The much-anticipated New Jersey-wide Bicycle-Pedestrian Master Plan update was not released at April’s big TransAction conference, but NJ DOT still says it will be out soon.

We hope the plan has some vision and a clear action plan for getting there; the consultants and others’ recitation at TransAction of their modeling exercises in preparing the document was less than exciting. We question whether combining an over-complicated and bureaucratized "bicycle demand model" and a "bicycle compatibility index" will lead to common-sense priorities for installing bike lanes and paths.

For the pedestrian analysis, the planners and modelers picked a "crossability index" and "barrier analysis" to find gaps in the traffic where the volume is low enough and the lanes few enough that there are crossable segments of road. That seems like a highway planners’ approach to where to install pedestrian facilities, especially when talking to citizens local elected and police officials can serve as very direct ways to locate danger spots. Ironically, the authors cautioned that the work product is not a design manual, will not generate locations for bike or ped projects, and is not a substitute for project-specific analysis. How then does it advance the cause? Concrete suggestions from the audience included the need to add county roads, enrich the database, publish more bike maps, train local engineers, put more money on the street via Local Aid and address seasonal peaks in bike-ped traffic (especially at the shore). v