Jersey girls still won't pump gas, but they'll pay more for it

When the Garden State hikes its gas tax 23 cents a gallon next Tuesday, a tradition I've cherished during 40 years of working and living in South Jersey will be no more.

I'll no longer be able to casually take note of pump prices in other jurisdictions, Pennsylvania in particular, and feel effortlessly blessed.

Gone will be the satisfaction - some might call it schadenfreude - that comes from having ready access to the cheapest gas around.

"Wow," I've so often said to friends in Center City. "Gas is how much over there? On top of that wage tax? Oh, man."

I've also had many a lively exchange with family members in New England, where I grew up - and where a buck got you three gallons when I started driving in 1970:

"I hate to tell you this, but gas is (insert a number between 25 and 50 cents) less down in South Jersey. And it doesn't snow from October to May there, either."

For decades now, through shortages and recessions and Middle East upheavals, gas has cost less in my part of the world than almost anywhere else - or anywhere else I might be driving.

Including North Jersey, that expanse of expensive real estate famous for TV mobsters, traffic problems, and a native son named Chris Christie.

And where the statewide gas tax hike will equally apply, but pump prices traditionally have long been higher than in the South Jersey market.

Nevertheless, "I wouldn't live in New Jersey if I had to be evacuated," a caller from area code 610 once confided, apparently believing that a pleasant fellow like me couldn't possibly inhabit the hellish place I had the misfortune to be writing about.

With a politeness I like to think of as a South Jersey signature, I didn't take note of her error.

But over the years I've exercised no such restraint with friends.

I've introduced countless Pennsylvanians to scenic stretches of Route 130 where folks from all over the world will gladly fill your tank with unusual brands of gas at delightful prices.

As a pal from South Philly says, "I always make sure I'm practically on empty when I come visit you."

Or, as another dear Philly friend used to say when leaving my house in the pre-GPS days:

"Just get me to a bridge.

"Any bridge."

He would, however, acknowledge that visits to my Camden County home were almost always worth it, because of the pump prices along the Admiral Wilson Boulevard.

But come next Tuesday, those days will be gone - because all the money in what is whimsically known as New Jersey's "Transportation Trust Fund" ran out last summer.

This led to yet another of those predictably and tediously time-consuming political showdowns between our occasional/visiting governor and various would-be candidates for his job.

The end result was a spin-worthy package of promises of eventual or phased-in tax cuts, as well as a seemingly instantaneous boost that will take New Jersey's gas tax from 49th-lowest to seventh-highest in America.

But I'm assuaging my despair with the knowledge that, unlike 49 other states, New Jersey still has a total ban on self-service gas (Oregon recently loosened its ban slightly). The only place in America where you don't have to do it yourself - although I did once make the mistake of asking an attendant at a station on Route 38 if he might wash my windshield.

Like my naive, and rather poorly received, request, the ban is a relic of an earlier era, when people smoked all over the place, perhaps even in the presence of gushing petroleum (remember The Birds?).

But no-self-serve has become one of those quirky, chip-on-the-shoulder Jersey things that spawn T-shirts ("Jersey Girls Don't Pump Gas)."

So deep has reverence for this particular tradition become that it's downright bipartisan.

Erstwhile potential gubernatorial candidate and current State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has publicly said repealing the ban will "never" happen.

And in August, Christie took a break from his Donald Trump duties to appear at an in-state reality show, where he told his "town hall" audience that repeal won't happen because polls show New Jerseyans ardently support the ban.

Of course, this same governor signed a "never raise taxes" pledge while courting a conservative organization during his presidential bid in 2015.

So I'm inviting any friends in Pennsylvania who might be curious about the credibility of political pledges in New Jersey to come over next Tuesday, when the gas tax hike takes effect at the pump.

No need to buy anything.

kriordan@phillynews.com

856-779-3845 @inqkriordan

www.philly.com/blinq