The New Jersey Department of Transportation issued $30.1 million in grants on July 16 as part of its local freight impact fund program to help counties and municipalities provide for the safe movement of large truck traffic.
“New Jersey roads and bridges carry some of the heaviest amount of commercial truck traffic in the country every day,” NJDOT Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti said in a statement.
“The Local Freight Impact Fund is an example of your gas tax dollars at work,” she added. “These grants using state funds will allow counties and municipalities to make critical improvements to truck routes that are essential to keeping our regional economy thriving.”
Gutierrez-Scaccetti also said this program helps New Jersey’s municipalities fund projects that emphasize and enhance the safe movement of large truck traffic, renew aging structures that carry large truck traffic, promote economic development, and support new transportation opportunities.
Eligible projects that win funding via the LFIF program fall into four categories: bridge preservation, new construction, pavement preservation, and truck safety and mobility.
[As an aside, to help keep commercial vehicles moving in winter through the steep mountain passes that dot the southern portion of Oregon’s highway network, the Oregon Department of Transportation keeps a brigade of “pusher trucks” on standby in snowy weather.]
The New Jersey DOT noted that the LFIF grant program – created as part of Transportation Trust Fund re-authorization in October 2016, which raised the state’s gas tax – is now in its second year of issuing grants.