Pedestrian safety important in smaller communities
For residents and business owners in Jamesburg and Cranbury, walking is a way of life.
In Jamesburg, where the school district does not provide busing, hundreds of elementary school students hit the pavement each day to make their way to and from the John F. Kennedy and Grace M. Breckwedel schools. In Cranbury, where the village is small and the school accessible, many do the same.
Want something to eat? All that means in either town is taking a short walk into the downtown, where you can visit an eat-in restaurant or diner, grab a slice of pizza or a sandwich and, while there, pick up the paper and maybe even run into a few friends.
Residents in Jamesburg and Cranbury both have a million reasons to walk, rather than drive, and each has plans to encourage even more.
And both would do well to take advantage of a new state program designed to encourage walking and pedestrian safety.
The five-year, $74 million campaign calls for the state Department of Transportation, the Department of Law and Public Safety and the Motor Vehicle Commission to improve pedestrian safety by focusing on educating people about the benefits of walking, enforcing pedestrian safety laws and improving infrastructure to make walking safer.
The program includes $15 million for the Safe Routes to School Program, which is run by the DOT and encourages walking and bicycling to school. The money also will go to making safer walkways, bikeways and street crossings near schools.
That’s a biggie. Until now, New Jersey has done anything but encourage walking in the Garden State. The only bike paths in the area are the ones in parks. People are cut off from supermarkets by lanes of speeding traffic. Poorly designed intersections and developments keep people who are willing to walk in their cars where it’s relatively safer.
It is the culture of driving, and it has consumed New Jersey.
But not in towns like Cranbury and Jamesburg, where sidewalks connect developments to downtowns, and museums and shops and parks.
Areas that don’t have sidewalks aren’t forgotten either. Both Cranbury and Jamesburg have very real sidewalks plans designed to make walking safer, plans they’ve been working on, and slowly implementing, for years.
And now the state can help them. Both towns should ask for money to be used to create bike paths along areas such as Plainsboro Road and the Railroad avenues and possibly event to jumpstart intersection improvements in Jamesburg. Raised crosswalks and crosswalks that are clearly marked need to be installed as well.
Making the area 100 percent safe and accessible for pedestrians will be a fantasy for as long as our destinations supermarkets, pharmacies and restaurants are built on highways and roads that are only accessible by car.
But with the state’s help, things can get a little bit better.

