10 years is too long a wait for parking permit

I want to offer some ideas on how to alleviate the severe parking shortage at the Aberdeen-Matawan train station where the waiting period for a parking permit in the Matawan portion of the facility is an incredible 10 years.

The simplest action NJ Transit could take in the short term is to raise the price of both permit and daily spaces, neither of which have been raised for many years. Permit parking in Matawan and Aberdeen costs $228 per year or $60 per quarter, while the daily spaces are $1. Nearby private lots (many of which also have waiting lists) charge $30-$35 per month and $3 per day. I see no reason, given the severe shortage of spaces, why the town spaces in both Matawan and Aberdeen should not be raised to $35-$40 per month for permit spots and $3 per day for the daily spaces.

A price increase of this magnitude would cause some people to switch to the bus and park for free at the Grand Union or Strathmore Shopping Center. Others might find that a family member could drop them off at the station in the morning and pick them up at night. Still others who are holding on to their permit to only go into New York once or twice a week might decide to give it up. The worst that could happen is that there would be no improvement in the available parking, but NJ Transit would make more money which they could use to hold down fares or subsidize a shuttle service.

The town could also look into providing a shuttle service, but it would have to be paid for by the users and perhaps NJ Transit, but not local taxpayers.

The best long-term solution would be to build a parking garage as was done a few years ago at Metropark. The factory located next to the new station in Aberdeen would appear to be an excellent site on which to build a garage. The factory could probably be relocated to the former Anchor Glass site in Cliffwood. It would probably also be necessary to widen the local feeder roads or build a new connector road to handle the traffic flow to Route 34, Route 35, Lloyd Road, Church Street and the Garden State Parkway.

It would also be helpful if the fee that NJ Transit pays the town to operate the station were raised sufficiently to provide a reasonable profit and not just reimburse their costs. If the town could make some money operating and maintaining the station and surrounding property, local politician leaders would have more incentive to find a solution to this problem instead of just complaining about the potential problems related to increased traffic during rush hours.

Aberdeen