Save Prospect Street Parking!
Petition: Support Safe Streets—Without Eliminating Prospect Street Parking

Dear Prospect Street neighbors,

The Township of Maplewood has proposed installing bike lanes on Prospect Street. Under the current plan:
• Nearly all on-street parking on the north side of Springfield Avenue would be eliminated, with only a few small sections remaining.
• Parking would be restricted to one side of Prospect Street south of Springfield

We urge the Township Committee to reject the current plan and consider alternatives.

(View the plan: https://www.maplewoodnj.gov/ProspectBikeLanes)

Our shared concerns
We support safe conditions for bicyclists, but this plan appears to prioritize a design with, at best, limited safety gains—possibly giving bikers a false sense of safety—while creating significant, immediate, and long-lasting disruption for residents, visitors, and essential services due to the removal of parking.

Parking and neighborhood impact
Many homes have narrow or small driveways, making on-street parking a daily necessity—not a convenience. Residents, visitors, delivery drivers, and tradespeople all rely heavily on street parking to access homes safely and efficiently.
Eliminating parking on large portions of Prospect Street will not reduce demand—it will simply push vehicles onto already limited surrounding streets, increasing congestion, reducing accessibility, and making everyday activities more difficult, particularly given the long Prospect block lengths.

School traffic and safety
Tuscan Elementary School drop-off and pickup already create heavy congestion. Removing parking will likely worsen circulation, increase double-parking, and create more unpredictable and potentially unsafe conditions during peak hours.

Location-specific safety concerns
Various issues remain unresolved in the current proposal and raise legitimate concerns about feasibility and safety, including adequate safety at the sharp curve at Summer and Prospect, which presents particular challenges. Existing curb extensions (“bump-outs”) may also conflict with or obstruct a continuous bike lane design.

Enforcement and design concerns
Unprotected bike lanes can be subject to encroachment from passing cars and may be frequently blocked by vehicles parking in no-parking lanes. Enforcement will be difficult and inconsistent. Though national data (https://bit.ly/4uwJ59X) shows that bike lanes generally can improve safety, some research (http://bit.ly/4utst2P) suggests that particularly in some specific instances paint-only bike lanes and sharrows of the type proposed by the Prospect Street plan may not improve—and in certain conditions may even worsen—safety outcomes. If physical barriers or delineator posts are added on Prospect Street, however, they will significantly and permanently alter the residential character of the street, essentially turning it into a highway.

Act now: Sign the petition
This proposal will have immediate and lasting consequences for daily life on Prospect Street. If you have concerns about the plan as currently designed, your voice matters. (Note: the request for a donation you see after signing is for iPetitions, which operates on donations -- it is not a donation for this petition.)