1 - The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) has opened up the draft New Jersey Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for public comment - Less than 0.5% of the highway dollars will go to bicycling in South Jersey over the next 4 years - meanwhile one interchange (42/295) will suck up more the 10% of the highway funds for the region. Click here to review the map and submit comments for more bicycle funding in NJ.
2 - The DRPA has extended the Ben Franklin Bridge walkway hours to 9 pm through October 1.
3 - More bikelash, this time in South Central, PA. Temporary bike lanes on Philadelphia St (for bike week) and permanent bike lanes on King St in York were put in place and the York Dispatch immediately began blaming the bike lanes for gridlock. We knew that the editorial was anti-bike when the tagline started with - "Seriously, we have nothing against exercise or bettering the environment". This state needs more cities like York and fewer bike bashing editorials from papers like the York Dispatch.
4 - In the Lehigh Valley The Saucon Valley rail trail has been extended to Hellertown. Plans are to extend the trail to Bucks County Line at Coopersburg. Meanwhile SEPTA has dialed back its plans for restored rail service on the corridor and that could further extend the trail to Quakertown. The Saucon Trail lease agreement with SEPTA has a rail reversion clause in case the Agency plans to bring passenger rail back to the Lehigh Valley. [Map]
2 comments:
Excuse me for being dense (or stupid) but regarding commenting on DVRPA's < 5% going to bike/ped projects, is there something more specific we can say besides: "more than 5% of your budget should go to bike/ped projects"? (Is there a specific project that is already on the STIP that we are vying for?)
Donald - How about this for a draft:
"With the Transportation Improvement Program allocating 1.1 billion dollars for road projects and nearly 800 million dollars for mass transit it only seems fair that dedicated bicycle and pedestrian projects deserve more than 8 million dollars - a mere 0.4% of the transportation budget.
In New Jersey bicyclists and pedestrians make up a quarter of all traffic fatalties. We must do better as a state to plan for and invest in infrastructure for our most vulnerable road users. We can begin by fully funding our backlog of bicycle and pedestrian projects with our transportation dollars."
PS - You can simply mail general comments about the TIP at
tip-plan-comments@dvrpc.org
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