The Burlington County Bike Plan - Map Your Comments

Have you ever come across something in your travels and say to yourself - "They really need to fix this". If you bicycle on a regular basis you almost certainly have.  But who are "They"???

The Burlington County’s Bicycle Master Plan team wants your participation. Following public meetings held in January, Cross County Connection TMA has released an online comment map and survey for you to sound off on where you want bikeways in the county. They want to hear where you want to go, your concerns and suggestions. Both the map and survey can be found on the project homepage:

driveless.com/BurlingtonCountyBikePlan

Is there a road in Burlington County that can be made better for bikes? Just Map It!

Join Us In Washington To Call On Your Congressperson on March 6th

Get your lobby on! Join the NJ Delegation in Washington DC for the National Bike Summit's Lobby Day on Wednesday, March 6th.

You don't have to attend the National Bike Summit to participate in this Lobby Day, but we do ask that you let us know you're coming by signing up here:

http://bikelobbyday2013.eventbrite.com/

Photo - Whiteknuckled on Flickr

What is involved? Travelling down to Washington DC to meet with your elected officials and stress to them the importance of supporting biking and walking programs, funding, and trail projects.

For the National Bike Summit in March we need representation from several Congressional Districts across the State. The most critical district that needs constituents is the 2nd Congressional District home of Congressman LoBiondo who is on the House Transportation Committee. The 2nd District covers most of South Jersey - Cape May, Atlantic, Cumberland, Salem and the southern sections of Ocean and Gloucester Counties.

We cannot provide you with transportation, but we can let you know who else is travelling so you can find someone to carpool with. If you wish to travel solo, NJ TRANSIT trains connect with Amtrak in Newark, Trenton and Philadelphia. Once we have appointments arranged with the various senators and representatives, we'll share those meeting dates and times.

Posted and modified with permission from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

Save $15! NJ Bike & Walk Summit pre-registration closes at midnight!

Long distance road bicyclist and Assemblywoman, Grace Spencer to attend in a surprise, last-minute addition to the Summit!

Still hemming and hawing about going to the NJ Bike and Walk Summit this weekend?  Don't wait!  Register now!  Online registration closes at midnight!
Register online and pay only $50 and avoid paying the $15 "at the door" fee.  Space is filling up fast so you better not wait anyway.  And if you are a student with a valid ID you will only pay $25 but that will rise to $40 if you wait.  It's going to rain anyway on Saturday so what else are you going to do?

Assemblywoman Grace Spencer to appear on featured panel   
A member of the New Jersey Legislature, Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (D) has represented the 29th Legislative District, which includes the Essex County municipalities of Belleville and a portion of Newark, since November 2007. Ms. Spencer received her BA in business management from Rutgers University and her JD from Rutgers Law School.  She specializes in liability law at the firm of Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman and Goggin. Ms. Spencer is a member of the Major Taylor Cycling Club of New Jersey.

In total, the NJ Bike & Walk Summit will have a total of 18 educational session with over 50 speakers.  To find out more, check out the Summit Schedule.  The Summit will be on Saturday February 23rd at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, a five minute walk from the New Brunswick train station.  Pre-registration closes on February 21 at midnight. Registration will be available on the morning of the summit, for an additional $15 per registrant. Register today!

Hawaii Bicycling League produces a perfect bicycle PSA for New Jersey

If you ride even a little bit on New Jersey's roads, it doesn't take long to realize that New Jersey drivers need a major education regarding the rights bicyclists' have to use the roadway.  They also need a good lesson or two on the safe and proper way to pass bicyclist riding in the road.  After seeing a motorcycle safety PSA play repeatedly all last summer on News 12 New Jersey, it dawned on me that a PSA focused on bicycling safety would be the perfect means to reach and educate the general public.

Fortunately, the Hawaii Bicycling League has already produced a close to perfect 30 second PSA that teaches exactly what New Jersey drivers also need to learn.  Take a look above.  All we would have to do is take out the "Aloha" greeting with the much more typically New Jersey "How ya' doin'?" and have cyclist ride past some iconic New Jersey landmarks and I think we would have a winner!

Maybe we could even get Prudential Insurance, headquartered in Newark, to underwrite the production.  SERIOUSLY!

Mahalo to Chad Taniguchi, Executive Director Hawaii Bicycling League for personally sharing the link to their most excellent PSA.

NJ Bike Summit in just five days! LAB Board President to speak

The New Jersey Bike and Walk Summit, presented by the New Jersey Bike and Walk Coalition is proud to announce the late addition of Hans van Naerssen, Chair of the Board of Directors of the League of American Bicyclists.  Hans is a bicycling activist, and an active bicyclist. He is also co-founder and Board Chair, Pennsylvania Walks and Bikes, and Board member and past President of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. He has a Governor's appointment to the PA Pedestrian and Pedalcycle Advisory Committee.  The addition of Hans to the list of speakers is a real surprise as he is will undoubtedly provide a valuable perspective on bicycle activism having experience working with all levels of government.

For all you trail users out there, the session "Building Community Support for Trails" should prove very interesting.   While the session will remind trail advocates that trails are used by groups well beyond the typical, hiker, biker, horseback rider groups, it will also be one of the few time members from all of these groups will all be in one room.  A sampling of the panel include Michael Gray and Becky Taylor of the Lawrence Hopewell Trail Corporation, Janice Elsishans, Trails Advocate for the New Jersey Horse Council , Equestrian Chairperson for the Heritage and Agricultural Association, participant in the Sussex County Trails Partnership and President of the Paulinskill Valley Trail Committee, and Wally Tunison of the Jersey Off Road Bicycle Association (JORBA)

In total, the NJ Bike & Walk Summit will have a total of 18 educational session with over 50 speakers.  To find out more, check out the Summit Schedule.  The Summit will be on Saturday February 23rd at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, a five minute walk from the New Brunswick train station.  Pre-registration closes on February 21 at midnight. Registration will be available on the morning of the summit, for an additional $15 per registrant. Register today!



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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.

Now follow WalkBikeJersey on Facebook!

Don't worry!!  WalkBikeJersey Blog isn't going anywhere.  We will continue to use blogger as our primary platform but to better reach a wider audience and to make it easier for some current readers to follow the blog, we here at WalkBikeJersey have created a WalkBikeJersey Facebook page that will allow you to follow all new posts on Facebook, starting with this one.

We are using RSS Graffiti to send our blog feed to Facebook.  It updates to Facebook as soon as possible but cross-posting to the FB WBJ page won't be immediate. We just set this up, so bear with us if there are any problems.  We hope to have to have the entire archive up on FB within a day or two.

We have also added a Facebook and Twitter share buttons
on the right column and a selection of share buttons at the
bottom of each post (like RIGHT below this line).  If like what we have to say, please share it!

Two new videos feature East Coast Greenway in Newark and Cranford

Better news from the East Coast Greenway this go around.  Two new videos from the East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGA) feature sights that one can see as you travel along the East Coast Greenway in the towns of Newark and Cranford New Jersey.

In the first video from Newark you will hear about the history of Weequahic Park in the south of Newark (it once housed a Velodrome) and you will get a glimpse of the well engineered road diet and bike lanes on Irvine Turner Blvd that the ECGA was instrumental in getting built.  Not only does the bike lane on Irvine Turner provide a critical bicycle connection between Downtown Newark and the Weequahic section of the city, it is also the first bike lane built on a street managed by Essex County and will surely act as a model to be repeated elsewhere in the county.


View Irvine Turner Blvd Bike Lanes in Larger Map

The second video is less eyeopening from a bicycle advocacy perspective but still VERY eyeopening demonstrating the beauty of Cranford which is representative of many of the older pre-war New Jersey suburbs.

Enjoy!