In a report presented to New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey on February 14, 2003, the New Jersey Toll Road Consolidation Study Commission recommended merging the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike. Under the Commission’s plan, the Garden State Parkway would be placed under the auspices of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority ("NJTA"). In addition, the Commission recommended restructuring over $300 million of E-ZPass debt issued on the premise that violations could pay for the system, as well as the refinancing existing Turnpike and Parkway debt.

The Commission has found that these operational and financial measures will achieve an estimated $198 million in actual dollar savings. A consolidation of the two highways under one umbrella will achieve economies of scale; produce financial savings; obtain efficiencies in administration, management, and operations; permit a pooling of economic resources to fund essential capital projects; and implement more coordinated transportation planning, while at the same time maintaining the historic identities of both roadways.

The Commission recommends excluding the Atlantic City Expressway, or any other responsibilities of the South Jersey Transportation Authority ("SJTA"), from the consolidation of the Turnpike and the Parkway. The SJTA's unique role as a regional transportation and economic development authority with multi-faceted responsibilities over an airport, bus lines, economic development, and the interrelationship of its financial structure, obligations, and diverse powers, strongly favors continuing the SJTA as a separate entity.

We also recommend that the Garden State Arts Center be transferred to the Turnpike Authority, because under our proposal, the Highway Authority will be abolished and only the Turnpike Authority will remain. Although the Turnpike Authority may not be best suited to administering an entertainment facility, the Commission recommends giving the Turnpike Authority the power to dispose of the Arts Center to the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority or such other entity as it determines to be in the best interests of the public. Finally, the Commission recommends that the Turnpike Authority be empowered to pursue other transportation projects in order to promote more coordinated transportation planning.

The current study began in March 26, 2002, when Governor James E. McGreevey signed Executive Order No. 15 creating the Toll Road Consolidation Study Commission (the Commission"). The Commission's charge was to consider and report on the viability of consolidating two or more of the three authorities that operate New Jersey's three toll roads.

The February 1,4 2003 report is the culmination of ten months of study led by the Chief of the Governor's Authorities Unit and two Commissioners of the Department of Transportation, in consultation with the chairs and executive directors of the affected toll road authorities, their constituencies, and transportation, finance, management and legal experts. The State sought the assistance of external consultants to assess the financial, administrative, and operational issues arising from a consolidation.

Since their inception, the mission of the separate toll road authorities has been to ensure the timely and safe construction, maintenance, and operation of their respective highways, to be paid for by charges imposed on the users of the highways. By charging different entities with undertaking these functionally similar activities at the outset, the State certainly benefited. The commercially-oriented Turnpike was authorized and completed in under two years between 1949 and 1951; and the passenger-oriented Parkway was authorized in 1952, opened to traffic in 1954, and completed in 1957.

Fifty years later each roadway remains an exemplar of its respective type. Transportation officials from around the world regularly visit the Turnpike to examine how that organization efficiently and safely serves one of the largest and most diverse streams of interstate traffic along the nation's critical I-95 corridor. Likewise, transportation experts marvel at the beauty of a Parkway that dispels popular misconceptions about New Jersey while simultaneously serving as a key artery for commuters and vacationers. Each roadway was designed with these specific attributes in mind, and the existence of separate organizations to conceive and promote these important and complementary needs certainly improved the final road network that motorists often take for granted today.

As the State and the highways that serve it have matured and grown in the last half century, the need for separate entities to maintain and operate these highways has diminished considerably.

Draft legislation has been prepared to implement the recommendations outlined in the Commission's report. The bill proposes the acquisition of the functions of the NJHA, principally the Garden State Parkway and the Garden State Arts Center, by the NJTA, as the best structural mechanism to promote the availability of tax-exempt financing.

The proposed legislation abolishes the New Jersey Highway Authority and vests the powers of that entity in the existing Board of Commissioners of the NJTA, without changing the composition or size of the NJTA Board.

The draft bill gives the NJTA the power to take necessary anticipatory acts to facilitate a transfer of responsibilities from the NJHA to the NJTA. The proposed legislation also gives the NJTA, after the transfer date, the flexibility to adopt interim rules to facilitate the smooth integration of the two authorities.

The legislation also proposes that the NJTA engage in an annual transportation and related economic development planning process. It further proposes that the NJTA be granted the power to promote an integrated statewide transportation network.