Jones Labels Rapid Transit Priority Work

Hackensack – State Senator Walter H. Jones said today a positive and workable program for providing northern New Jersey with a rapid-transit system must be a priority project of the 1958 Legislative session.

The Republican candidate for re-election pledged that he would personally support such a program after the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission makes its final report in December. Jones emphasized, however, that he hoped the Commission would come forth with a plan that doesn't carry what he termed as a $12 million deficit millstone around its neck. He made it plain that such a price tag could doom North Jersey's hopes for a solution to the rapid-transit problem.

Jones emphasized that the solution to the mass transportation problem was not Bergen County's responsibility alone, but is a State-wide problem with direct bearing on all New Jersey resi-dents. He said this was a hard fact of life that the Meyner Administration had ignored for the last 44 months.

Going It Alone

"I sincerely believe that Bergen County has been more or less going it alone in an attempt to solve this problem, and this is a problem which, despite the best intentions, cannot be solved without executive leadership in Trenton and without more evidence . of co-operation than we have seen so far from the City of New York and the chief executive in Albany," Jones declared.

He said the City of New York must be prepared to recognize the basic economic stake it has in any mass transportation plan for the Metropolitan Area and that the city must be prepared to meet its fair and proportionate financial responsibilities in this connection.

Jones sad he felt his own record in the transportation field was the best illustration of his sincerety and willingness to any sound and economically feasible plan offered by the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission.

Cites His Record

Jones pointed specifically to these accomplishments in the field of transportation as part of his legislative record:

Legislation which reestablished and provided funds for the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission; legislatión for the construction of the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel; legislation for the double-decking of the George Washington Bridge; legislation making possible the construction by the Port Authority, of the world's longest suspension bridge across Upper New York Bay at the Narrows.

Also, legislation for the establishment of commuter auto parking facilities in North Bergen; the extension of the Garden State Parkway, at his insistence, to its natural terminus at the New York State line; his realignment of the Bergen County Expressway, which will save 448 of the 927 homes originally scheduled to be lost, and his correlation of the Expressway project with the financing of improvements, without cost to New Jersey residents, of Routes 4, 46, and 17.