1999 Grant Recipient Information
New Jersey

Preparing Modern Intermodal Freight Infrastructure to Support Brownfield Economic Redevelopment
Northern New Jersey

Abstract

Northern New Jersey has the largest port on the Atlantic and one of the fastest growing air cargo hubs in North America. It is the distribution platform to the consumer market encompassing the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan area and much of Pennsylvania and New England. It is also at the center of expanding railroad operations resulting from the acquisition of Conrail by Norfolk-Southern and CSX railroads. Freight-related industries are major players in the regional economy. Port Newark and Port Elizabeth alone generate 180,000 jobs and $6.2 billion in annual wages. New Jersey's trucking industry has a $10 billion annual payroll. The operational efficiency resulting from serving a huge regional market from its core accounts for this transportation business concentration.

After decades of de- industrialization in the region, large numbers of unskilled, mostly urban residents have few employment opportunities beside the semi-skilled and unskilled jobs associated with these freight distribution-related industries. With recent trade agreements opening even more markets, regional freight activity and the jobs it creates are expected to grow, regardless of national or international economic recessions. Yet congestion and aging transportation infrastructure are limiting mobility and frustrating achievement of regional air quality goals. Absent a readjustment of infrastructure and land use patterns, the efficiencies and related environmental and energy-use benefits of North Jersey's centralized freight service system are at risk.

To safeguard existing port industries and jobs and realize the economic development potentials of expected growth in freight activity, an important, though often neglected, resource is the large number of brownfield sites adjacent to the port and along major highways and rail freight routes leading to the port district.

The North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, Inc. (NJTPA) is the metropolitan organization (MPO) which is responsible for coordinating transportation plans for 5.8 million residents of the 13 northern counties and two largest cities in the State of New Jersey. Its host agency, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), is the state's technological university and is also the headquarters of the federally-funded National Center for Transportation and Industrial Productivity (NCTIP) and to the Northeast Hazardous Substance Research Center (NHSRQ. The NJTPA proposes a project to tie brownfield redevelopment to the goods movement activity-taking place at the adjacent port and airport through targeted and supportive transportation investments. With support from a coalition of public and private agencies and organizations, the NJTRA and NJIT will collect, organize and analyze economic, land use and environmental data to develop a transportation action plan to make the most efficient use of the region's resources, in particular, its underutilized brownfield sites and the nearby transportation infrastructure built over the last century.

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