Minutes from the
April 15th 2004
Meeting Attendees: Roger Alig, Ken Carlson, Meg Chico, Susan Conlon,
Bruce Ellsworth,
Web site: http://www.princetonol.com/groups/bikeped/
Grants
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Safe Routes Grant- Meg informed the group that the Safe Routes Grant applications have not
yet been sent out to local Municipalities.
The highest grant award last year was $55,000 and apparently Mercer was
under-represented among recent grant recipients. Meg intends to use the Sidewalk Priorities in
the Grant application and it was discussed that we should also reference the Orth-Rodgers report.
It was suggested that we should also consider applying for T-21 funding
in the fall for pedestrian projects.
Alison mentioned that we should keep the new WW Business Administrator,
Chris Marion, informed of our plans.
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Alternative funding ideas- Susan threw out two ideas for alternative funding. One was to consider ideas for raising money
for bike/ped projects in town. The other was to consider a tax for
sidewalk/bike projects, much like the Open Space Tax.
Sidewalks
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April 1st
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http://www.pacpub.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11250482&BRD=1091&PAG=461&dept_id=346950&rfi=8
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Sidewalk Prioritization- Most
of the meeting was focused on the Sidewalk Prioritization process. This process was initiated by Susan with help
from Ken C and Alison. The immediate
goal of this process is to provide Orth-Rodgers with
a list of top sidewalk project priorities for inclusion in their
bike/pedestrian plan for the township. In the longer term, the prioritization
will be used by the Task Force to help us decide on project priorities. Ken and Susan presented on the process. The objective was to review the existing
sidewalk inventory and produce a first series of recommended improvement
locations and to evaluate and identify routes that lead and connect to key
destinations (generators) in the township.
Using aerial photographs of the township, maps were generated that
placed each generator in the center of the photograph. Superimposed on the
streets in the maps was the color coded sidewalk inventory, showing which
streets have sidewalks on one side of the street, both sides of the streets, or
neither side. Radiating out from the generator were ½ mile and 1 mile radii.
Within each map, key pedestrian routes (existing or potential) to the
generators were identified. A sidewalk
project ranking was created in Excel by scoring pedestrian routes for distance
to generator (2 points for within a ½ mile; 1 point for within 1 mile) and
sidewalk status of route (2 points for no sidewalks, 1 point for 1 sidewalk).
Routes that appear in multiple generators score higher (points for a route from
each generator are added together). 72 routes were evaluated over 15
generators. Members of the Task Force
present at the meeting discussed the rankings, and taking into account the absolute
scores of the routes and attempting to include geographic diversity, the top 15
sidewalk projects were selected:
It was difficult to limit the choice to the top 15 projects, but it was
felt that 15 was a reasonable number for Orth-Rodgers
to utilize in their report. There
are many other projects to be considered beyond these initial fifteen. It was
discussed that the Task Force will continue to maintain and update the sidewalk
project database to index projects for future consideration. Susan also presented on a crosswalk project
ranking, conducted similarly to the sidewalk prioritization process. The top 16 crosswalk projects were:
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Canal
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Canal
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571
and
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571
and
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571
and Wallace/
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