The importance of commuter rail as a transit mode has increased with the expansion of services to new metropolitan areas, such as San Diego, Los Angeles, South Florida, Dallas, and Washington, D.C., and with the expansion of existing services in areas of New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. This expansion of services can have economic impacts in the communities served by rail stations. Some of the economic impacts of a commuter rail service have been studied.

This working paper describes employment trends and patterns in New Jersey over the last decade. Its focus is on the relocation of firms and jobs, into New Jersey, and their transportation implications.

A central component of the New Jersey: Link to the 21st Century project is the calibration of TRANUS, a land use-transportation model, for use in the study of northern New Jersey. The model will be used to forecast the impact of transportation investments on economic activity in the study area. Within TRANUS, the distribution of population within the region will be a function of basic (e.g., manufacturing) economic activity, which will be exogenous to the model.

An improvement in the transportation system in a certain area will have an impact on accessibility, which in turn may affect land use, economic development and travel patterns in that region. How large is this impact on each of the above mentioned issues? This can be measured by observing the changes in certain indicators such as population, income level, employment rate, land use patterns, and transportation system characteristics of this region.

The main objective of this paper is to assess key economic impacts, mainly output, employment, and earnings, in Northern New Jersey from recent major transportation infrastructure investments, mainly in rail. This effort is part of the New Jersey 21st Century study carried out by the University Transportation Research Center, Region II, for the New Jersey Department of Transportation. Regional multipliers, derived from input-output analysis, have been used widely to measure economic impacts.

This working paper describes the socio-economic trends in the fourteen northern New Jersey counties which constitute the study area for the project: New Jersey: Link to the 21st Century. The paper is based on data primarily taken from the 1990 Census and from data posted on the web by the New Jersey Department of Labor.

<p>This paper presents an analysis of the residential relocations that followed the New Jersey Transit Midtown Direct rail improvement. The increased transit accessibility provided by the Midtown Direct connection reduced one-way commuting travel times by 15-20 minutes between New Jersey and New York. The analysis examines the residential decision-making process of travelers before and after the rail improvement. It is based on revealed preference surveys mailed by City College of New York (CCNY) to 1242 riders in 2001.

The primary purpose of this working paper is to present available land use information for New Jersey State at county and municipality level (where available). Land use research is important for many scientific, ecological and land management purposes. Land use/land cover maps tell us how much of the landscape is changing, as well as what changes have occurred and where the changes are taking place.

The overall goal of this project is to assess the impact of planned transport infrastructure investment projects on travel behavior and economic development in New Jersey. The proposal for this research project discusses 5 main objectives for this study. The purpose of this working paper is to review these objectives, provide basic definitions, highlight key issues and suggest methodologies to accomplish these objectives. In addition this paper suggests a general structural framework and outlines the main tasks and phases to follow.

One of the key factors that play a pivotal role in a region's economic well being is the presence of a reliable and efficient transportation infrastructure. This is mainly due to the fact that a well-developed transportation system provides adequate access to the region, which in turn, is a necessary condition for the efficient operation of manufacturing, retail, labor and housing markets.