News
New Jersey State Policy Lab: Blue Acres, Buyouts, and Managed Retreat
Managed retreat is the process of deliberately moving away from places that are no longer safe to remain due to various environmental factors, most often flooding.
National Transit Institute names Geisha Ester as advisory board chair
The National Transit Institute’s mission is to provide training, education, and clearinghouse services in support of public transportation and quality of life in the United States.
Traffic cameras could reduce racial profiling, Rutgers study finds
Perceptions among state and federal policymakers that the public opposes the installation of speed cameras has made the technology rare despite the fact it could reduce racial profiling and minimize police-driver interactions, according to a Rutgers study recently...
NJ employee payout limits lack legal enforcement
When the Legislature passed laws in 2007 and 2010 designed to save taxpayers money by limiting sick leave cash-outs for local public employees, it did not explicitly add an enforcement mechanism. And that may be one of the reasons why the Office of...
Cameras to catch speeding on NJ roads? Illegal now but public could support it
The idea of automated speed cameras along roadways may get more support from the public, as well as policymakers, if the technology were promoted as a way to reduce racial profiling by law enforcement. That's according to a new study out of Rutgers University. But it...
New Jersey State Policy Lab: Housing Affordability in New Jersey, 2010-2020
As of 2019, New Jersey ranked third in the country for median monthly housing costs, after California and Hawaii. Nearly half of renter households in New Jersey spent 35 percent or more of their incomes on housing expenses.
NJ alleges familiar benefits fraud in Wildwood
When we saw the words "health benefits fraud" in a headline recently, our first thought was finally, a step toward justice in the massive kickbacks to public employees in South Jersey for submitting bogus prescriptions to their lavishly funded state health...
Paul Wiedefeld MCRP ’81 joins VTC Advisory Board
Mr. Wiedefeld served as the General Manager/CEO of the Washington Metro, one of the nation’s largest transit systems serving more than 300 million passenger trips annually and with an annual $2.2 billion operating budget.
Equity implications of electric bikesharing in Philadelphia
Recent PhD grad Or Caspi examines how the integration of e-bikes influenced Indego’s usage in disadvantaged areas. In these regions, the users use shared e-bikes for commute, leisure, and other utilitarian purposes, while in the rest of the city, users use e-bikes...
NJ gas prices are trending down but experts are worried
Rutgers economist James Hughes said even if President Joe Biden is able to convince Congress to freeze the 18.4 cent a gallon federal gas tax for the next few months and Gov. Phil Murphy agrees to suspend the state gas tax (an idea he has rejected so far) “that would...
Lonely Last Days in the Suburban Office Park
“It was absolutely shocking to many people that you would take an office building and knock it down, like we used to knock down factories,” said James W. Hughes, a professor at Rutgers. “Now it’s routine.” But in many places, that idea is still settling in. It will...
Did the Supreme Court just tell the Senate to abolish the filibuster?
Last week, in West Virginia v EPA, the Supreme Court invoked the “major questions doctrine” in determining that the Clean Power Plan issued by the Obama administration was illegal. The major questions doctrine essentially says that for really big...