How to speed up North Jersey supply chain? Port Authority has $176 million plan for that
Anyone who drives in the Garden State knows the white-knuckled, anxious feeling when a large container truck tries to bend slowly around a tight turn without hitting anything.
Now picture intersections where at peak hours some 1,440 trucks have to make careful, slow and perfectly angled turns to enter Port Newark from the highway and surrounding streets. These sharp angles significantly slow the movement of goods in what is at times the busiest port in the country. In the worst cases, there are crashes and fatalities.
Now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is launching a 10-year, $176 million effort to improve five intersections, upgrade interchanges and traffic signals, and reconstruct roadways near Port Newark, with the help of a $44 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Infrastructure for Rebuilding America program.
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"We’re rebuilding what was built 65, 70, 75 years ago for the U.S. Navy," said Bethann Rooney, port director for the Port Authority. "We have infrastructure that — because of the activity that has been built up in the port — hasn’t been able to be redeveloped over the time," she said, and is not built to accommodate today's larger and heavier trucks.
The grant was awarded in 2021, but dignitaries, including Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation, New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, and Port Authority officials, announced that construction will soon begin.
Will reduce crashes by 37%
From 2005 to 2018, there were 401 crashes, including 81 injuries and three deaths, in the Port Street area. Once the projects are completed, Port Authority officials estimate, crashes will be cut by at least 37%.
The changes will also reduce traffic and idling due to slow turns or crashes — which will affect the local, U.S. and world economy, Trottenberg said.
"One thing we learned during COVID is the supply chain is a whole complex system — it’s goods coming to ports; it’s goods moving on trucks and rail," Trottenberg said. "What we discovered is when stressed, like it was during COVID, it was a brittle system, because we hadn’t been investing in it like we need to."
Some $2 billion in federal money has been invested in the ports during the Biden administration, and Adm. Ann Phillips of the Maritime Administration called it a "generational" investment. Biden's centerpiece legislation, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, added $450 million annually over five years to federal port investment, up from $230 million annually for the Port Infrastructure Development Program.
Improving supply chain flow
This week, the Biden administration announced a series of actions to improve supply chain flow in the U.S., including convening a supply chain council that involves the private and public sectors to share information and data and improve the movement of goods.
"Everything we can do to invest in these ports and make them be more efficient is going to make us globally more competitive," Trottenberg said. "We compete with Europe and we compete with Asia on the port front."
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Port Authority has plan to speed up NJ supply chain issues
