For decades, Jersey City has run one of the largest, most unacknowledged welfare programs in its history, for wannabe suburban car owners. By giving away 60,000 street parking spaces of expensive public real estate for free, it's a multi-hundred million dollar annual wealth transfer.

In the twilight of Governor Murphy's administration, he tried to lock in a bad deal by giving up very little. $10.2B Turnpike widening instead of a $10.7B widening. Many people wanted to just accept the deal or prioritize trucks over the people of Newark/South JC. Win or lose it was worth the fight.

Murphy left a $10.7B project a $10.2B project. Sherrill fully scaled it down to $6.7B. One new bridge, the old one will be torn down. *Repair-first* approach to the rest of the extension. 0 new lanes. Full cushion to continue to invest in NJ Transit. Sherrill so far has been a breathe of fresh air.

Guess which city devotes the most land to highways. Newark. But bcs Newark's prop values aren't as high as, say, Oakland's, it doesn't rank among cities w/ the most to gain from redeving its freeways--in terms of total $. But Nwk prop tax revs could ⬆️ at least 32%, more than Manhattan or Oakland.

🚨🎉💪 We will have more to say soon, but this is a huge win for transportation and the environment. Our coalition's brief statement below 🌳🚶🛤️

Hello! We're the official account for Jersey City! By way of introduction, Here are some facts that might surprise you 🧵

Officially adopting Jersey Fortress

Hello world! jct.rbw.sh is a map of @jerseycity.bsky.social property tax payments

65 groups and three state legislators ask Governor to back the downsized one bridge option fo NJ Turnpike project www.nj.com/news/2026/02...

I do apologize to whichever fellow Jersey City-an I am grabbing Killed By a Traffic Engineer from. JCFPL should order more. Looking forward to reading this @wesmars.bsky.social

Anyway, the solution is obvious. There are good and bad faith critiques of 150 Bay St. But if it's not a viable plan, let's see another one that gives more density in exchange for a school. I am hopeful Eleana Little is willing to do this.

Join us at City Hall TONIGHT at 6:00 PM to support the Franklin St. Protected Bike Lane! An ordinance to turn Franklin Street one-way and add the Heights' first protected bike lane will have a first reading TONIGHT (Wednesday, February 25th, at 6:00PM). cityofjerseycity.civicweb.net/Portal/Citiz...

This is very good. Exasperated yet playful. Don't let the seemingly niche topic drive you away.

JC Birds Continues to Mislead Jersey City on Costs, Impact of Bird Ordinance Ever since the bird-safe glass ordinance was introduced in 2025, Better Blocks has worked hard to make it a better, more targeted ordinance [Jersey City Times]. Our goal is to reduce bird strikes in high-risk areas…

Oregon's state senate just voted to ban unfunded inclusionary zoning, recognizing that it makes housing *less* affordable, not more affordable.

This is like the tenth research group using a totally new dataset to reach this same conclusion: building new market-rate housing helps low-income tenants. "These findings demonstrate that housing supply expansions benefit lower-income households through moving chains"

Unfortunately, more snow is forecasted Sunday into Monday for Jersey City. Stay safe and warm during the storm, and off the roads if possible.

Even if you could take fictional liberties, it would not be possible to create a more credible South Jersey Everyman than this 🤣

NYC should help Chinatown go full pedestrianization for the month of Lunar New Year at the very least. It's more like Christmas than your average single day holiday. They have 9 days off in Taiwan this year for example. #FixCanal

The gall of developers erecting out-of-scale apartment buildings that violate the neighborhood character of single family homes. (Duncan Ave, Jersey City)

Bike lanes still full of snow today. It's been *three weeks* since the big snow storm with several 40+ degree days. If the City of Jersey City was praying the warm weather would melt all the snow, let's remember for future years that it's unlikely to be the case when it's this much snow.

Governor not ruling out cuts to Stay NJ tax relief program, treasurer says newjerseymonitor.com/2026/02/16/g...

Thank you to this mighty team of volunteers for clearing a bunch of crosswalks and bus stops yesterday! 💪 As we anticipate another ~2 inches of snow tonight, please remember that it is the responsibility of corner property owners to shovel the crosswalk out to the plow line.

A1743 / S3114 In committees. Contact your reps. www.njleg.state.nj.us/bill-search/...

Please help Meryendang Pinoy, a beloved family-owned business on the corner of 3rd and Newark, recover after a fire. #JerseyCity gofund.me/c0c3eeace

The ABCs of an IZO: Part III in our Housing Policy Series In the previous post in this series, we discussed vouchers and income-restricted affordable housing as two principal ways policymakers can make… https://betterblocksnj.org/2026/02/08/the-abcs-of-an-izo-part-iii-in-our-housing-policy-series/

了解您的 权利 #JerseyCity

There's a WSJ article about how states really mess with Federal welfare block grants (TANF). Of course, NJ is one of the worst states 🤦 Recipients get only 1/5th the cash of the average state. Most is diverted to fund things that should be funded by the general budget: www.cbpp.org/sites/defaul...

Welcome @jerseycitynj.bsky.social to bluesky!

New city strategy of completely caking over the roads with salt due to the cold? 🤔🤔🤔 Salt only lowers the melting point by a fixed amount, so it can't really melt snow when it is this cold, but two, all the lane markings are invisible now, and there are clouds of salt dust flying around.

This actually might help Jersey City's case, although good luck getting the legislature to account for it. patch.com/new-jersey/w...

Dwelling on this, two corollaries of what I think will have to happen: 1. There will have to be austerity. 2. There will have to be increases in under-priced fees, especially parking. Every dollar cut or raised from commercial fees is worth much more than every dollar of property tax revenue raised

Some basic arithmetic is being missed in the reporting about Jersey City's deficit. Because a lot of the budget is aided, it has leverage dynamics – a 28% deficit actually implies a *66%* increase in the municipal property tax levy (!!) That is truly insane.

My first takeaway from the weekend ICE raids is we need totalitarian enforcement on any vehicle with no license plates. Would solve a ton of problems if there was a modicum of enforcement. No/obstructed plate = a criminal, ironclad rule.

Jersey City becomes The Wire.

*In this traffic* brah behind me had the cojones to honk at me for riding a bike with the cars. Drivers get so jelly you can move faster than them. #jerseycity

@eleanalittle.bsky.social can you see if the city can start posting stuff on Bluesky? The JC website links to Twitter, but the posts are not in chronological order.

Bus 80 today took 10 minutes to go from Newark Ave to JSQ. At JSQ, half got off, half stayed on mostly headed to WSA. It's an important route but is fragile + high congestion. Bus 9 avoids JSQ and is a good express alternative to bus 80 for a lot of trips, but is too infrequent at only once an hour

Something pretty interesting about this winter storm is so far there haven't been any crash deaths since the snow. Five days is notable because NJ in recent years has had a rate that is a little less than ~2 fatal crashes per day. Driving slower, a little less driving saves lives. #visionzeronj

So many cars are stuck and covered in snow but this guy said yes it's a mess out there but we're making breakfast today #jerseycity

I get that people are working remotely, I am too, but the fact that the streets are filled with cars covered in snow proves we underprice street parking. Ironically, the people who should pay the least for parking are the ones who have to use their car daily and have no choice.

Increases in traffic enforcement on the Garden State Parkway in 2025: ⬆️ Summonses up 30% ⬇️ Crashes down 25% Total 2025 NJTA fatalities: 20 on the Garden State Parkway 32 on the NJ Turnpike (From today's NJTA board meeting) #visionzeronj #turnpiketrap

This is a beautiful photograph of Alex Pretti. May he rest in peace. 🕊❤️

The National Weather Service is forecasting a major winter storm for the Jersey City area this weekend.❄️ Here are a few quick reminders are we prepare:

It's the 9am peak on a weekday morning, and there is no congestion to be seen on the Newark Bay Bridge. There's the usual congestion at the Lincoln Tunnel. $6B for two new bridges is the wrong way to spend precious dollars. One bridge, not two, and we can invest billions in transit instead.

What is “Affordable” Housing in Jersey City? Part II in our Housing Policy Series In our last article on housing policy, we explored how increasing housing supply - especially… https://betterblocksnj.org/2026/01/22/what-is-affordable-housing-in-jersey-city-part-ii-in-our-housing-policy-series/

Murphy does not care about victims. In the Scotch Plains & Cranford fatal e-bike crashes: 1. The riders are dead because of cars. E-bike insurance would provide zero disincentive to car drivers. 2. Unlike for cars, it's all liability coverage; there's no coverage for the own rider's injury or death!