New Jersey has allocated $70 million in Clean Energy Fund cash to New Jersey Transit. Although the stated intent of the grant is to support bus electrification, the funds may also be used to support NJ Transit’s operating budget for fiscal year 2025. Therefore, the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club supports S-4468, a budget Resolution from Sen. Andrew Zwicker, which would ensure that all of the money allocated to NJ Transit bus is restricted to electrification projects.
New Jersey is woefully behind in transitioning to emissions-free buses, and using the Clean Energy Fund for its intended purpose is the right place to start.
In past years, New Jersey administrations have treated The Clean Energy Fund like a Depression-era cookie jar, diverting over $2 billion for unrelated purposes. Instead, Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration should move forward with its fiscal year 2025 proposal to tax the wealthiest corporations in New Jersey to help support NJ Transit’s capital and operating costs.
“Right now, New Jersey Transit’s sole source of funding for bus electrification is coming from federal grants to build a new bus garage in Union City and to modernize the Meadowlands garage to accommodate electric buses. However, the agency currently owns and operates 17 bus garages in the state, and there is no long-term funding plan to migrate these facilities to handle electric buses,” said Sierra Club NJ Chapter Transportation Committee Chair Bill Beren. “Although Gov. Murphy has set a goal to purchase electric transit buses starting in 2024, this goal and others like it are meaningless unless the infrastructure is built ahead of time to charge and maintain these buses—and there is no plan in place to time the needed infrastructure improvements with electric bus purchases.”
Tellingly, NJ Transit CEO Kevin Corbett said in a July 24th press release that its new Union City bus garage will serve “as a model for cost-effective, sustainable bus operations … and represents another important step in advancing [NJ Transit’s] Zero-Emission Bus Program.” But this model isn’t expected to be on line until 2030.