May 2025
Posted: 5/14/2025 1:14:57 PM
The biggest factor in how people get around has more to do with land use than transportation assets and the relationship between the two should be much more intentional in the Garden State.
Zoe Baldwin, Vice President, State Programs, and New Jersey Director, for the Regional Plan Association (RPA), made that case in a presentation to the NJTPA Board of Trustees at its meeting on Monday. Founded in 1922, RPA develops plans to improve the “economic health, environmental resiliency, and quality of life” of the New York City metropolitan area.
Baldwin outlined the impact of the $16-billion Gateway Program, which includes the Hudson Tunnel Project. The RPA’s recent report, The Economic Promise of the Gateway Program, estimated that the program will generate economic impact of $230 billion for the tristate area and $170 billion nationwide in its first 15 years of operation (2045-2060). Losing one of the two tracks of the Hudson River Tunnel at this point would reduce capacity by up to 75 percent; a partial shutdown would cost the U.S. $16 billion over four years.
And Gateway is not just a tunnel; it consists of several related projects, , Baldwin said.
“The full Gateway program has major supporting projects underway including bridges, stations, loops and yards that actually make the whole system more resilient and get us where we need to go,” she said.
A 2021 report by RPA found that capacity is needed across four work-from-home (WFH) and return-to-office (RTO) scenarios. “This really isn’t about restoring service, it’s about preparing for the growth we already have. You’ve got to build ahead of need, not behind it.”
Baldwin said she started her career in what she realizes was a “golden age” of New Jersey transportation. Now-critical infrastructure projects were completed at the time, from the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail in 1996 to the Meadowlands Line in 2009.
Recessions and the cancellation of the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) tunnel in 2010 “kind of tipped the system in a way in which we haven’t recovered,” Baldwin said. “What we have to do to get back to that golden age is acknowledge the inextricable relationships between land use and transit.,” she told Board members.
This includes promoting Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) which is good for taxpayers and local budgets. “Every mile of pipe, pavement, or rail impacts a higher percentage of your residents and that’s just good finance, especially in a state that’s almost paralyzed by our property tax discussions,” Baldwin said.
About half of New Jersey residents already live within a 10-minute walk of transit. “We have this really good base, we’re not starting from scratch. We just need to plan smart, remove some of our outdated barriers, and really keep going,” Baldwin said.
“Everyone likes demanding that transit should be efficient and roads be less congested, and then we’re making land use decisions at the local level that do not support any of these improvements. We really need to be much more intentional about these relationships.” She praised NJTPA programs that are supporting Complete Streets and other measures to improve local land use.
A recording of the presentation is available here.
Posted: 5/2/2025 11:55:50 AM
The next two years could be challenging economically for New Jersey but the state will return to modest growth over the long term.
That was the snapshot presented by Will Irving, Associate Professor, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, to the Joint Project Prioritization and Planning and Economic Development Committees during their April 21 meeting.
Irving presented the most recent forecast (December/January) from the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON), which typically releases three reports each year.
The December forecast took into account some expected increased tariffs,an extension of tax cuts and more immigration restrictions, though not as extensive as currently underway, said Irving.
A big drop-off in the state Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected over the next couple of years, at 0.5 percent and 0.7 percent in 2025 and 2026, respectively, compared to the U.S., which Moody’s had at 2.2 percent this year and 1.6 percent for next year.
In subsequent years, growth in New Jersey is forecast to recover but still lag the U.S. by 1 percentage point annually over the longer term. That lag compared to the U.S. is consistent for the state going back to 1998. “We’ve had a history of a lag, that doesn’t really change over the longer term,” Irving said, and New Jersey has trailed regional peers, like New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, which have had a little faster growth.
New Jersey’s employment growth has been characterized by a lot of volatility, with about 1 percent growth, or 40,000 jobs, in 2024, Irving said. The state is moving past the large employment gains of the COVID recovery and settling into a slower trajectory, similar to the past few years before COVID of about 30,000 jobs annually.
The long-term outlook, over 10- and 25-year horizons, is largely unchanged but the outlook over the next two years will decline significantly, with a decline in state GDP forecast this year and a significant jump in unemployment next year to 5.4 percent. Things could also be worse: a change in Federal Reserve policy, stagflation, and entrenchment of more severe tariffs would result in larger and longer lasting effects, he said.
Demographic Outlook
New Jersey has been losing population to other states at a significant rate for at least the past few decades, with domestic out-migration averaging about 50,000 people annually from 2010-2020. Without immigration, New Jersey would have seen a population decline of about 9,000, Irving said.
New Jersey is also affected by slower population growth nationally and a pattern of growth shifting to the South and West at the expense of Northeast.
Forecasts call for about 0.1 percent population growth annually, compared with 0.5 percent over the 2010-2020 period, for the U.S.
This slower growth also reflects a contracting aging population compared to the nation, likely due to retirees leaving the state due to high costs, Irving said. An aging population portends higher costs and further dominance of the healthcare sector in employment growth, he added.
The next forecast, likely out in late June, would include revisions to New Jersey data from last year as well as Q1 data for 2025.
A video recording of the presentation is available on the NJTPA YouTube channel.