Recently, an idea was put forth to redo Grove Street, in Haddonfield, NJ.

Haddonfield designed the project for Grove Street, offering a design to add bike lanes, or to add a center median. The county has chosen the median, stating that the scope of the project is limited to “beautification and traffic calming”. This is a mistake.

Haddonfield, and all of Camden County, has a unique position in the bicycling world. Located next to one of the most bike friendly cities in America,(Philadelphia has the most bicycle commuters per capita of any US city),as well as offering great public transportation to and from the city, it has great potential to take the increasing support of biking as a form of transportation and become an example of how smaller communities can also benefit from biking. Biking not only allows residents a healthy form of transportation, but bike lanes and bike friendly streets have been proven to increase sales in local businesses. By pushing to build biking infrastructure now, you will be ahead of the curve as biking continues to rise in popularity as an alternative form of transportation.

We understand the need to calm traffic on Grove Street, as it is an arterial road from Route 70, however we believe that bike lanes are an effective way to achieve this goal. They will not only help to calm traffic, but it will make the street safer for bikers and pedestrians using the trails. It is also our understanding that Camden County has a Complete Streets policy, and that forgoing bike lanes would contradict this important policy.

The most interesting thing about the project is lack of accordance with Camden County’s new Complete Streets Policy. In short, a complete street policy is a resolution to “provide safe and accessible accommodations for existing and future pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit facilities”. Many cities and counties across the country are adopting these policies as a way to encouraging alternate forms of transportation. The decision to build a center median goes against this policy, first by ignoring the option to build bike lanes, and then again by creating a street that actually makes the road less bike-able than it currently is!

Please let Camden County know that you want bike lanes!