With so many major highways crossing Parsippany, we don’t have to go far to see the mess that New Jersey’s roads are in.  It is almost impossible to avoid the potholes, some of which are more like sinkholes.  When you can’t avoid one and hit it square on, your teeth rattle and you pray you haven’t broken an axle in your car.   And this will get worse when the after affects of this winter set in.

Not only do we have to deal with the potholes, but there is debris along the highways that hasn’t been properly cleaned up for years.  This hardly helps our image as the “Garden State”.  There was a time when New Jersey was known for the quality of its road network.

But for several years now, as the state has devolved into a precarious financial situation, our roads have been sorely neglected.  And with the Transportation Trust Fund slated to run out of money in 2011, it doesn’t appear that this situation will improve for a long time.

Unless, of course, the state can find some way to replenish the Trust Fund, not an easy task.  I and most of the public don’t really like any of the options.  One that has been tossed around is to place tolls on more of our highways.  That will just cause more backups and delays which we don’t need. Plus, the cost of collection for tolls is estimated to be 14 to 20 percent of revenue collected. Another option is to raise the gas tax.  New Jersey’s gas tax, 14.5 cents per gallon, is the fourth lowest in the country behind Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming.  Looking at our neighboring states, New York’s tax is 42.5 cents per gallon, Pennsylvania’s is 32.3 and Connecticut’s is 36.4.  And the cost of a gas tax is only 1 to 2 percent of revenue collected.

Taking all of the above into consideration, it seems that it’s time to raise the gas tax.  But before that is done, there must be assurances that the revenue raised will be dedicated to the Trust Fund and not diverted for other purposes.  The public needs to be assured that they are getting what they pay for and that our roads will again be maintained as they should be.