specialgravity t1_jdnmozj wrote on March 25, 2023 at 7:21 PM

Devil’s advocate: There are plenty of accessible beaches in NJ for people of different income levels. The State beach is free under Murphy and the cost was marginal under Christie if I recall correctly. It’s nice for a non-beach taxpayer to not have to pay for maintaining free beaches that NYers and Pennsylvanians will vacation at. Also, California has free beaches but hey also have homeless encampments lining their boardwalks. You wouldn’t even bother going to the beach if we had that here. There’s a trade off.

SnooBooks4898 OP t1_jdny6yv wrote on March 25, 2023 at 8:45 PM

I understand what you're saying but I'm not sure that the fee is a deterrent or that there are an overwhelming number of non-NJers spending an appreciable amount of time at our beaches. Would be an interesting experiment to see what happens if the open all beaches for a season.