Fees on electric vehicles get a thumbs-up from the people of New Jersey in a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University. It shows they support the recently passed fees by more than 2 to 1.
But the survey also found that most people want gas tax and vehicle registration money to fund roads and bridges rather than NJ Transit. Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at FDU who ran the poll, explains.
“This is an issue of putting two things people believe in up against each other. Should we fund NJ Transit? Absolutely. Should we maintain roads and bridges? Absolutely. What happens when you put those up against each other? When you do that you find most people prefer funding roads and bridges to funding NJ Transit because of course most people in New Jersey don’t ride NJ Transit on a regular basis,” he said.
“The underlying issue really is how do we pay for NJ Transit? There is not really any train system in the world that runs purely off user fees, off of tickets. Any rail system is subsidized by the government,” he said.
Even in the state’s urban areas, where NJ Transit is most used, most people said the fees and gas tax should only be used for roads and bridges.
EV fees could discourage people from buying them, said Cassino, but that doesn’t seem to be the primary concern.
“Once you put in that tradeoff, when you have a tradeoff between supporting electric vehicles —fighting climate change — and maintaining roads and bridges, well, when the rubber hits the road, people care more about the roads,” he said.
EV drivers will pay an annual fee on top of their regular yearly registration fees starting July 1. That fee is $250 this year and will rise $10 a year until it reaches $290.