Making Red Bank more pedestrian friendly, a town where children can walk safely to and from school, is the focus of a new group that met for the first time last week.
The Red Bank Safe Routes group held its inaugural public meeting on Oct. 20 at the Red Bank Middle School with several dozen people in attendance, including residents and borough officials.
Organized by Jim Willis, a resident and parent, the meeting provided a forum to discuss ways to build on one of the borough’s strong points: it is walkable. At the same time, Willis would like to see less vehicular traffic, which, he said, would result in stronger neighborhoods.
“I do know a little bit about what I think makes a place a good place. Community and walk-ability is very much one and the same thing,” he said. “We know a ton of our neighbors, and all of them are within walking distance.
“The skills that it takes to be a neighborhood aren’t really cultivated through the window of a car,” he added. “We think that Red Bank is an unbelievably amazing place to live; we just want to make it more unbelievably amazing.”
Willis said the primary point of the meeting was to get as many people as possible in the room and talk about ways to make the community better.
“Our primary hope is by bringing the stakeholders all in one place, we can prevent some of the isolated problem-solving methods that research shows are not effective. This is the first step in a really long trip,” he said.
After Willis spoke, Elise Bremer-Nei, state director of the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program, discussed the initiative.
“I am amazed at your turnout tonight,” she said. “This really is a tremendous start, light years ahead of some of the other communities.”
Bremer-Nei said that there are consequences for communities that remain highly reliant on vehicle travel. Among the consequences she cited are traffic accidents and air pollution.
The SRTS program, which is a Department of Transportation initiative, is designed to provide students with a safe alternative to taking the bus or riding in a car to school, whether it is by bicycle or on foot.B
remer-Nei said that studies show that the quality of streets and sidewalks has a direct connection with students walking to school and a direct impact on the environment.
“Schools that are placed in neighborhoods with good streets and sidewalks have many more students arrive by bike or by foot,” she said. “The air quality is measurably better.”
Childhood obesity, she noted, is becoming more and more of a problem, and finding ways to get kids to school and giving them some extra exercise would have benefits.
She explained that congestion and traffic around schools is causing injuries.
“Another problem is traffic injuries,” she said. “There is so much more car traffic out there.”
Bremer-Nei urged the borough to request funding for programs and to repair infrastructure around the schools.
“Now we have funding available to do all sorts of programs,” she said. “The benefits are reducing congestion around our schools.”
The funding comes from the federal government and is facilitated by the DOT.
Bremer-Nei also said that encouraging kids to find alternative methods to get to and from school would have cost-saving benefits for the schools and life lessons for the students.
“There is a lot of talk lately of towns in New Jersey cutting funding to busing,” she said. “It teaches children valuable life skills.”
Bremer-Nei said that she expects funding to continue to be available for communities in the state in the coming year.
“We are acting on the premise … we are going to have a similar level of funding for 2010 as we did in 2009,” she said. “That would be about $5 million to spend on school projects.
“Granted, that covers the whole state and it’s a very competitive program, but money is there.”
Bremer-Nei cited other towns throughout the state, including Brick, Garfield and Netcong, as communities that received funding and were able to improve conditions around schools.
She brought up different activities to encourage students to use alternative means to travel to school, including designating a day when everyone rides bicycles to school and setting up a “walking school bus.”
Capt. Darren McConnell, representing the Red Bank Police Department, said that pedestrian accidents are down in recent years. He said there were an average of 22 pedestrian accidents a year in 2004 and 2005, but that number has since decreased.
“We are down now in the last four years to about half that,” McConnell said. “Our overall accidents were cut about 10 percent.”
McConnell said that while traffic accidents and pedestrian accidents have dropped, biking accidents have remained flat at between 12 and 16 a year.
“We can’t seem to bring that down,” he noted.
McConnell said the blame in cycling accidents is often split, with half being the fault of the cyclist and half where the driver is to blame. He also said the cyclist is rarely a child.
Borough resident Jenny Rossano, who is a civil engineer, presented a map of potential bicycle and walking routes to school.
“I found that our town is only two short miles, but it includes 17 bus routes,” she said. “I am in no way recommending that tomorrow you give your kids a bike to ride to school. I’m simply trying to give this group a starting point,” she said.
Borough Engineer Christine Ballard said the borough is taking steps to improve pedestrian access.
“I actually [submitted] this year a Center of Place grant application focusing on the train station area and improving pedestrian access on Monmouth Street,” she said. “We are a walking community, why not embrace it and give it what it needs to succeed? I’m hoping to hear soon on the outcome on that grant.”
One of the roads discussed for a walking and bike route was Chestnut Street, for which the borough has already received two grants totaling $330,000, Ballard said.
“I actually have two grants for Chestnut Street,” she said. “It actually seems well timed that we are having this conversation now, because I have not started any designs to use the money.
“It takes a community to come together and come to the right solution that everybody could live with,” she added.
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