Christie Owns His Role in Halting Giant Transit Tunnel; Planners Dismayed.

"That's the difference," Christie said. "My policy choice is that drivers have paid increased tolls two years in the last four years and I didn't think it was their turn to feel the pain." (The Tri-State Transportation Campaign fact-checks that -- they say it's actually been one raise, in seven years.)

Christie seems to making a similar policy choice today: with the highway trust fund broke, and no money to pay for roads, Christie says he's reluctant to use state funds to pay for a transit tunnel. Not when there are so many other pressing infrastructure needs. "And if I can’t pay for it, then we’ll have to consider other options," he told reporters.

On Sunday, NJ Transit announced it was putting a moratorium on the $8.7 billion ARC tunnel project - that stands for access to the region's core -- which is funded with $1 billion of stimulus dollars, with the rest shared equally by NJ Transit and the Port Authority of NY & NJ.

It's hard to overstate the dismay this is causing regional planners. "The fallacy is that these [dollars] are not all needed at once," City College of New York Engineering Professor Buzz Paaswell tells me in an email. "The benefits will accrue over a 100 year lifetime - the state is now looking at costs alone at not at investments - access to jobs are critical - they are the tax base of the state's future."

The tunnel has been credited not only with the potential to create 6000 construction jobs, but with raising the value of real estate along NJ Transit lines and allowing for West Side development in Manhattan by funneling more workers to the Hudson Yards project.

"ARC will enable major economic growth, alleviate traffic gridlock at the lower Hudson River crossings, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and increase home values throughout northern New Jersey," write the Regional Plan Association, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and NJ Future in a letter to Christie.

One group is thrilled with the moratorium -- NJ's Sierra Club. The group considers the project a costly boondoggle, and is particularly concerned that its terminus at 6th Avenue and 34th Street -- not the Amtrak Station a block and a half west -- will mean that it won't be convenient to transit riders.

It's always hard to read the tea leaves on these things, but the trajectory of Christie's thinking is clear. If he sticks with his ideological commitment -- and he's known for that -- the ARC project is in deep, deep trouble.