Bicycle and Pedestrian
New Jersey ranks third among states in the percentage of households not owning a vehicle (11.4 percent) and fourth for households owning either one or zero vehicles (45.1 percent).
Yet, since 1970, vehicle miles traveled in New Jersey has increased at a rate four times faster than the state’s population—thanks in large part to the sprawling, auto-dependent development that has prevailed in recent decades. This increase has helped make transportation the largest, and fastest-growing, contributor to the state’s overall carbon footprint.
With these numbers in mind, it makes sense to encourage pedestrian and bicycle behavior by constructing safe roads and routes that accommodate all users. New Jersey Future is an advocate for “Complete Streets,” ensuring that roadways are designed and operated to enable safe access for pedestrians, bikes and the disabled, not just cars.
Riding a bicycle or walking represents an affordable and convenient way to get around, particularly for short distances, and travel by bike or foot can also help people get more active. Our environment—physical, social and cultural—affects our daily behavior. If we want to encourage healthy choices every day about eating and physical activity, we need environments where such choices are available, affordable and easy. As New Jersey strives to reduce emissions from the transportation sector in order to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals, turning these short auto trips into a walk or a bike ride would be a good place to start.
An effort to incorporate public health impacts into all policies can result in smarter transportation and local land-use planning.
Four innovative projects and three visionary plans comprise the list of winners of New Jersey Future’s 2013 Smart Growth Awards.
An interactive planning workshop at the Redevelopment Forum took a look at New Brunswick’s efforts to improve the pedestrian-friendliness of its streets.
Once a town passes a Complete Streets resolution, the important work of getting it implemented begins. Here are some best practices.
The rescheduled American Planning Association-New Jersey Chapter conference offers several opportunities to learn about initiatives and policies that can help encourage wise development in the Garden State.
New Jersey has 243 transit facilities, ranging from small single-track stations to major multi-line hubs. The unique characteristics of each station, of its immediate neighborhood, and of its surrounding municipality mean that a wide variety of development strategies should be brought to bear in order to maximize each location’s potential. This report shows how data assembled by New Jersey Future can be used to make decisions on how to target various kinds of transit-oriented development efforts. September 2012.
Sept. 24, 2012: New Jersey Future announced it has assembled a comprehensive database of development-related statistics for the state’s 243 transit stations and their surrounding neighborhoods.
A comprehensive policy, along with a strong outreach effort, is helping the State of New Jersey and its municipalities re-envision streets in order to consider the needs of all users.
An assessment of how comprehensively New Jersey’s Department of Transportation has implemented its Complete Streets Policy. September 2011.
The Englewood renewal plan for the West Side-and the Group USA building which serves as its anchor-conforms to many of the core principles of intelligent design and growth, and suggests how they are at once interdependent and distinct.
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