Cumberland County
The Population of Cumberland County
As of 2004, Cumberland County had an estimated 151,183 residents, which represents a growth of just over 3% from 2000 levels and a growth of just under 10% from 1990 levels. Just fewer than three-quarters of the population of the county (around 106,000, or 73%) live in the three largest municipalities: Vineland, Millville, and Bridgeton (the county seat). The land area of the county is 489 square miles, making the population density just less than 300 persons/square mile, significantly under the state average of 1,134 people/square mile. The county has 18 municipalities and is governed by a board of 7 ‘freeholders’ chosen at large by the voting population of the entire county. About 28% of the total area of the county is water, especially as the county is low-lying and much of the land near the Delaware Bay is salt marsh. The population of the county by municipality and other census designated places for 2000 was as follows:
Municipality: / 4/1/2000 / 4/1/1990 / PercentChange / Annual
Growth
Rate% / Square
km / Square
Mi.
• Bridgeton City / 22,771 / 18,942 / 20.2 / 1.9 / 16.1 / 6.2
• Commercial Township / 5,259 / 5,026 / 4.6 / .5 / 84.1 / 32.5
• Port Norris CDP / 1,507 / 1,701 / -11.4 / 16.5 / 6.4
• Deerfield Township / 2,927 / 2,933 / -0.2 / 0 / 43.6 / 16.8
• Downe Township / 1,631 / 1,702 / -4.2 / -0.4 / 131.5 / 50.8
• Fairfield Township / 6,283 / 5,699 / 10.2 / 1.0 / 109.6 / 52.3
• Fairton CDP / 2,253 / 1,359 / 65.8 / 7.3 / 2.8
• Greenwich Township / 847 / 911 / -7.0 / -0.7 / 47.0 / 18.2
• Hopewell Township / 4,434 / 4,215 / 5.2 / .5 / 77.4 / 29.9
• Laurel Lake CDP / 2,929
• Lawrence Township / 2,721 / 2,433 / 11.8 / 1.1 / 97.1 / 37.5
• Maurice River Township / 6,928 / 6,648 / 4.2 / .4 / 241.9 / 93.4
• Millville City / 26,847 / 25,992 / 3.3 / .3 / 109.7 / 42.4
• Port Norris CDP / 1,507
• Rosenhayn CDP / 1,099 / 1,053 / 4.4 / 6.9 / 2.7
• Shiloh Borough / 534 / 408 / 30.9 / 2.7 / 3.1 / 1.2
• Stow Creek Township / 1,429 / 1,437 / -0.6 / -0.1 / 47.8 / 18.4
• Upper Deerfield Township / 7,556 / 6,927 / 9.1 / .9 / 80.6 / 31.1
• Seabrook Farms CDP / 1,719 / 1,457 / 18 / 5.1 / 2.0
• Vineland City / 56,271 / 54,780 / 2.7 / .3 / 177.9 / 68.7
Total: / 146,438 / 138,053 / 6.1 / .6 / 1267.4 / 499.4
As the county is one of the larger counties and the state in terms of area with one of the lowest populations, the population is not particularly dense. Most of the population is concentrated in the Vineland, Millville, and Bridgeton. The following map shows population densities for the county. The low population density areas toward the Delaware Bay are mostly salt marshes, while the region in the east that is sparsely populated is mostly part of the Pinelands, a heavily forested area across much of south-central New Jersey, in which development is highly regulated by the New Jersey Pinelands Commission. The map of population densities:
Source: US Census Bureau
Economy of Cumberland County
Cumberland County, with a per capita income of $17,376 and a median household income of $39,170 in 2000, is the poorest county in New Jersey by a good stretch. For comparative purposes, the wealthiest county in the state, Somerset County, had a per capita income of $37,970 and a median household income of $76,933. The state itself had a per capita income of $27,006 and a median household income of $55,146. While these measures made New Jersey the richest state in the nation and Somerset County the 7th wealthiest in the county, Somerset certainly did not fare so well. Of the 21 counties in New Jersey, 9 are in the top 100 for wealth in the US. 13 are in the top 200. The 20th ranked county in terms of per capita income, Salem County (located on Cumberland’s western border) ranked 462 in the nation. One must look far down the list, to position 1353 (out of 3,086 total in the entire country) to find Cumberland County. The county could certainly use some sort of revitalization (or vitalization) program, especially as 15% of the population lives below the population line, compared with 8.5% for the state as a whole. Further reinforcing the situation in Cumberland County is the fact that of the 702 municipalities in New Jersey ranked in terms of per capita income, the only three from Cumberland County, Vineland, Millville, and Bridgeton, rank 619, 628, and 700 respectively.
As most of the non-farm economic activity occurs in the census designated place of Bridgton-Millville-Vineland, it is useful to analyze the composition of industry in that area. As of October 2005, the Civilian Labor Force included around 70,000 persons, of which 67,000 were employed, leaving an unemployment rate of around 5.0%. This jumped to around 6.1% in November. Reflecting the economic state of the county, this level of unemployment is higher than 3.9% (October) and 4.6% (November) experienced by the state as a whole. Inflation for the 12 month period ending in October was around 3.9%. As for the composition of non-farm employment, the following pie chart summarizes those statistics:
Though there are a fair number of farms in the county, the Department of Agriculture considers agriculture to be minor in the county and it is certainly not ‘farm dependent’.
The top private employers in the county (and their locations) are listed below:
Employer: / Municipality: / # Employed:South Jersey Hospital System / 1221**
Durand Glass Manufacturing Company / Millville / 908
Alcan / Millville / 736**
Clement Pappas Co., Inc. / Upper Deerfield / 710
The Glass Group / Millville / 675
Training School at Vineland / Vineland / 499***
Wawa / (various) / 490**
Kimble Glass, Inc. / Vineland / 437
Seabrook Brothers & Sons, Inc. / Upper Deerfield / 420*
Silverton Marine Corp. / Millville / 417
Sheppard Bus Service / Fairfield Twp. / 400**
ShopRite / Vineland/Bridgeton / 362**
Wal-Mart / Millville / 355***
Tri-County Community Action Agency, Inc. / Bridgeton / 325
Acme Markets Inc. / (various) / 312**
Ag/Mart Produce / Lawrence Twp. / 306*
Leone Industries. / Bridgeton / 265
Lanning Brothers Farms, Inc. / Lawrence Twp. / 265*
Sun National Bank / Vineland / 248**
Tri-County Security Service / Vineland / 240
Bayada Nurses / Millville / 240
Progresso Quality Foods/Pillsbury / Vineland / 231
Omni Baking / Vineland / 225
Sunny Slope Farms / Hopewell Twp. / 220
Comar, Inc. / Vineland / 214
Education in Cumberland County
As indicated above, 15% of all private employment occurs in the education sector. This accounts for about 10,000 people in Vineland, Millville, and Bridgeton. As the PRT system will hopefully replace all car and bus trips that currently bring students to school, it is necessary to know where schools are located in the county. Stations will be located as close to schools as possible because parents will most likely only let their children walk a certain distance from the station to the school, probably a much smaller distance than the parents themselves are willing to walk in order to make it to work.
There are 21 private schools in the county, all but 2 located Vineland. The other 2 are both located in Bridgeton. The county has 37 elementary schools located in Bridgeton, Commercial Township, Deerfield Township, Downe Township, Fairfield Township, Greenwich Township, Hopewell Township, Lawrence Township, Maurice River Township, Millville, Shiloh, Stohcreek Township, Upper Deerfield Township, and Vineland. The county has 7 middle schools, with one in Fairfield Township, one in Millville, one in Upper Deerfield Township, and 5 in Vineland. There are 7 High Schools, with one in Bridgeton, one in Seabrook, 2 in Millville, and 3 in Vineland. The total enrollment in Cumberland County Public Schools as of 2004 was just over 26,000 students.
The only institution of higher education in the county is the Cumberland County Community College located in Vineland. Enrollment at the college is about 3,000 at any given time, though no students live on-campus. All are commuter students. As of 2004, the College employed 397 people, of whom 227 were faculty.
Hospitals in Cumberland County
The only hospital system operating in Cumberland is the South Jersey Hospital System, which employs over 1,200 people in the county. In the county, the system operates a regional hospital in Vineland (which includes a cancer care center, a women’s health center, a sports rehabilitation center, a sleep therapy center, and a fitness center), a women’s center in Bridgeton, community health centers in Bridgeton, Vineland, and Millville, a dental center in Vineland, and occupation health centers in Vineland and Bridgeton. There are no trauma centers in the county. More advanced medical attention is available within 45-minutes (by car) in Atlantic City and Philadelphia.
Housing in Cumberland County
The county has 52,863 housing units, with an average occupancy of 2.73 persons per house. These houses have a median of 5.4 rooms, with the median year of construction being 1962. The median year that the householder moved in is 1992. 67.9% of persons are homeowners in the county.
The average household owns 1.6 automobiles with around three-quarters of the households owning either one or two. 0.5% of all homes lack plumbing, 0.5% of all homes lack electricity, and 3.4% of all homes lack telephone service. 65.1% of all housing units in the county are single-family detached homes. 5.7% of the housing units are structures with at least 20 units and 6.6% of the housing units are mobile homes.
A map of the value of these housing units across the county is as follows:
Transportation in Cumberland County
As only 3.3% of workers work at home, it is important to see how workers currently move between their residences and places of work (in the absence of the PRT system). The following chart shows what percentage of workers use various means of transport to get to work. The data comes from the 2000 census:
The mean travel time to work in the county in 2000 was 23.1 minutes—considerably less than the NJ state average of just over a half-hour. Transportation infrastructure in the county is relatively basic, especially compared to the rest of the state. The only limited-access highway in the county is New Jersey State Route 55 (speed limit 65), which connects Millville north to Vineland, then continuing on through suburbs of Philadelphia to lead drivers to the New Jersey Turnpike (getting on the NJ Turnpike requires leaving NJ55 in Camden County), I-295, and the Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges into Philadelphia. Travel time from the center of Vineland to the center of Philadelphia on NJ55 is about 53 minutes without traffic. It is only a couple minutes more to Millville. Bridgeton is about 10 minutes farther from Philadelphia than Vineland because one must first drive to Vineland to connect to NJ55. The only other road of considerable size is New Jersey State Road 49, which is not a limited-access highway. The road connects Millville and Bridgeton. The road also continues outside of Cumberland County to connect to the Garden State Parkway on the coast in Cape May County and I-295 in Salem County at the Delaware Memorial Bridge over the Delaware Bridge into Delaware.
Road travel is without doubt the principle means of transport in the county as there is no passenger rail service to the county and bus service is particularly limited. New Jersey Buses 313 and 315, going from Atlantic City to Philadelphia make stops in Millville and Vineland. Bus 408, going from Millville to Philadelphia, similarly connects Millville and Vineland. Bus 553, going from Upper Deerfield to Atlantic City, stops at Bridgeton, Millville, Cumberland Mall, Cumberland County College, Vineland, and Mays Landing in Cumberland County. Each of these bus lines run about once an hour, meaning service is not particularly convenient. Unsurprisingly, ridership is low on these lines. Though the airport generates $30million per year in business, Millville Regional Airport has no scheduled flights and is used mostly for business and personal uses. It does not serve as a passenger airport.
PRT in Cumberland County
Goals
Considering Cumberland County’s economic status compared to the rest of the state, an extra goal was added to the PRT design. As desired for the entire state, PRT for Cumberland County wanted a system that could replace the need for automobiles in approximately 90-95% of trips. The system would consist of one-way guide way at grade with off-line stations, which allow free-flow on the guide ways without cars having to stop when a car ahead of them stops. Stations would be placed such that, mostly in suburban and urban areas, no walk to a station from any point would be greater than 3/8 of a mile. The designed PRT system would attempt to achieve ‘ubiquity of access’ with minimum numbers of stations and miles of track. The design should also attempt to minimize costs. However, for Cumberland County especially, the designed system intended to revitalize the county and provide a much-needed economic boost, considering the gap between the economic conditions in Cumberland and those existing almost everywhere else in the richest state in the country.
Methods
To hopefully achieve our vision for PRT in Cumberland County, the system was designed to service the entire county, especially the extremely developed areas in Vineland, Millville, and Bridgeton. Before any stations, interchanges, or miles of track were laid out, a plan to create an economic vitalization of the county was considered. Though there is ample space in the county for new development, it was thought that a better idea for the future of Cumberland County would be to try to improve some of the developed space that already exists, instead of tearing up previously unused and potentially environmentally sensitive space. Further, creating a new development threatened to leave Vineland, Millville, and Bridgeton further in the lurch, as those with money who wanted to stay in Cumberland might be tempted to leave those cities for the new development. Such a strategy leaves only the most economically disadvantaged in those areas.