TV commercials urge opposition

By: Matthew Kirdahy , Staff Writer     
South Brunswick Post, 05/20/2004

A series of advertisements calling on opponents of Route 92 to voice their concerns at today's (Thursday) public hearing on the highway have been running since the weekend.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a coalition of environmental, planning and other organizations, produced and paid for the 60-second advertisements to run on the Comcast central and west cable networks beginning on Saturday. The ads were scheduled to run through today during CNN and Fox news programs.

The advertisements urged the highway's opponents to attend today's hearing on the draft Environmental Impact Study issued in April by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The hearing will take place at the Radisson Hotel on Route 1 in South Brunswick and will run from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to midnight. The ads also urge people to contact Gov. James McGreevey to ask him to veto the highway. While the road is being proposed by the N.J. Turnpike Authority, the governor can prevent it from being built by vetoing the minutes of N.J. Turnpike Authority meetings.

Tyler Burke, spokesman for Tri-State, said the ad campaign is meant to remind people there are other ways to alleviate traffic problems in central New Jersey that do not include Route 92. To keep government officials and the Army Corps aware of that, people should attend the public hearing and contact the governor.

"This proposed project is decades old and it has been a bad idea from the start," Mr. Burke said.