A master plan for making municipalities more bike friendly

In all of Downtown Jersey City, the largest municipality in the county, there is one solitary bicycle rack. Located just across the street from the Grove Street PATH station, the solitary rack was put there by a restaurant for his customers. The fact that it's the only bicycle rack in the area is amazing to Lewis Dijkstra, a project manager for the Rutgers University Transportation Policy Institute.

Dijkstra, a PhD candidate at the university and Jersey City resident, is an avid cyclist, using his bike as his main means of transportation in the city. When the state announced last year that it was making $7.4 million available to municipalities that have a bicycle accomodation plan. Dijkstra was surprised to find that not one of the state's urban areas had applied for any of the funds.

"It struck me that only suburban municipalities had applied for the funds," he said. "Bicycling makes the most sense in urban areas. It wasn't even an issue that their applications weren't good enough; no one even bothered to apply."

At the center of the state's bicycle accomodation initiative is Governor Christie Whitman's goal of having 2,000 miles of bicycle lanes and other accomodations by the year 2010. In one of the country's most densely populated states, it is not only a good idea, but an environmental, economic and general quality of life imperative. The Transportation Policy Institute, which studies ways to make getting around easier, has taken on a project that will ultimately result in a bicycle master plan for the city. The plan - the cost of which will be split by the state Department of Transportation and the city of Jersey City - will be used as the basis for a grant application with the state, seeking some of the bicycle cash to make the plan a reality and, Dijkstra hopes, making Jersey City a model for urban areas across the state.

"Jersey City is really ideal for this type of plan," he said. "There are so many people using bicycles right now and the city could really benefit from increased bicycle accomodations."

Lane Changes

Dijkstra has already been touring the area, taking notes and seeing where bike lanes can work best. He will present a draft of his plan at a public meeting in City Hall (280 Grove St.) on Tuesday, July 13th. At the meeting, Dijkstra will seek additional input from the public at large about where they think the city can make itself a bit more bicycle friendly.

"We want people to tell us where they'd like to bike to, what are the best roads for bike lanes, which intersections are the most dangerous, and where there is more bicycle parking needed," explained Dijkstra.

At the center of the Dijkstra plan is a network of proposed bicycle lanes in all parts of the city. The goal is that no resident in the city should live more than a quarter mile from a bike lane. Dijkstra is proposing bike lanes on major north-south corridors like Kennedy Boulevard, Central Avenue and Palisades Avenue, which lead into neighboring communities. He also proposes bike lanes for east-west roads like Montgomery Street, Grand Street and Newark Avenue.

"The plan is not just for cyclists," explained Dijkstra, noting that the city of Philadelphia created a nationally-recognized bicycle master plan that included a network of bike lanes. "It helps everyone; it keeps the older cyclists off the sidewalk and thus out of the way of the pedestrians while automobile drivers no longer have to share a lane with cyclists on roads where [bike] lanes have been provided. Experience elsewhere has show that putting a few bicycle lanes in a city does not make much difference whereas a network makes it easier and safer for everyone to cycle."

In addition to bicycle lanes, which, not surprisingly, do not exist anywhere in Hudson (see article on "Hudson"), Dijkstra wants to put bike parking where people will use it.

"Surveys suggest that there are two main reasons why people don't use their bikes," he said. "The first is safety [on the streets] and the second is that they're afraid their bikes are going to be stolen," he said.

The Dijkstra plan calls for increased bike parking all around the city including at every PATH and light rail station, major employment centers like Exchange Place, Journal Square and Newport as well as commercial districts like Central Avenue and Newark Avenue.

"That makes a lot of sense," said Elizabeth Strong, a cyclist who uses parking meters, sign poles or gates as parking spots. "I use my bike all the time, but I knew that a lot of my friends would use their bikes if they knew they could park it in a bike rack. I know that in Manhattan there are bike racks all over the tourist areas."

"We need people to come tell us what works best for them," he said of Tuesday's public meeting. "We really want to show people what Jersey City has done and to show what they can do. Ultimately, we hope that all urban areas will look to the Jersey City example and see that they can be more accomodating of bicycling."

Strong said that pedestrians and motorists need to change their views of cyclists if a master plan is going to have a genuine impact. "People still see bicycles as toys or just for fun," she said. "But a lot of us use our bikes instead of cars, as transportation, and if we could make it easier for everyone to co-exist on the road, I think more people would use their bikes and we'd have a little less traffic. In Europe and other places around the world, bicycles are an integral part of the transportation system. We could benefit from that model."