Future Facts
Walk or Cycle to Work? You Have Company
May 14th, 2012 by Dan Fatton
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May is National Bike Month, and according to the 2010 American Community Survey, approximately 134,000 New Jersey commuters, or 3.4 percent of those who did not work from home, commuted by walking or biking to the office. This percentage is unchanged from 2000.
Photo: League of American Bicylists
- The total masks a divergence in the trends – a decline (-2.7 percent) in the number of commuters walking to work, contrasted with a big spike (+72.5 percent) in the number of bike commuters, albeit starting from a very small base.
- The walk/bike commuter percentage is much higher in communities that feature more compact, mixed-use downtowns, such as Flemington, Harrison, New Brunswick and Princeton Borough, each of which had commuter walk/bike percentages greater than 15%.
- According to the Active Living Network, 43% of people with safe places to walk within 10 minutes of home meet recommended activity levels, while just 27% of those without safe places to walk are active enough. Read the rest of this entry »
Preserving Land through Market Real Estate Transactions: Nine Approaches and Four Success Stories
May 1st, 2012 by Chris Sturm
Innovative, affordable efforts to create an alternative to sprawl development are illustrated in New Jersey Future’s new report, “Preserving Land through Compact Growth: Case Studies of Noncontiguous Clustering in New Jersey,” coauthored by New Jersey Future Intern Nicole Heater and Senior Director of State Policy Chris Sturm. Read the rest of this entry »
State Planning Commission Announces Additional Public Hearing for State Strategic Plan
April 30th, 2012 by Elaine Clisham
The April 30 meeting of the State Planning Commission was originally scheduled with the intent of voting on adoption of the final State Strategic Plan as the updated version of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan. (Today was the last day that the commission could have voted on the final plan and still meet the State Planning Act requirement that the plan be adopted within 60 days of the final public hearing.) Read the rest of this entry »
Milestone: Camden County’s Proposed Wastewater Service Areas Published for Review
April 24th, 2012 by Chris Sturm
Source: Flickr user -luz-
The following was co-authored with assistance from New Jersey Future intern Christopher Cavaiola.
Camden County’s proposed Future Wastewater Service Area map was posted for public notice in the New Jersey Register on April 16, and on the DEP Watershed Management website yesterday, making Camden the first full county to near adoption of an updated sewer service area under the 2008 Water Quality Management Plan (WQMP) rule. (For more information, see our Camden County Fact Sheet.) Read the rest of this entry »
Newark Is Apparently Not a City Either
April 20th, 2012 by Tim Evans
Newark: Not a City. Photo courtesy of photohome.com
Updated below.
When is a city not necessarily a city? When Wendell Cox is writing the definitions. In a recent article on the website New Geography, Cox resorts to some creative use of Census geography in an attempt to refute a growing body of evidence that urban areas are making a comeback. Read the rest of this entry »
359 Municipalities Working Toward Sustainable Jersey Certification
April 18th, 2012 by Dan Fatton
New Jersey is the first state in the nation to have a comprehensive sustainability program that supports community efforts to reduce waste, cut greenhouse gas emissions and improve environmental equity. Read the rest of this entry »
2012 Smart Growth Award Winners Announced
April 18th, 2012 by Elaine Clisham
Photo: Ideal Image Consulting
An innovative zoning code in a small town, a wide-ranging multi-jurisdiction open-space and historic-asset preservation feasibility study, a dramatic repurposing of a distressed suburban shopping center and a mixed-use brownfield redevelopment project are among the seven 2012 winners of New Jersey Future’s Smart Growth Awards. (Full list.) Read the rest of this entry »
“One-Seat Ride” Not Contingent on the (Now-Canceled) ARC Tunnel
April 13th, 2012 by Tim Evans
A NJ Transit dual-mode locomotive. Source: flickr user PhillipC
An April 12 article in the Record of Bergen County makes it sound as though NJ Transit’s decision to purchase 26 new dual-mode (diesel-electric) locomotives was only made because the now-scuttled ARC Tunnel project required it, and that the project’s cancellation renders the locomotives superfluous. In fact the acquisition of the new locomotives should be regarded as an action independent of the ARC Tunnel decision, one that will still provide clear benefits. Read the rest of this entry »
More New Jersey Commuters Relying on Transit to Get to Work
April 3rd, 2012 by Tim Evans
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The percent of New Jersey commuters (people not working at home) who ride transit to work increased between 2000 and 2010 — from 9.6 percent to 11.2 percent.
Source: NJ Transit
- While New Jersey’s total workforce has risen by 4.6 percent in this 10-year period, the number of transit commuters has increased by 20.9 percent.
- Nationally, New Jersey is second only to New York in the percentage of its commuters who ride transit. Read the rest of this entry »
New Jersey Future Hails Promise of State Strategic Plan
April 2nd, 2012 by Chris Sturm
Proposed Revisions Can Ensure Balance and Effective Implementation
As an organization formed to promote and watchdog state planning, New Jersey Future has followed closely the development of the State Strategic Plan. Today we submitted our comments to the State Planning Commission (pdf), which is scheduled to vote on a final plan on April 25. Read the rest of this entry »
