The Federal Highway Safety Administration (FHWA) has published its Summer 2010 newsletter, including links to the 15-year status report on walking and bicycling, resources for Safe Routes to Schools programs for law enforcement officers, grants for livable communities, and web-based courses about designing for pedestrian safety.
“Livability means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or Post Office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids at the park—all without having to get into your car.” -USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood
The Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia has this to say about West Windsor:
“On July 19th, West Windsor Township, NJ home of Princeton Junction and Orson Well’s Grovers Mill became the first suburban community in the DVRPC region to adopt a complete streets resolution. In some ways West Windsor Township seems to have been invaded by Martians. That would explain the miles of bike lanes and the success of the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance…. On a per-capita basis the organization is one of the most successful bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups in the country, not too far off the pace of the San Francisco Bike Coalition. It is truly a model community for the many built-out suburbs in the region.”
“On July 19th, West Windsor Township became the second municipality in New Jersey, after Montclair, to adopt a Complete Streets Policy. In addition, Monmouth County became the first county in the state to adopt a Complete Streets Policy as the Board of Chosen Freeholders passed Resolution 10-592 at their meeting on July 22nd.
Congratulations and a big thank you from all of us at the NJDOT Office of Bicycle and Pedestrian Programs to all of you who worked so hard to make this happen!”
The WWBPA thanks all our members for their support and encourages friends to become members and swell the ranks. Our thanks as well to the West Windsor Council and administration for supporting Complete Streets.
West Windsor adopted a “Complete Streets” resolution on Monday that calls for designing new and reconstructed streets so that they can “safely accommodate travel by pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit, and motorized vehicles and their passengers, with special priority given to bicyclist and pedestrian safety.”
Complete Streets policies have been adopted by the U.S. and New Jersey governments, but West Windsor is one of the first New Jersey municipalities to do so. The WWBPA believes that designing streets with ALL users in mind from the start will save money because we won’t have to do costly retrofits and will make our community more liveable — which benefits all of us (and our property values).
What do Complete Streets look like? Watch this animation to see the transformation of a fairly barren multiple-lane road becomes a bustling shopping area.
We’ve been advocating putting some of West Windsor’s roads on diets, principally Canal Pointe Boulevard and Alexander Road (see our post from May 2010). A “road diet” means reducing travel lanes, for example, from four to two with a center turning lane, thus allowing room for bike lanes and sidewalks. This leads to fewer changes in lane by cars and fewer accidents.
A June 2010 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Transportation shows that road diets still allow for the same number of cars on the roads, with from 19% to 47% fewer crashes (percentages vary depending on whether the road diet is in an urban or suburban area).
Four-lane configuration before road diet
Three-lane configuration after road diet
Source for both photos: Pedestrian Bike Information Center, “Road Diets” training module, 2009.
WWBPA joined hundreds of groups from around the country in signing a letter of thanks to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood for helping to make bicycling and walking an important part of the department’s policy. Many bicyclists and pedestrians joined Secretary LaHood at DOT headquarters in Washington, D.C. at the start of the Memorial Day weekend to present the letter.
Secretary LaHood noted, “… making walking and biking safer and more accessible is relatively inexpensive. For example, we could upgrade the entire 2,250 mile East Coast Greenway, a network of bike routes stretching all the way from Key West to Maine, for only one-fifth the cost of a single recent I-95 bridge over the Potomac.”
The WWBPA believes that Alexander Road and Canal Pointe Boulevard would benefit from road diets. A Seattle study of a road diet on one of its streets notes the following:
“The streets of our cities and towns are an important part of the livability of our communities. They ought to be for everyone, whether young or old, motorist or bicyclist, walker or wheelchair user, bus rider or shopkeeper. But too many of our streets are designed only for speeding cars, or worse, creeping traffic jams.
Now, in communities across the country, a movement is growing to complete the streets. States, cities and towns are asking their planners and engineers to build road networks that are safer, more livable, and welcoming to everyone.
Instituting a complete streets policy ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind – including bicyclists, public transportation vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”
The federal Department of Transportation recently adopted a policy to support “the development of fully integrated active transportation networks. The establishment of well-connected walking and bicycling networks is an important component for livable communities, and their design should be a part of Federal-aid project developments.”
“Through a program called “Smart Transportation,” Pennsylvania has been working to find innovative solutions to the challenges of constrained resources, aging highways and bridges, and congestion by reexamining the relationship between land use and transportation. One example is PennDOT’s U.S. Route 202 Parkway project in suburban Philadelphia. First envisioned as a new four-lane expressway between Doylestown and Montgomeryville, the project’s cost was simply not affordable. After an extensive consensus-building process, a lower-cost option to build a parkway-type design was approved at roughly half the original cost. The new Parkway included a 12-foot wide bicycle and walking path along its entire 8.4-mile length; concrete stamped , and painted to simulate the appearance of stone on all bridges, culverts, and retaining walls; and landscaped median strips and other aesthetic enhancements.
The Parkway will be built as four lanes for two miles and two lanes for six miles and speed limits will be lowered. Nine signalized intersections will replace three interchanges and slower speeds will help increase safety.”
AASHTO is traditionally very motor-vehicle-oriented, so for them to recognize the role of context sensitive roadway design in making our communities more livable is a welcome sign of improvement.
Congratulations to everyone for contacting the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission with your support, and especially to John Boyle of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia for leading the advocacy effort! The WWBPA posted an article asking for support on February 4 this year.
The Federal Highway Safety Administration (FHWA) has published its Summer 2010 newsletter, including links to the 15-year status report on walking and bicycling, resources for Safe Routes to Schools programs for law enforcement officers, grants for livable communities, and web-based courses about designing for pedestrian safety.
West Windsor adopted a 
“Through a program called “Smart Transportation,” Pennsylvania has been working to find innovative solutions to the challenges of constrained resources, aging highways and bridges, and congestion by reexamining the relationship between land use and transportation. One example is PennDOT’s U.S. Route 202 Parkway project in suburban Philadelphia. First envisioned as a new four-lane expressway between Doylestown and Montgomeryville, the project’s cost was simply not affordable. After an extensive consensus-building process, a lower-cost option to build a parkway-type design was approved at roughly half the original cost. The new Parkway included a 12-foot wide bicycle and walking path along its entire 8.4-mile length; concrete stamped , and painted to simulate the appearance of stone on all bridges, culverts, and retaining walls; and landscaped median strips and other aesthetic enhancements.
