December a bad month for pedestrians in New Jersey

As we celebrate the holiday season with our families and friends, and begin to reflect on this past year, there will many families questioning the blessings of this season as they deal with the tragic and seaming senseless loss of loved ones killed or injured during December.

I bring this up today because I picked up my local weekly paper and read about an 86 year old man who was killed crossing US 1 at an intersection in North Brunswick I often use to cross the highway when riding my bike around town. Wanting to see if I could find out more about what happened to this poor gentleman I did a quick search for the term "pedestrian" in the local New Jersey news. Unfortunately the number of pedestrian crashes I came across was very disheartening. On top of that, I noticed that a vast majority of the victims were either over the age of 60 or children.

However, what is the equally disturbing is continued tone, in many of the stories, that seem to blame the victim, along with forum comments that do so outright. Yes! Many times pedestrians can make foolish moves. We've all seen people that seem to willfully dare us to hit them while we are behind the wheel. And we've all have come close to making big mistakes on the road whether on foot, on a bike or in a car. However, being a pedestrian wearing dark clothing is not a crime nor should it ever be a a quick and easy excuse for a driver in a crash (admittedly, crosswalks with lighting to maximize a driver's ability to see pedestrians are far and few). And merely trying to cross a certain street at a certain location during a certain time is also not a crime but actual comments like, "Only a fool would attempt to cross the highway at the time of day" (source) continue in the on-line forums.

Only thing that we can do is to keep trying to make New Jersey a safer place for those who get about without a car. Hopefully the New Year will prove better then the last.

The story links are below:

Elderly pedestrian is struck, killed on Route 1 in North Brunswick
The Star-Ledger • Monday, December 13, 2010

Pedestrian fatally struck by carjacked vehicle in East Orange during police chase is identified
The Star-Ledger • Friday, December 17, 2010

After being hit by car, Bayonne woman on the mend
The Jersey Journal • Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Sadly, another death on the road
Daily Record • Monday, December 20, 2010

Dover, NJ: Pedestrian struck crossing Route 46
Daily Record • Monday, December 13, 2010

Manchester pedestrian dies from injuries suffered in accident
Asbury Park Press • Monday, December 20, 2010

Marlton woman, 42, hit by car on Route 70
Courier Post • Thursday, December 23, 2010

Pedestrian struck outside Hillsborough Municipal Complex
Courier News • Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Hillsborough accident seriously injures pedestrian, 46, on Route 206
Courier News • Saturday, December 18, 2010

Ewing pedestrian suffers broken leg; pinned under car after icy collision
The Times of Trenton Thursday, December 2, 2010

Pedestrian hit by car remains hospitalized
The Record • Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Pedestrian struck by car dies from injuries
Wayne Today • Thursday, December 16, 2010

"Pedestrian hit by alleged drunk driver"
Belleville Times • Friday, December 17, 2010

East Rutherford resident killed over the weekend
South Bergenite • Tuesday, December 21, 2010
(comments informative)

"West Milford boy, 12 injured crossing road"
Suburban Trends • Sunday, December 19, 2010

Lakeland student remains at trauma center
Suburban Trends • Wednesday, December 15, 2010
(approximate crash site)

Pedestrian struck in Fair Lawn
The Record • Saturday, December 4, 2010

2 teen pedestrians struck by car in Fair Lawn
The Record • Thursday, December 2, 2010

Three teens hit by vehicles in Ridgewood on Friday afternoon
The Ridgewood News • Friday, December 3, 2010

DRPA Postpones Ben Franklin Bridge Bike Ped Ramp Project

The following was originally written by John Boyle and posted on the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle News. It is reprinted here with the permission of our friends at the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

We were so close.

Remember that rosy blog post proudly declaring "Mission Accomplished" for the construction of a bicycle and pedestrian ramp on the Ben Franklin Bridge walkway?

Not so fast.

The Delaware River Port Authority Board of Directors, who were caught between a suspicious Wall Street and a populist revolt, ordered DRPA staff to trim the 2011 Capital Budget of any project "that does not relate to public safety." As a result, DRPA trimmed back about 9% of the $164 Million budget. Within that amount was $50,000 allotted for the design of the Bridge Bicycle and Pedestrian path. At just 0.03% of the Capital Budget, $50K amounts to about 6 hours worth of Ben Franklin Bridge toll revenue.

The project is included in the 5 year Capital Program with all of the design happening in 2012 and construction beginning in 2013. A call to the Engineering Office indicated that the project will now start in early 2012 instead of late fall of 2011. The two or three month delay might have little effect on the proposed timeline to open up the ramp in the late Spring of 2013.

But will it remain in the Capital program? 2012's post toll hike budget may come under the same scrutiny. One of the top complaints of DRPA critics is that the Authority is spending money on projects that are not part of the core mission "moving people and goods across the Delaware River". Most of the criticism is aimed at economic development funds but recent Board discussions indicate a desire by some to narrow the Authority's mission. Proposal's have included shedding operations for PATCO and the Riverlink Ferry. When all is said and done the new mission may change to "moving cars and trucks over the four DRPA bridges". How progressive!

If you really love the bridge walkway then why not take some time to write a brief friendly note to DRPA Customer Service or ask to speak at a DRPA Board Meeting and declare your support for a bicycle and ramp. You need to call DRPA ahead of time (877-567-DRPA) to request time to speak at board meetings; transparency at One Port Center is an evolving practice.

Freehold Bike-Plan presented to public, Borough Council

This past Monday, representatives from Michael Baker Jr. Consulting presented their draft bicycle and pedestrian plan for Freehold Borough before the general public and Borough Council. This meeting brought out a large number interested people, so much that they had to move the public presentation from a small conference room to the larger Council Chambers. Included in the roughly 25 attendees were some heavy hitters in New Jersey bike/ped advocacy including Jim Nicholson, President of the NJ Bike & Walk Coalition, Ann and Mike Kruimer, New Jersey representatives for the East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGW), Wally Tunnison who has been instrumental in the development of the Henry Hudson Trail and yours truly of WalkBikeJersey. Along with all the state and regional advocates, there were a large number of local residents who attended the meeting including David Metz of the Metz Bicycle Museum who was also there to receive a proclamation of appreciation from the Borough upon his 95th birthday (Happy Birthday Mr. Metz and long live your museum!). Just about all who were in attendance at the meeting were in support for better bicycle amenities in Freehold Borough.

Overall, the plan presented by the consultants from Michael Baker Jr. was well thought out and clearly showed an understanding of the needs of bicyclists and pedestrians. Freehold Borough is a small, older town roughly 1.5 miles square that is the County Seat for Monmouth and is the crossroads of many old highways that still bring a great deal of traffic into town. Similar to the plan they put together for Morristown, the suggestions for Freehold also included a liberal use of bicycle lanes and sharrows on major streets where appropriate, accompanied by a reduction in motor vehicle lane width and limited elimination of on-street parking (the one street that they recommended this last action, they never observed cars parked on the street). They also suggested extending the Henry Hudson Trail further into town using the old railroad right-of-way, which is currently not used and has been the sight of rampant dumping.

For pedestrians suggestions included construction of sidewalks in places without them, particularly in areas that have significant evidence of pedestrian use as seen from direct observation and the existence of desire paths on the side of the roadways. Also suggested was the construction of one or two additional crosswalks on a section of downtown Main Street that had no crosswalks over a stretch of approximately 800 feet.

Bicycle parking oddly enough has been probably been the most contentious issue in Freehold. As WalkBikeJersey has reported in the past, Borough ordinance requires bicycle to be parked only to official bicycle racks, however almost all of those are located in the parking lots behind buildings and in other areas not readily apparent to bicyclist. Most locals feel that these racks are not located in safe places to lock a bike. Despite general opposition from many downtown merchants, the proposed plan does call for bicycle parking be placed in select curbside locations on Main Street, which follows the bike parking standards detailed by the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. However, if a curbside parking plan cannot be ratified by the Borough Council, the consultants did provide a “Plan B” bike parking proposal that would provide better parking options if bicycle parking is still not allowed along the Main Street storefronts.

Bike parking in a back lot near the old train station which is now a bus stop.

Probably the most unique part of the plan (and undoubtedly the coolest) was the bicycle map of the Borough that included a Bruce Springsteen bicycle tour. Freehold Borough has many historic sights due to its 300+ years of history and its close proximity to the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth (were a newly trained Continental Army proved it could go tow-to-tow with the British and the legendary Molly Pitcher took command of cannon post when its male soldiers were wounded). Still, Freehold is known the world over for being the birthplace of Bruce and there are many sights around town associated with “The Boss.” While there are eight other historic sights and places of interest in the Borough, there are nine sights uniquely associated with Springsteen and the proposed bike map points them all out.

Also of note was that this plan looked at important destinations beyond the Borough boundaries. With cooperation from Freehold Township that surrounds the Borough, the consultants considered the needs of bicyclists and pedestrian that would like to visit sights like Monmouth Battlefield State Park and other nearby county parks. Also investigated were the needs of people who would need to travel back and forth to a select number of commercial establishments that lay just beyond the Borough.

During public comment everyone who spoke showed support for the plan, including all the local residents many of whom use their bikes as a regular means of transportation around the town. When Mike Kruimer of the ECGW spoke, he applauded the proposed plan and reminded the Council that there are many great amenities in their town to attract bicyclists such as the Henry Hudson Trail and the world-class Metz Bicycle Museum. Mike also reminded the Council that when he comes to town on his bike he doesn’t bring loud music or a loud car but he does bring his wallet, as he pulled it out of his pocket and waved it before all in attendance. Other bicycle advocates from outside the Borough, including myself, praised the plan for being well thought out and a great opportunity for Freehold.

Unfortunately, I needed to leave before the Council saw the presentation for themselves and could begin debate on the bicycle plan. A reporter from the Asbury Park Press was there to cover the story and you can read her coverage here.

New Census Data Profiles Where People Are Walking and Biking

The 2005 to 2009 US Census American Community Survey is out. This included Means of Transportation to Work. WalkBikeJersey broke it down by the percentage of commuters who bike, walk or take public transportation as their primary mode to work.


Use right arrow to access walk and transit data

Here is how New Jersey compared to the nation:

• 0.31% Biked (US 0.5%),
• 3.35% Walked (US 2.9%)
• 10.75% took transit (US 4.95%)

Of course many trips involve more than one mode, the question posed by the Census bureau basically asks - What mode of transportation is the longest part of your work trip and/or what is the mode you use most often? So someone who bikes to a transit connection or only twice a week will not be counted as a bike commuter. That being said the statistics for the top ranking communities are impressive.

Red Bank and Ocean Township move forward with bike/ped plans

Greater Media Newspapers, The Hub and The Atlanticville both reported about progress in bicycle and pedestrian plans in Red Bank and Ocean Township respectively in the past 7 days. Both preliminary plans were done by the firm Urban Engineers, headquartered in Philadelphia but with an office in Cherry Hill, and funded by NJDOT. The news reports seem to indicate that recommendations for Red Bank seem to focus around bike lanes, sharrows and better crosswalks while those for Ocean Township are for trails, sidewalks, some bike lanes with an emphasis of provided safe routes to schools and parks. For more details read the articles linked above.

December 2010 NJ BPAC Meeting info brief

On Wednesday, December 15th NJ DOT with the Voorhees Transportation Center hosted the latest New Jersey Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council (NJ BPAC) meeting.
For those of you that don’t know, ever 3 months state, county, and local government officials, consultants as well as advocates and members of the general public come together at the Bloustein School at Rutgers University for the NJ BPAC meeting. Here the latest happenings and other news concerning bicycle and pedestrian are discussed and shared. All are welcomed.

Items discussed and announcements include:

• NJDOT announced the completion of the updated New Jersey Bicycling Manual. It was done with the assistance of the NJ BPAC Policy Subcommittee and the consultants at the RBA Group and funded with a grant from the Federal Highway Administration (or so I believe). This new manual is geared to all age groups, unlike that last version that focused only on children and includes advice on everything from lane positioning, hand signals, how to properly lock and secure one’s bicycle, commuter tips, advantages of the different types of bicycles, essential repair tools for the road, lights, wet weather gear and even bicycle touring. This is a quality product produced by people who are highly experienced bicyclists. The Manual will only be available on-line and will be released before Christmas. When it is, WalkBikeJersey will have a complete review with a direct link.

• A representative from the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance announce that they are putting together a Complete Streets petition that they will present to Mercer County. They hope that Mercer County will follow the lead of Monmouth County and adopt their own Complete Streets Policy.

• Ranjit Walia of the Voorhees Transportation Center gave a quick review and rundown of the Complete Streets Summit held this past October at Rutgers University. The official attendance was 160 but there were many more there, up to as many as 200. 27 municipalities and 14 counties sent representatives. There were also 12 elected officials, 42 consultants and 19 people representing non-profits (for more details see the CS Summit Report or the official BPAC minutes - both not available at press time).

• Ranjit Walia and Peter Bilton of the Voorhees Transportation Center will be leaving the center by years end to start their own private venture. Along with a third partner, their new company will do custom bicycle and pedestrian as well as community visionings using multimedia, video, etc. Their hope is to provide a product that is as visually compelling as Streetfilms but with the years of planning expertise that both Ranjit and Peter bring to their project. During a few minutes of extra time at the end of the meeting Ranjit even showed a few examples of their work. It should be also noted that Peter and Ranjit’s leaving does not mean the end of their relationship with VTC and NJDOT. Both parties already plan to work with Ranjit and Peter on future projects that will help advance walking and bicycling issues here in New Jersey.

The feature presentation at this BPAC meeting was given by Ian Sacs, the Director of Transportation and Parking for the City of Hoboken. If you are regular reader of WalkBikeJersey you are already aware of some of the innovative (Ed - if less than ideally executed) bicycle and pedestrian amenities found in Hoboken. Most of what Ian talked about in his presentation on this day however was more on how he, with the backing of the City Council, has been creating incentives for residents to leave their cars at home or to get rid of them all together and not so much on the finer details of Hoboken’s bicycle and pedestrian amenities.

Ian comes from an engineering background and calls himself a transportation engineer, not a traffic engineer and this is evident in the way that he approaches transportation and traffic problems in Hoboken. For many decades prior to his arrival, the only proactive approach to transportation and parking that the city undertook was to accommodate cars by increasing to supply of parking through the construction of expensive parking garages. Instead of continuing down this ever more costly and futile path of an ever-increasing parking supply, Ian’s approach is that it is better and much cheaper to reduce parking demand.

Ian admits that much of what he has been able to accomplish in Hoboken is the direct result of how the city was planned and laid out many years ago, when walking and transit was the only way that people got around and commuted to work. The residual pedestrian friendly layout, dense urban residential infrastructure and transit amenities, new (Hudson-Bergen Light Rail) and old (NJ Transit’s Lackawana Terminal and PATH), has made it rather easy for him to get residents to leave their cars at home and in some cases get rid of them all together. The two new major initiatives that city has implemented with Ian’s guidance to reduce private motor vehicle mode share and parking demand has been the “HOP” bus shuttle and the new and highly visible car-share program called “Corner Cars.”

While Hoboken has great transit amenities to help take residents to destinations outside of the city, transit options to destinations within Hoboken were actually rather limited. The HOP Shuttle, with its three different routes servicing major destinations only in Hoboken looks to remedy this oversight and eliminate much of the need for expensive paratransit services that provides door-to-door transportation for the elderly and disabled. While the service has yet to break even financially (typical of transit BTW), Ian continues to find additional revenue streams and riders for the system, while expanding service, keeping regular fairs low and free for the cities elderly and poor.

Corner Cars is a much more innovative and controversial (at least for some in the city) approach to reducing parking demand and car ownership in the city. While Hoboken has long been a site of a successful car-share program, this new program brings to visibility of Hoboken car-share out onto the streets. Like the name implies, Corner Cars are literally parked in reserved spots on the streets at select and even spaced corners throughout Hoboken. What has made this program controversial to some has been the elimination on on-street parking spaces to make room for the Corner Cars. To help silence critics who lament the loss of “precious” parking spaces, the city has also implemented a program called “Surrender Your Permit” which provides additional financial initiatives for residents with a parking permit to get rid of it if they sign up to become a member of the Corner Cars program. So far around 50 people have done just that, which about makes up for the lost on-street parking taken by the Corner Cars (did not remember the exact numeric details but this is roughly correct).

Reducing traffic and parking demand does benefit those who wish to walk and bike by helping to tame the streets. A more direct way to help the city’s cyclist and pedestrians has been to simply enforce current parking regulations more strictly. Not only does this clear up the streets and increase city revenues but also eliminates illegal parking at street corners that often blocks a driver’s view of pedestrians crossing at the intersections along with cyclists and other vehicle traffic. A more proactive way to keep street corners clear has been to install flexible bollards to block people from parking in the last 25 feet before a crosswalk which he termed “corner daylighting.” However, even this does not stop 100% of illegal parking at these locations.

These bollards stop the driver of this $100,000+ Maserati from parking too close
to the curb but they aren't always enough to stop some drivers from parking illegally.

Finally Ian noted that the city’s efforts to make the streets more livable have increased the number of cyclists using a bike for simple local transportation. Scenes of bicycles with child carriers grocery baskets and fenders parked around the city are becoming evermore common. When asked by WalkBikeJersey about the parking at the train station he announced that the plan to develop the area around the train station would include what will probably be New Jersey’s first bicycle station.


That’s a rap on the December 2010 NJ BPAC rundown. Check back here to find out more when the next BPAC meeting likely scheduled for March 2011.

Cyclist killed in New Brunswick crash ID'd as California woman - Updated with photos of intersection

The Star-Ledger reported on Saturday that the woman killed in a crash on Rt 18 at Georges Rd in New Brunswick was 21-year-old Californian Chelsea Traynor, of Concord, California. Traynor was a sophomore, in the class of 2013, majoring in nutritional science at the university’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in New Brunswick, formerly known as Cook College. As of Saturday, no charges were filed against the driver.

Since the Google Streetsview imagery was outdated for this newer intersection I went out and visited the location, took some pictures so I and our readers could get a better understanding of the place and what could have happened to Chelsea Traynot. I went through the crosswalk to cross the northbound local lanes of Rt 18. Going over to the riverside it took exactly one minute to get the walk signal. Upon my return in took only 20 seconds. It also appeared that when traffic turning left from George Stgot the green light, all traffic on the northbound local lanes also came to a halt. I did not observe the operation of the light well enough to say that this was the case with 100% certainty.

It was rather somber to go to a place where someone had lost their life not even a week earlier and I took these pictures and show them here with the greatest reverence to the deceased.

Traffic turning left onto Rt 18 in the foreground. The green signal for these
drivers seemed to bring all Rt 18 traffic to a halt seen in background.A view of the approach to the intersection with George St.
A view of the approach to the intersection but further south along the highway.
Note the posted speed limit.