July 2024
Posted: 7/11/2024 1:28:39 PM
Sixteen projects to make walking and bicycling to school safer within the NJTPA region will receive almost $14 million through the state’s Safe Routes to School program.
Overall, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) awarded 23 grants totaling $21.1 million through the federally-funded program to increase pedestrian safety among motorists and schoolchildren. SRTS is administered by the NJDOT in partnership with the NJTPA, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission and the South Jersey Transportation Planning Organization.
“The Murphy Administration is committed improving safety by providing resources to improve sidewalks and bike paths near schools,” NJDOT Commissioner Fran O’Connor, who sits on the NJTPA Board of Trustees, said in a press release announcing the awards. “The Safe Routes to School program encourages children to stay active by walking and biking to school, and is a great example of how NJDOT, working with the state’s three regional planning authorities, helps utilize federal funding to support communities through local transportation projects.”
Infrastructure improvement projects to be funded through this program include sidewalk upgrades, pedestrian and bicycle crossings, and on-street bicycle facilities. Special consideration was given to applications that addressed equity by providing benefits to underserved communities, low-income residents, minorities, those with limited English proficiency, persons with disabilities, children, and older adults.
The goal of the program is to make bicycling and walking to school a safer and more appealing transportation alternative, encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle from an early age. Projects are designed to improve safety, reduce traffic, fuel consumption and air pollution near schools.
NJDOT received 62 eligible applications in the NJTPA’s 13-county region, awarding 16 top-scoring projects with $13.996 million in funding. The NJTPA Board of Trustees approved the following grant awards during its meeting on Monday:
- Teaneck: Pedestrian Bridge over CSX Railroad Project, $1.5 million
- Rockaway: Pedestrian Safety & Connectivity Improvement, Copeland Middle & Stony Brook Elementary School Complex, $1.199 million
- Berkeley Heights: Mountain Avenue Sidewalk Project, $1.27 million
- Passaic: Parker Avenue and Van Buren Street Improvements Project, $1.089 million
- Freehold: Freehold Safe Routes to School Project, $972,000
- West Orange: Gregory Avenue and Lowell Avenue Safe Routes to School Project, $966,000
- Belleville: Belleville Public Schools Pedestrian Safety Project, $962,000
- Orange: Lincoln Avenue School Pedestrian Safety Improvements Project, $912,000
- Little Egg Harbor: Sidewalk Safety Improvements to Frog Pond Road, Railroad Avenue, and Parkertown Drive, $800,000
- Bridgewater: Garretson Road and Easton Turnpike Pedestrian Improvements, $768,000
- Keyport: Maple Place, West 4th Street, St. Peter’s Place and St. George Place, Safe Routes to School Improvements, $749,000
- Point Pleasant: Proposed Sidewalk near Ocean Road Elementary School, $725,000
- Nutley: Nutley Schools Intersection Improvement Project, $557,000
- New Providence: Various Bike Route Improvements, $534,000
- High Bridge: Fairview Avenue and Church Street., $530,000
- Essex County: New traffic signal at Lakeside Avenue (County Route 636) and Pease Avenue in Verona, $436,000
Posted: 7/10/2024 4:09:33 PM
An Austin, Texas shopping mall is now a satellite campus of a community college, served by a light rail line.
A former motel outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, serves as memory care housing.
Mizner Park, a mixed-used shopping, residential and entertainment district has now been around longer than the original mall that was built in Boca Raton, Florida.
Those are just a few examples of “suburban retrofitting” but with thousands of strip malls across the country in nearly every community, there is “a lot of latent opportunity,” for more, according to June Williamson, Professor and Director of Programs in Graduate Architecture at The City College of New York.
The author of Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia, Williamson presented “Building Better Places: Urban Design Strategies for a Connected Region” at the July 8 meeting of the NJTPA Board of Trustees.
Williamson offered an array of case studies illustrating three urban design strategies for suburban retrofitting used alone or in combination:
- Redevelopment, urbanizing selected “nodes” by increasing density, walkability, transit readiness, and use mix;
- Reinhabitation, or adaptive reuse of existing buildings; and,
- Regreening, introducing small parks, plazas and greens to have a social or public space where there wasn’t any in suburban settings, restoring wetlands ecologies and wildlife corridors.
Among the urgent challenges of suburban retrofitting cited by Williamson are adding water and energy resilience and supporting an aging population that has already reared their children.
The larger goal is to promote progress toward “incremental metropolitanism.” She said these transformations can take time but offer a lot of benefits to communities that undertake them. Williamson said vacant and obsolete shopping malls, big box stores and office/industrial parks are prime locations to consider for retrofitting. Reimaging these sites can provide economic benefits and address a community’s housing or recreational needs.
“Broadly, I’m here to advocate for the idea that implementing a suburban retrofitting approach can lead to a better, more connected and vibrant region,” Williamson said.
Inspired by her work, the
Boston Metro Area Planning Commission mapped every strip mall in the region, assessing sites to determine which were most favorable because of their proximity to transit, Williamson said. The study concluded that redeveloping just 10 percent of the more than 3,000 sites into mixed-used projects would meet the entire new housing demand projected for the region, creating some 124,000 homes and increasing building values by $479 million in extra tax revenue for host communities.
There are issues to overcome, such as dealing with site owners and addressing land use concerns in communities, she said. It’s a significant finding and many communities can make similar strides.
A recording of her presentation is available on
our YouTube channel.