So, of the 431 Federal highway miles in NJ, the Federal Government shouldn’t pay to maintain any of them?
That’s the thing - I’m OK with the Government spending on maintenance of critical infrastructure like roads and airports. If there’s too much spending, then cut something else - not the road, bridge, and airport maintenance of its own assets.
I’m say they constitute about 1% of NJ road mileage.
They also constitute about 1% of all Federal road mileage.
But the Feral government is funding maybe HALF of NJ’s transportation budget. About a billion dollars, perhaps closer to $2 billion.
Seems like too much Federal money going to NJ for 431 out of 38,000 miles of road...
If you look through the projects in the one link I had - there are all sorts of bogus projects in the NJDOT plan. This is slush money pure and simple.
What I’m saying is easy: NJ should simply take over the 431 miles - maintain it just like the do the other 38,000 miles of their own roads. And then take NO money from the Feds. The Feral government would save over $1 billion EVERY YEAR from here on out !
If that was forced on NJ by Congress NJ would just... get along. We’d survive. We’d just have to decide how much garbage we were going to cut out of our Transportation fantasyland spending. I bet we’d cut. Trubble is, the mobsters - sorry, ex-mobsters - would NOT want to have their juicy contracts cut. Ouch.
Here’s an interesting link...
According to the article (I’d have to look it up)... my WONDERFUL Congressman Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) recently proposed a bill to allow states to opt out of Federal funding !!!!!!!
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/transportation/highway-funding