OPINION
Last Sunday night, while visiting a friend’s home on 6th Street and Coles, I sat in traffic Downtown for a half hour for each and every block.
Whether you were on Christopher Columbus Drive, Montgomery Street, Erie Street, or, as I was, on 6th Street, traffic simply did not move. The Waze map was red throughout our business districts and residential roads. For our families, this situation recurs almost every weekend.
As Councilman Solomon stated three years ago, “cars [are] using Downtown as a pass through to the Holland Tunnel. No community would accept being turned into a highway.” Unfortunately, the traffic has only gotten progressively worse.
As one person shared with me, God forbid her mother or father suffered a medical emergency; an ambulance would never be able to arrive or depart in time to serve their needs – the traffic chokes our roads, it is terrible for the air we breathe, it paralyzes our neighborhoods, and hurts our local businesses.
This problem is more than a quality-of-life issue. It is an emergency condition. When we cannot move through our streets, ambulances, fire trucks, and other emergency responders cannot. When minutes matter most, it is not an overstatement to say that what has become our weekly traffic woes can be life or death.
Jersey City is a modern, pedestrian-friendly metropolitan city with access to transit and micro-mobility options. But seemingly every Sunday night, we become an arterial thoroughfare for out-of-town—and more often, out-of-state—drivers trying to access the Holland Tunnel.
Whenever there is a problem on the New Jersey Turnpike Newark Bay Extension or in the Holland Tunnel, there is a problem in our Downtown. Clogged streets are dangerous for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers. The conditions cause aggravated emissions due to increased idling, acceleration, and braking.
Others have tried to solve the problem. Jersey City rightfully announced a plan to limit left turns on Christopher Columbus Drive during certain morning commuting hours – a plan to make Jersey City Waze and Google Maps “undesirable” by increasing the time it takes to get to the Holland Tunnel and reducing cut-through traffic.
Limiting left turns is laudable, but as our shared Sunday night experience proves, more needs to be done to abate this condition.
As Mayor of Jersey City, I would take immediate action to abate this emergency condition:
1. I would ban commercial vehicles on Sundays during the extreme traffic hours from 3 pm to 9 pm and broaden the no-left-turn prohibitions to additional times.
2. During these Sunday restricted hours, I will station auxiliary Jersey City Police Department officers at key intersections (Palisade Avenue and Newark Avenue, Palisade Avenue and New Jersey Route 139, Summit Avenue and New Jersey Route139, and Chestnut Street and Pavonia Avenue) to ensure these policies are vigorously enforced.I will adjust the staffing and sites accordingly.
3. During these Sunday restricted hours, I am prepared to stop the problem at its root cause. During specified emergency times and conditions, I would close Jersey City to non-residents exiting the New Jersey Turnpike/Interstate 78 at the Christopher Columbus Drive exit. Depending on conditions, non-residents would be redirected back to the Turnpike.
As State law requires, if our actions impact a State highway, we will seek approval from the State Commissioner of Transportation. As Mayor, armed with statistics on emergency response times and other transportation analyses, I would seek the Commissioner’s approval to restrict non-residents from exiting the New Jersey Turnpike.
Utilizing records from the Jersey City Parking Division, I would restore the requirement to display Jersey City parking permits on vehicles or ensure that the present scanning technology was universally operative, which is formally required, to register parking permits.
Traffic in our city when the Holland Tunnel backs up is a quality-of-life problem and a crisis. We should treat it as such, and, as Mayor, I will.