Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning. My name is Nat Bottigheimer, New Jersey Director for Regional Plan Association.

Sustaining New Jersey Transit service at ​“normal” levels is vitally important to New Jersey’s economy, environment, and the tens of thousands of essential workers who rely on it daily, have borne the brunt of COVID, have been hardest hit by the economic downturn, and have the fewest transportation options. RPA’s deepest concerns for NJ Transit are the reliability and availability of future funding for NJ Transit especially considering expected future state budget shortfalls.

With no guarantee of new additional federal relief funds beyond those already received; it is critical that our federal elected leaders keep the pressure up for a second round of Covid relief funding. New State sources of funding must be tapped to prevent transit service reductions that would harm essential workers and the most vulnerable; and forestall diversion of capital funds from the infrastructure rebuilding program that NJ Transit has set forth in its strategic and capital plans.

The agency is moving in the right direction to increase transparency. The recently-released strategic and capital plans are models of information communication; and customer survey data showing ridership by race and income motivates resources to support New Jersey’s most vulnerable.

Data on current and historic bus time and location, which can show how traffic congestion and other factors worsen bus performance and increase transit cost, is also extremely helpful; as are libraries of past planning studies.

RPA understands that raw data on transit performance can be warty and may reveal information gaps that need correcting.

We recognize this risk and commit to providing the greatest support possible to connect such gaps with the need for investment in updated information systems; and also to support the positive strategic value of sharing performance data, even if it is not perfect.