Quick hits: New Jersey news in brief for Wednesday, Jan. 20
FTA awards NJ Transit $600,000 to fight COVID-19
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has awarded $600,000 to NJ Transit to deploy video analytics and artificial intelligence to fight COVID-19 exposures on transit vehicles.
NJT will use heat mapping, face mask detection and capacity management as part of the pilot program. The agency will launch and evaluate the program on the RiverLINE in South Jersey.
The FTA issued $15.8 million in funding to 37 projects. The “resources will provide transit agencies and the states with the additional resources to strengthen public confidence in transit,” FTA Deputy Administrator K. Jane Williams said in a news release.
Measure would urge Congress to include part-time, online students in any stimulus legislation
The Assembly Higher Education Committee has advanced AR-199, a measure urging Congress to include online and part-time students in future federal stimulus legislation.
“Every college student has been impacted immeasurably by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only has their learning been disrupted, but many are shouldering job losses, health concerns and family commitments,” Assembly members Valerie Vainieri Huttle, D-Bergen; Gordon Johnson, D-Bergen; and Robert Karabinchak, D-Middlesex, said in a joint statement. “Excluding online students from emergency federal assistance has only widened the existing academic and economic disparities within higher education.”
Greenwald introduces bills to improve mental health access
Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald, D-Camden/Burlington, has introduced legislation to improve mental health care access across New Jersey.
“This sustained period of fear, uncertainty, instability, loss and pain will have lasting repercussions on the well-being of residents for years to come,” Greenwald said in a statement. “Our health care systems must be prepared to care for not only the physical health, but the mental health of the people throughout our state.”
Three of the five proposed measures would create pilot programs to help determine the feasibility of expanding mental health care. The bills have been assigned to the Assembly Health Committee.
– The Center Square
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