Credit: (Jim Connolly; NJLCV)

It’s never easy to find a dedicated, permanent funding source for any government program. But it’s essential we do so now for New Jersey Transit.

New Jersey’s public transit system is on the cusp of major improvements that will preserve and enhance our state’s critical rail connection to New York for generations to come.

After years of steadfast advocacy by Gov. Murphy, legislative leaders in Trenton and our congressional delegation, New Jersey is receiving billions of dollars through President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law to complete the Gateway Project.

This project will double rail capacity going into New York City. And just as important, it will allow us to make critical repairs to the existing rail tunnels running under the Hudson River, which were damaged during Superstorm Sandy and are beginning to fail. And it will provide funds to replace aging bridges and other infrastructure that cause frequent delays and backups.

Taken together, this is the largest federal investment in a public transit project in history — a historic commitment to communities in New Jersey that rely on easy access to New York City and a robust rail system for their economic well-being.

The project is also essential for addressing climate change. By expanding public transit capacity, we’ll be able to reduce traffic by bringing cars off the road, lowering emissions and improving air quality.

Ongoing failure of elected leaders

Despite these massive federal investments in our state’s economic future, New Jersey is at risk of failing to take full advantage of the Gateway Project because of our elected leaders’ continued failure to identify a dedicated source of funding for NJ Transit.

Most public transit commuters in New Jersey rely on NJ Transit, not Amtrak, to get where they’re going every day.

As COVID-19 changes patterns of how people work and where they live, it’s even more essential that we provide robust public transit options to attract businesses and families to our state.

But NJ Transit can’t plan, or invest, for the long term. Instead, it must rely on an appropriation from the state that is hashed out each year in the budget to supplement money it gets from fares. The problem is compounded because Trenton has relied on budget gimmicks to fund NJ Transit for years, including raids of the state’s clean-energy fund.

This money, collected from businesses and working families’ energy bills, is supposed to fund energy cost-saving projects to insulate and weatherize homes of low-income families. The cheapest energy is the energy we don’t use or the energy we save through energy efficiency.

Instead of helping reduce costs for families, each year these funds are taken and diverted to NJ Transit — further burdening working families with unnecessarily higher bills, not to mention weakening efforts to tackle our climate crisis.

This means that the agency can’t predict from year to year how much money it will receive and is instead subject to the whims of the annual budget process, where funding for transit must compete with needed investments in schools, social services and public safety. It also means that we can’t use all our clean-energy fund dollars to support clean-energy efforts for low-income customers.

It’s not too late

It takes years to expand a new rail line or build new buses. Now, in the coming state budget season, is the moment for our leaders to identify our priorities. It’s not too late to support NJ Transit, save working families’ money by investing fully in home weatherization programs and tackle the climate crisis.

Thanks in part to federal recovery dollars as well as the prudent fiscal stewardship of the governor and Legislature, the state has been able to break out of the perennial budget shortfalls that led to frenzied negotiations every June as Trenton sought desperately to balance the budget.

By contrast, the state is currently enjoying record surpluses and has been awarded upgrades by the credit rating agencies — a testament to New Jersey’s growing fiscal stability.

The state’s firmer financial footing should give the governor and legislative leaders enough maneuvering room to finally end the clean-energy raids once and for all and instead identify a permanent and stable source of funding for NJ Transit that will allow the agency to plan for the long term.

We need to be able to leverage this historic moment to build the nation’s best transit system and invest in low-income communities to lower energy costs.

NJ Transit riders deserve it. The environment deserves it. Working families living in uninsulated homes with rattling windows and doors deserve it. And the communities that benefit from public transit deserve it.

As Gov. Murphy prepares to unveil his budget proposal, we call on him to both finally achieve long-term stability for NJ Transit and end the clean-energy diversions. These long overdue investments will be an essential part of a long-standing environmental legacy.