Today's Agenda for the NJ Bike Walk Summit

The 4th Annual NJ Bike and Walk Summit is Today February 8th. If you are tweeting during the summit we recommend using the Twitter hashtag #njbikewalk14. Tickets are still available at the door this morning for $65.

The Summit is just a 5-10 minute walk from NJ TRANSIT"s New Brunswick Train Station on the Northeast Corridor Line. This means you can get to the Summit from many places in NJ by bus or train, even from Atlantic City!

Ralph Buehler's talk a powerful case for Sustainable Transportation

Ralph Buehler's talk on Wednesday absolutely rocked!   Ralph had me saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" out loud about a dozen times during his lecture. His concise, logical, fact driven lecture style with just the right amount of reserved enthusiasm was very powerful.  If you didn't go, you really missed out! 

The theme of his talk was “Making Urban Transport Sustainable: Comparison of Germany and the U.S.”  Many in the sustainable transportation planning world like to use Germany as a comparator to the U.S. as both countries are wealthy and have large automobile ownership and the automobile industry makes up a large part of the national economy.  In fact, the German car industry is even a bigger part of the German economy that it is here.  So Germans are just as much invested and in love their automobiles as Americans but that hasn't stopped Germany from making effective efforts at reducing automobile use.  Using a combination of transportation policies that make driving less appealing and make transit, cycling and walking cheap and convenient, Germans now make a four times the number of trips by foot, bike, and public transport and drive for a 25 percent less than Americans.  Ralph explained this all armed with solid facts and figures.

We are inquiring about a video link of the lecture so more can here Ralph's talk. 

Now the power Ralph's lecture came as no surprise to me as his insights into transportation policy are second to none.  The seminar that he taught when he was a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers was one of the best classes I took at Bloustein. Today Ralph Buehler is an Assistant Professor in Urban Affairs & Planning at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria Center just outside of Washington D.C.

Ralph Buehler to return to Rutgers in feature lecture at Bloustein

There are two big names in bike / ped planning academics in the US right now.  Many of you already know about Rutgers' and New Jersey's own John Pucher.  But there is also John's protege, Ralph Buehler who was finishing his PhD under John's guidance when I was also at Rutgers' Bloustein School.  Ralph's insights into transportation policy are second to none and the seminar that he taught was one of the best classes I took at Bloustein.  Today Ralph Buehler is an Assistant Professor in Urban Affairs & Planning at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria Center just outside of Washington D.C.

Ralph will present the Bloustein School’s annual Isadore Candeub Memorial Lecture in Planning on Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 5:00 p.m. This year’s lecture will be “Making Urban Transport Sustainable: Comparison of Germany and the U.S.”  According to the Bloustein School announcement:

Professor Buehler’s presentation will investigate international trends in daily travel behavior with a focus on Germany and the U.S. Reliance on the automobile for most trips contributes to costly trends like pollution, oil dependence, congestion, and obesity. Germany and the U.S. have among the highest motorization rates in the world, yet Germans make a four times higher share of trips by foot, bike, and public transport and drive for a 25 percent lower share of trips as compared to Americans.

For full details about Ralph's lecture, see the complete Bloustein School announcement.

If you follow bike/ped planning, advocacy and academics you may have noticed both John Pucher's and Ralph's name on a number of milestone publications in the past couple of years. They include:

• Last year's City Cycling book.  (It made it all the way to the Houses of Parliament!)
• The 2007, 2010, 2012 Alliance for Biking and Walking Benchmarking Reports
• The groundbreaking 2007 paper, "Making Cycling Irresistible."
• Dozens of other articles you can read, without paying for, here (publications) and here (reports & articles).

So if you didn't get enough bike/ped "wonkiness" at the NJ Bike and Walk Summit the Saturday before, make sure you attend Ralph's lecture.  I guarantee that you like it AND you will learn something profound.  Plus, it's FREE!!

 The lecture will be held at the Special Events Forum, Civic Square Building, 33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ. A reception will follow the lecture. Please RSVP by Tuesday, February 19 to Amy Cobb by e-mail to RSVP@policy.rutgers.edu or by phone to 848-932-2733.

Bloustein students proposed bicycle network and other ideas for Rutgers / New Brunswick

What might a bicycle network look like for Rutgers University and the City of New Brunswick look like? Graduate students at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy took on this question as part of Prof. John Pucher’s, Biking and Walking for Sustainable Cities Class. Students took a look at a number of issues including, bike share, turning Rutgers into a Bicycle Friendly University, a community bicycle center like Recycle-A-Bicycle and Second Life Bikes to name a few.

The other presentations I saw talked about:

• How to motivate people to walk and bike more, 
• Redesigning Livingston Ave (a primary access route to New Brunswick from the south),
• A look at the safety improvements and controversy with the Prospect Park West Cycletrack

Included below are several images of the one major presentation that investigated a New Brunswick bicycle network designed to maximize the connectivity between university campuses while connecting to the French Street commercial corridor (Note: I give the students credit for trying some innovative bike lane treatments however I must say that I do have some concerns with the finer points of some of the design treatments).  For those mega bike wonks there is a link to video of the presentation (webinare style) but I don't have that link available as I publish.