7-22-2022 11:57am

NJ Transit’s FY23 Operating Budget

Chris Connors Editor

The NJ TRANSIT Board of Directors Wednesday (7/20) adopted the Fiscal Year 2023 (FY 2023) operating budget and updated capital plan that supports continued investments in personnel, infrastructure, and equipment to maintain a state of good repair and enhance the overall customer experience.

The Board adopted a $2.75 billion operating budget and $2.64 billion in capital investments for FY 2023.

This budget does not include a fare increase for FY 2023.

26 percent of the revenue in the FY 2023 operating budget comes from passenger fares. The remaining funds, $721 million in FY23, come from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, federal COVID-19 relief money, and a combination of commercial revenue and state and federal resources.

FY23 Operating Budget

Approximately 61 percent of the operating budget is dedicated to costs associated with labor and fringe benefits.

Other significant expenses include purchased transportation which represents 10 percent of total operating expenses.

Expenses including materials, fuel and power, utilities, and outside services represent the remaining 29 percent of the total operating expenses.

The budget also allows for the hiring of personnel within the bus, rail, light rail, police operations, and strategic administrative support services.

Reliability & Safety:

The FY 2023 Budget includes $10.1 million to hire additional operational staffing in Rail Infrastructure/Engineering, Mechanical, and Transportation departments.

In addition, $1 million is included for additional police positions to increase police visibility on NJT.

The budget also includes funding for the hiring of Light Rail vehicle maintenance employees and additional Office of System Safety positions – including safety training, COVID-19 response, community outreach, and accident/incident investigations for all new employees.

Customer Experience:

The FY 23 budget will fully fund 129 Bus positions for service enhancements. It will support the redesign of the Newark Bus System and Newark Micro-Transit initiative and the assumption of contracted bus routes.

Workforce:

The FY 23 budget will include enhanced recruitment for the HR Department, employee engagement, and candidate experience along with additional Procurement positions.

FY 2023 Capital Plan Update:

The FY 2023 update to A Five-Year Capital Plan continues to prioritize investments in infrastructure to maintain an overall state of good repair, enhance reliability, safety, and resiliency as well as improve the overall customer experience on the system.

The Five-Year Capital Plan is an unconstrained vision of projects to demonstrate opportunities for safety, service, reliability, resiliency, sustainability, and other improvements critical to NJ TRANSIT.

The Five-Year Capital Plan contains two sets of projects – the first set includes projects already funded by existing or expected resources. The second set identifies proposed projects for which funding has yet to be identified but is vital to NJ TRANSIT’s service delivery.

The capital budget includes approximately $814 million from the Debt Defeasance and Prevention Fund to be invested in upgrades to major terminals and public facilities and rail station modernization including:

$191 million for Newark Penn Station,
$176 million for Hoboken Terminal,
$250 million for Walter Rand Transportation Center,
$48 million for Bloomfield Station,
$33 million for Brick Church Station,
$49 million for New Brunswick Station,
$27 million for Roselle Park Station.
$40 million for the Northern Maintenance of Way (MOW) Facility in Clifton.

The Capital Plan continues to invest in infrastructure, which includes a funding increase of $191 million from the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act for projects including the agency-wide state-of-good-repair program, the midlife overhaul of the River LINE fleet, as well as rail infrastructure & facilities projects.

It also includes design projects for critical future investments including the design for Northern Bus Garage and NJ TRANSIT’s Bus Garage Modernization Program as well as key early construction activities for HBLR Route 440 expansion.

The FY23 Capital investments also include a $40 million funding increase for customer-facing technologies including Bus farebox replacement and modernization and Light Rail and Rail fare gate replacement and modernization.

NJ TRANSIT’s capital funding allocation is $2.64 billion which is an increase of $1.045 billion above last year’s approved amount of $1.59 billion.

The additional $1.045 billion is derived from several new sources: 