Wednesday, September 24, 2014

No Bikes on Trains Today (Til Sundown?)




In case you haven't memorized the rules:

Bicycles are not permitted on trains (with the exception of the Atlantic City Line) on New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, day after Thanksgiving, Sunday after Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Bicycles are not permitted on the day before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but are permitted on the holidays themselves.

So if you didn't read this in time and you wind up stranded somewhere remember that you can take your bike on the Atlantic City Line, most buses, ferries, PATH and NJT light rail. Bolt Bus will accept bicycles if space is available.

NJ TRANSIT along with Metro North/Long Island RR and Chicago's METRA are the only commuter rail lines with black out dates. But just yesterday we heard that METRA is narrowing its rush hour restrictions and eliminating black out dates.

With bicycling more popular then ever the time is now to modernize NJT's bike on rail policies.

Monday, September 01, 2014

Mapping the Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress in Your Community

In 2011 the Mineta Transportation Institute released the report "Low-Stress Bicycling and
Network Connectivity". It examined the practicality of a bicycling network being defined as "a set of streets and paths that people consider acceptably safe for bicycling". These streets already exist and in urbanized areas actually comprise the majority of streets. The problems lies in the lack of connectivity of these mostly local streets.

The resulting model is called Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) and it categorizes all streets, and intersections into 4 levels of bicyclists comfort :
LTS 1 suitable for children
LTS 2 acceptable to traffic intolerant adult (interested but concerned)
LTS 3 OK for experienced bicyclists (enthused and confident).
LTS 4 Highest Stress (strong and fearless)


After the jump find out how you can create a simplified LTS assessment for your own community on Google Maps