Route 55 Would Restore Cape’s Lifeblood; Jeff Van Drew Addresses Cape Issues

Folks, Cape May County is a beautiful place to live and to visit. Like anything worthwhile, our beloved county needs tending in order to flourish. Many of the people who work in the county are having trouble thriving right now. Everybody knows the national economy is hurting, which is impacting us, but part of our problem is our inability to keep pace with our competitors for visitors who are our lifeblood.
With tourism as our primary economic driver, we have to keep people wanting to come here; part of the way we do that is to make it possible for them to come here without frustrating them by undue delays on our roads. As I have noted before, four-lane roads are the standard, not just in the U.S., but in all developed countries. My wife and I have seen these modern roads not just in Germany, but in Sicily, Croatia and under construction in China.
There was a time when New Jersey cared about the economic well-being of all her citizens, but then we lost our way and became more concerned about the tree frogs and salamanders than about the working man and woman. But don’t misunderstand, without a clean environment, we would not want to live here and our visitors would not want to visit.
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When a beautiful rosebush is not tended,
it first ceases to thrive, then slowly withers.
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Six decades ago we identified the need to create an interstate-quality road between here and Philadelphia. We completed two-thirds of it, and stopped, leaving our visitors to travel the last 20 miles on a slow, crowded, dangerous, weaving cow path through the woods. That is the status of Route 55 today, without even a plan to move forward. Good transportation is essential, and not just to revive our shrinking economy and shrinking population. Slow-moving cars by the thousands, stopping and going for hours needlessly pollute our air, and create a storm-evacuation hazard.
In search of answers we invited Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-1st) to join the Cape Issues group at 7 a.m., Sept. 3 to find ways to break the logjam. Following is the gist of his remarks.
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We Can Do It: I think Route 55 can be completed if there is a will to do it. At issue is, regardless of the route that is chosen, you are eventually going to impact wetlands. I think that we can deal with that, and I think that we should. One of the ways is an elevated highway, similar to what Florida does. At a minimum the cost to complete it is probably a billion dollars.
How? We Need To Design It: The next phase that we should go into is the design phase. If you design the project you have to deal with all the issues. You’ve got to deal with the people who are impacted by it and the environment that is impacted by it. We have a piece of legislation that allocated about $8 million for the design phase of Route 55.
The problem is political dysfunction. We have some extremism. Some environmental groups consider any route we might choose to be some of the most pristine and important areas not just in New Jersey, not just in the U.S., but globally. To some of them, it is like cutting down the (California) redwoods. To get it completed will require the focus of the legislative team, the DOT commissioner, the governor and also the primary driver of economic development, that being the county.
There is going to be a huge firestorm of opposition. Some ask the opposition to state their specific objection so that answers to those problems can be sought. That would be a sane and practical approach, but politics doesn’t work that way.
I am a dentist. When I have a problem with a tooth, I say, here is the problem; here is how we deal with it. Can the tooth be saved? Does it need to be extracted? Does it need a crown? Do we need to do an implant? That is not the way politics works.
The way politics works is, you have powerful advocacy groups on both sides. The way this issue would play out, you would have the district advocate for it; you will have the unions advocate for it because it will create a tremendous amount of work for a lot of people; you are going to have chambers of commerce advocate for it; and then you are going have the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Fish & Wildlife, Fish & Game, Environmental Federation, to name a few, be against it.
Many times I have had conversations with some of those folks where I have shown them in black and white why something makes sense and needs to get done (and by the way, at the end of day, we have gotten it done), and despite that mailers and email have gone out saying how I am bad for the environment. Politically they show their muscle and stop a project. I am not saying they do all bad; they do some good things too.
It doesn’t mean it can’t be done. But when you get into a battle, you have to understand what the war is about. At the end of day, we have to have the public understand that we are going to save the environment.
The Money: The environmental issue is number one; the fiscal issue is number two. The tunnel from Hudson County into New York was killed because it cost too much money, and because of that a lot of smaller projects got done. So the second part of getting Route 55 done is to justify the cost: how much money will it generate in tourism and in tax revenue?
Through regulation we have made this process much more difficult than you can ever imagine. We could have never built the Parkway; we could not have built this country; people don’t realize that. This country and the system of roads that Dwight Eisenhower envisioned and built could never happen now given the regulations we now have. In the past, sometimes we did too much, we destroyed too much, we polluted too much, but now we have gone to the opposite extreme, where we can’t do a thing, and if we do, it costs a zillion dollars because there is so much red tape involved. You have no idea until you are deeply into it how hard it is to get these things done.
Next Step: Getting the Design-Phase bill passed is a really good goal for the next legislative session, starting in November. We’ll reintroduce the bill; my assemblymen will reintroduce the bill, I’ll introduce the bill. It is going to be a major effort to get that bill moved, and I am going to need everybody’s help from both political parties.
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For the good of all New Jersey citizens, and for the economic health of one of New Jersey’s most beautiful regions, the county must cease to be a neglected rosebush. When a beautiful rosebush is not tended, it first ceases to thrive, then slowly withers. If New Jersey thinks we can abuse our visitors as we currently do, they will find more visitor-friendly destinations.