Port Authority Business Model is Broken, Report Says
NEWARK — The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is broken, according to a report issued yesterday, and unless its mission is drastically reshaped, the bi-state agency’s fortunes are more dubious than a ride on the Pulaski Skyway.
The George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal has ignited a debate over the role and behavior of the 93-year-old authority. But the 28-page report by the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University claims the agency’s business model — which includes $800 million in pet projects for the governors of New York and New Jersey — is inherently flawed and its financial woes have been decades in the making.
“The critical problem facing the Port Authority today is not mismanagement, political abuse or rivalry between New York and New Jersey,” Mitchell Moss and Hugh O’Neill, who authored the report, wrote. “The fundamental challenge is that the business model under which the Authority has operated for the past thirty years is no longer sustainable.”
When it was created in 1921, the authority had a simple enough business plan, the report states. Big money generators like the George Washington Bridge and Idlewild Airport — now John F. Kennedy International Airport — helped fund capital projects at other port facilities that did not generate much revenue. (Giambusso/Star-Ledger)
What do people expect when those put in office know nothing about transportation or mass transit.