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!

Navigating NJDOT's Public Information Sessions

When if comes to public outreach of transportation projects there is an old joke - There are just two phases of the public involvement  process: Too early and too late.  You attend a public information and suggest putting in bike lanes and you are told, "that's a design detail, so its too early to discuss that". Then several months down the road the final plans for a road project are put out and you ask why bike lanes are not included and the response is "the design has been finalized, its too late".

Engineering drawings can be very hard to read
  Route 38 and S Church St project in Moorestown

The complete streets movement is built on the premise that all road users are considered throughout the project development process. NJ DOT project managers have been for the most part trying to adhere to this process. I haven't seen a major urban/suburban project recently that did not have at least some pedestrian elements. But that doesn't mean that these early designs always hit the mark (especially for bike accommodations) and the public information sessions offer an opportunity to suggest improvements.