Title 27: Highways

Section 1: Legal Paraphrase

Title 27 of the New Jersey Statutes Annotated is the State's comprehensive highway law. It creates and organizes the New Jersey Department of Transportation and its Commissioner (N.J.S.A. 27:1A), and governs the construction, improvement, maintenance, and repair of State highways (N.J.S.A. 27:7), as well as county and municipal roads receiving State aid. The Title regulates access to the State highway system through the Highway Access Management Act (N.J.S.A. 27:7-89 to -98), controls outdoor advertising adjacent to highways (N.J.S.A. 27:5), authorizes the taking of land for highway and beautification purposes, and establishes special authorities for major toll facilities, including the Garden State Parkway (N.J.S.A. 27:19) and the New Jersey Turnpike (N.J.S.A. 27:23). It also allocates responsibility and liability between the State and local governments for highway conditions and defects.

Section 2: ELI-10 Explanation

Imagine New Jersey's highways are the hallways of one giant school. Title 27 is the rulebook for those hallways. The Department of Transportation is the head hall monitor: it decides where new hallways (roads) get built, keeps them repaired, and says who may cut a new doorway (driveway) into a big hallway. Towns take care of the small hallways, but the state watches over the big ones. Special teams run the toll roads — the Turnpike Authority runs the Turnpike, and the Parkway Authority runs the Parkway. The rulebook also says you can't slap a giant billboard right next to a hallway, and if the state ever needs your land to widen a road, it has to pay you fairly for it. Everyone must follow the same rules so the hallways stay safe and move people smoothly.

Section 3: General Application & Case Example 1

How It Is Applied

Title 27 operates mainly through the Department of Transportation's regulatory and proprietary powers over the State highway system. In practice, it touches anyone who owns land abutting a State highway, any developer seeking to build near one, and every municipality whose roads connect to the State system. The central mechanism is the Highway Access Management Act, N.J.S.A. 27:7-89 to -98, under which the DOT Commissioner adopts a State Highway Access Management Code (N.J.A.C. 16:47) and issues, modifies, or revokes permits controlling where and how property owners may enter State highways. Every abutting owner retains a right of reasonable access, but that right is subject to regulation for public health, safety, and welfare, and the DOT may close or relocate driveways when safety and traffic flow require it. Because restricting access can diminish property value, the statute and its case law mark the boundary between non-compensable police-power regulation and compensable takings, so DOT decisions frequently collide with eminent domain proceedings and are reviewable in the courts.

Case Example

• Case Name & Citation: State, by Commissioner of Transportation v. Marlton Plaza Associates, L.P., 426 N.J. Super. 337 (App. Div. 2012)
• Statute Applied: N.J.S.A. 27:7-89 to -98 (Highway Access Management Act), especially N.J.S.A. 27:7-90
• Brief Summary: The DOT closed one of several access driveways leading into the Marlton Plaza shopping center under the Access Act and simultaneously condemned a small strip of the property, depositing $179,600 in eminent domain. At the condemnation trial, the Law Division permitted the property owners to present evidence that the driveway closure diminished the property's value. The Appellate Division reversed and remanded. Applying the Access Act's declaration that every abutting owner's right of reasonable access is subject to regulation for public health, safety, and welfare (N.J.S.A. 27:7-90(e)), and that regulation may not eliminate all access without just compensation (N.J.S.A. 27:7-90(f)), the court held that diminution in value caused by a modification of access is non-compensable per se so long as reasonable access remains; only on-site impacts and severance damages are compensable.
• Source Link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15579082063375446642

Section 4: ELI-10 Application & Case Example 2

Real World Example (Explained Simply)

Here is a story about a toll road. The state decided to build the New Jersey Turnpike, so it created a special team — the Turnpike Authority — to build and run it. The law gave the team permission to buy land for the road, and the team bought extra farmland right next to the highway "just in case" it might need it later. Then two towns tried to charge property tax on that unused farmland, the way they tax everyone else's land. The Turnpike Authority said, "We're a public team — our land is tax-free." The towns said, "Not if you aren't using it for the road." The Supreme Court agreed with the towns: a public agency can't buy extra land and hold it forever without paying taxes like everyone else. Land only gets the special tax-free treatment while it is actually being used for the highway. This is how Title 27 keeps big road projects and ordinary towns working together fairly.

Case Example

• Case Name & Citation: New Jersey Turnpike Authority v. Township of Washington, 16 N.J. 38 (1954)
• Statute Applied: N.J.S.A. 27:23-3 and 27:23-5(j) (Turnpike Authority powers) and N.J.S.A. 27:23-12 (tax exemption of Authority property)
• Brief Summary: Washington and East Windsor Townships assessed real property taxes on Turnpike Authority land located outside the Turnpike's 300-foot right-of-way — former farmland with no prospect of use for turnpike purposes, which the Authority intended to sell as surplus. The Division of Tax Appeals canceled the assessments under R.S. 27:23-12, but the Supreme Court reversed and reinstated them. Chief Justice Vanderbilt's opinion held that the Authority, though "in" the State Highway Department, is an independent public corporation, and that its statutory power to buy more land than condemnation would allow does not permit it to retain land not intended for a public purpose; the tax exemption therefore did not shield the surplus land. The case fixed the boundary of the Authority's powers and its property's tax status under Title 27.
• Source Link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8617943728824036020