Nearly four months into the state-ordered shutdown of hundreds of millions of dollars in road and rail projects in New Jersey because of continued political bickering over refilling the state’s empty transportation trust fund, project owners, contractors and workers are scrambling for short-term solutions to salvage a fast-disappearing construction season.
“I have never seen anything like the New Jersey situation since I have been analyzing … the transportation construction industry,” Alison B. Black, senior economist of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, told ENR. “My understanding is that there were over 4,000 transportation worker positions that were lost over the summer, and the number of project bids put out since July 1 is down by about half.”