The Jersey City Independent "

As the world grapples with global warming and finally begins to recognize the impact of individual action, non-automotive transit is becoming one of the most pressing issues for the future of our city. With that in mind, JCI recently spoke with four of the five mayoral candidates — Mayor Jerramiah Healy, Dan Levin, Lou Manzo and Harvey Smith — about their visions for transportation in Jersey City. Candidate Phil Webb was not available for comment.

While saying Jersey City’s mass transit receives a grade of “A-Plus,” Healy admits “there are areas of the city that are presently not adequately served, especially by buses.”

In January 2008, two major bus lines serving Greenville — the number 99 and 16 routes — were eliminated. Earlier that year, shifts in private bus routes in the Heights had residents up in arms.

Healy says his administration is working on providing better bus service, citing the soon-to-be-completed bus study it undertook with NJ Transit that sought residents’ input at a series of open houses.

Not surprisingly, the other candidates don’t agree with Healy’s rosy assessment.

“Like a lot of things in this city, [it] depends on where you live,” Smith says. He points out the West Side is particularly ill-served by transit, as are other parts of Greenville, the Heights and even parts of Downtown. “For many residents, commuter vans and buses are the main mode of transportation, and some buses are scarce, indeed.”

Levin agrees, and uses the “tale of two cities” meme that has popped up throughout the campaign as a way to illustrate it.

“The PATH system is excellent; the light rail system is excellent; certain bus lines and services are good,” he says. “But in order to bring back areas that need development, we need mobility everywhere.”

Levin says that he would aim to create frequent and reliable bus service within a 10-minute walk of every home — and every place of business — in the city.

Manzo says that many residents feel frustrated by mass transit in the city.

“Our residents are being impacted by the lack of transportation,” he says. “People feel almost compelled to buy a car.”

One of Manzo’s proposals unveiled during this campaign is for the city to create its own mass transit authority, mainly to run the bus system in Jersey City, but also to advocate for residents’ transit needs with NJ Transit and the Port Authority. He says the Jersey City Port Authority, which was created in 1981 but never instituted, could take over the city’s transit issues.

“Some guy sitting in Trenton writing a bus route for Jersey City doesn’t make sense,” Manzo says, adding that the local authority would give Jersey City more control over its transit destiny.

But some other candidates criticized Manzo’s proposal.

“Manzo’s plan to create a Jersey City Transit Authority would cause more cost to the city and more bureaucracy with no guarantee of success,” Healy says.

Levin agrees with the mayor.

“It would collapse,” Levin says. “It’s wrong.” He says the idea is the latest in the time-honored New Jersey tradition of municipal autonomy, which he says hurts both the city and the state. “We should be regionalizing instead,” Levin says.

Intra-city Commuting

The Jersey City Mobility 2050 study gauged the transportation habits of people in three categories: those who work in Jersey City and live elsewhere, those who live in Jersey City and work elsewhere, and those who live and work in Jersey City.

Not surprisingly, those who live and work in Jersey City were found to have the highest rate of walking or biking to work, at 25 percent. But the same group of people were found to have the lowest rate of mass transit use (36 percent) and the highest rate of automobile use (39 percent).

Levin says he knows why.

“Government is the biggest industry in Jersey City,” he says. He and Smith both say the city needs to do more to get city employees out of their city-owned cars and onto mass transit.

“We need our government employees and elected officials to be riding the PATH and the buses,” Levin says, so they can understand the problems riders face.

He also says the city shouldn’t be subsidizing parking for workers with offices near transit hubs, pointing to the recent extension of a lease on 116 spots for workers at 30 Montgomery St. as a prime example. The city agreed to pay the Parking Authority $104,000 a year for the spots, which will be used by workers whose offices are steps from Exchange Place, which as Levin points out, has light rail and PATH access and is served by a number of bus lines.

Smith says he’d cut the city’s fleet of cars and “encourage city workers to take mass transit to work” by “cooperating with mass transit providers for pre-tax, discounted fares for city workers.”

Bicycling

Beyond mass transit, bicycling is also a key to creating cleaner and more sustainable cities. But the mayoral challengers all say the city needs to foster a better bicycling environment.

“The city does an extraordinarily poor job” at accomodating cyclists, Levin — a devoted bike commuter — says. He says the city needs to get bike lanes on the streets.

Manzo agrees that the city is “definitely not” bike-friendly. Designating certain streets — both north-south and east-west routes — as bike routes with lane markers and designating a grid of major bike paths would be a priority in his administration, he says.

Smith says making the city more bike-friendly benefits more than just bikers.

“We can do a lot to alleviate traffic if we just made it easier and safer to cycle around the city,” Smith says.

“The biggest joke in the city is those ‘Bike Route’ signs,” he adds. “What bike routes? Random signs at random intersections is not making your city bike friendly.” He says his administration would create “real bike routes that go somewhere” and create more bike parking near mass transit and shopping districts.

Healy says his administration is “installing bicycle racks throughout the city,” but Levin points out that instead of adding more bike racks at spots like the Grove Street PATH station, as the city is doing, it should be adding more bike facilities at waterfront employment centers, which he says are currently lacking in bike racks.

Jitney Buses

The number of jitney buses that shuttle people around the city — and to and from New York City — generally grows as more private bus companies cut services in Jersey City, as they have in recent years. But in most instances, these buses are protected from city regulation by federal interstate commerce laws (since they operate in New Jersey and New York). However, all the candidates agree that the city can help make sure they are operating legally and safely.

Healy proposes asking the Jersey City Department of Commerce to determine the feasibility of the city licensing jitneys, much as it currently does for taxis.

Smith says the city needs to do as much as it legally can to monitor the jitneys.

“The jitneys play an important role filling in the gaps where larger mass transit entities fall short, but we need to bring some sane regulation to the industry,” Smith says. “We need to make sure that the drivers are competent and qualified to be behind the wheel and that their vehicles are safe to be on the road.”

Manzo says he’d work to make sure the buses have the proper insurance and would try to coordinate with the operators so they don’t fight existing bus routes.

“Those jitneys put a lot of the current bus lines out of existence,” he says. Manzo adds that the city would be less affected by jitneys if it had its own transit authority, as he proposes.

While noting that jitney buses “clearly serve a market,” Levin says his administration would work with NJ Transit to get the agency to take over independently-run bus lines. He also wants to green the jitneys, proposing that NJ Transit run “small but frequent jitney buses run on electricity, natural gas or hybrid fuel.”

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