Yup. It actually increases revenue by reducing the milage of a backup and thus reducing traffic getting sent through not Turnpike routes (like the Skyway). There's a reason they sped up that project when the Skyway construction winded down and things reopened. They didn't want that revenue to go away.

And Fulop could have played his hand on traffic downtown, but chose not to because he's done with JC and wants to be governor. He could have offered to back the expansion on the condition local governments could restrict through traffic on local streets when a highway exists (which is the law in most of the world by the way). He'd have gotten lots of mayoral backing around the state (especially places like Fort Lee, but even some more conservative areas that have been having this problem for years with things like the GSP), and political capital to actually pull that off... but piss off some more conservative democrats in the state he needs to win Mayor.

Realistically that would reduce traffic downtown, and since the footprint of the Turnpike doesn't change, it has no real impact on anything for the Turnpike. Traffic on the extension would be relatively constant since the tunnel isn't getting bigg.er Since the Turnpike is funding it themselves, there's not even a financial issue at play.

The only reason he didn't play this card is it would hurt his run for governor.

Also groups like Bike JC have been against any effort to cut down on Turnpike traffic using downtown as a bypass because they feel it will hurt their funding. People annoyed by it support them. People less annoyed less likely to do so. That's the real dirty laundry people don't like seeing written.

It's not a problem that can't be fixed. It's that there's nobody who cares enough to fix it, even if it's not beneficial to them personally.