Tuesday, July 27, 2010

West Windsor Township Adopts A Complete Streets Policy

On July 19th, West Windsor Township, NJ home of Princeton Junction and Orson Well's Grovers Mill became the first suburban community in the DVRPC region to adopt a complete streets resolution.

In some ways West Windsor Township seems to have been invaded by Martians. That would explain the miles of bike lanes and the success of the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance with 400 members in a community of 33,000 27,000 residents. On a per capita basis the organization is one of the most successful bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups in the country, not too far off the pace of the San Francisco Bike Coalition. It is truly a model community for the many built out suburbs in the region.


















Martian Landing Site (Wikipedia)

It is another sign that New Jersey is an emerging state in the Complete Streets movement with NJDOT adopting a respectable statewide policy (backed by a recent training session for engineers) which was quickly followed by Montclair Township in North Jersey. On Thursday Monmouth County became the first county in the state to adopt a policy. Unlike Pennsylvania, New Jersey counties maintain extensive networks of secondary roads (the 500 and 600 series routes) and often serve as the primary bike routes between municipalities.

3 comments:

Ken Carlson said...

Thanks for the kind words! The WWBPA couldn't do it without the support of West Windsor and Mercer County officials who agree to install those bike lanes!
We are seeing more bicyclists of all ages and abilities on our roads, so our work must be having an impact.
Love the comparison to San Francisco! One thing: WW's population is about 27,000, not 33,000. (But we also have some non-WW members>0
Silvia
WWBPA 2nd Vice President

Ken Carlson said...

The map you are using John is out of date. There are many more roads with bike lanes than are depicted on the map. Is this from the county bike-ped map?

John Boyle said...

That is Google Maps bike data, see our July 25th post to see how you can provide updates to Google.
http://tinyurl.com/gglbikemap