You’re woefully mischaracterizing the situation. As someone born and raised in NJ, this was clearly FAR outside the bounds of normal traffic congestion. NJ does have awful traffic jams, but they don’t usually make the national news. This did – while it was still going on, and before anybody blamed NJ officials for it…
And the idea that it was due to a “traffic study” was looked at as a glib excuse or lie at the time. I was following this as it unfolded, and I don’t know anybody who thought this was the result of a “traffic study”.
After that, if not before, it would have been strange for the Governor not to have at least placed a phone call or two to state police, or his appointee at the Port Authority, to find out just what was going on. If he truly didn’t know, it could only have been because he truly didn’t *want *to know, right?
To the contrary, I think you’re mischarecterizing the situation, and allowing subsequent events to influence your view of the perception at the time.
According to Wikipedia, “The first story in the media about the lane closures, and the first to bring politics into the mix, was reported by The Record’s John Cichowski in his September 13, Road Warrior column …”. So far from being a national story at the time, it was first covered on the day it ended (4 days after it started) by a local traffic columnist. (I myself don’t recall hearing anything about it until it became a scandal.)
You can claim now that you don’t know anyone who thought it was the results of a traffic study, but the traffic study is not just some silly excuse provided to the media. It was the actual reason given by the Christie people to the Port Authority people in giving them the order to close the lanes.
So, then, there is some sort of requisition paperwork, yes? Someone wrote something down and sent it to somebody saying “We need to spend (X) amount of money to study the traffic patterns. We need to hire (X) to collect the data, (Y) to analyze the data, and then alert the Office of Writing Checks to write some checks…”.
So, where is it? Doesn’t even have to be the long-form proposal and request. But had to be written before anybody started setting up traffic cones. I believe that is the standard, to write a proposal and an expected budget, which outlines expenditures.
Stuff like which state offices would be involved, what manpower each would contribute, equipment. Were we witnessing an experiment in improv government, not so much “pay as you go” but more like “make it up as you go along”?
There might be a public weal aspect to this, protecting the private investor and pension fund widows and orphans. Hudson Light was promoting itself as having easy and direct access to some big city. Was that selling point truly valid? Perhaps the claims were not well-founded? So, maybe, just maybe, such a study might be justifiable. But there would still be paper. And spreadsheets and budgets and e-mails.
And if they existed, copies would have been in the hands of every reporter in New Jersey quick as shit. But lo! they are not. Even to this day.