The draft proposal uses ITE auto trip generation rates based upon generic land use types that do not distinguish between existing land use densities or prevalence of travel modes -- whether a community is dispersed or compact or whether transit, walking or bicycling are commonly used. Street, sidewalk and parking treatments view the car as the only possible vehicle of personal travel. Sidewalks are set at the too-narrow four foot width, and only on one side of streets, even where development is very dense. Greater widths are justified only where "necessary" near "pedestrian generators" and employment centers. Comprehensive and continuous sidewalk networks, linking origins to major destinations, are completely missing. The 40-50 foot standards for street widths will encourage cars to travel at high speeds through residential subdivisions, rejecting emerging, safer standards for street widths such as Portland's "skinny streets" and Boulder's "queuing streets." Traffic-calming devices seem to be disallowed altogether. The standards provide no guidance on where bicycle lanes (also four feet) are appropriate, and they can be required only where already specified in an adopted municipal master plan. Moreover, a proposed "waiver" process would become a free-for-all administered by engineers in Trenton.

Governor Whitman shouldn't blithely inherit this mess and endorse it. Sources claim one sprawl-promoting residential developer is behind the standards. The same developer has also tried to scuttle an improved, alternative bill introduced in the Legislature by Assemblymen Pascrell and Arnone (A.2388) that sticks to pure engineering standards.