Hi everyone,

We have some potentially promising news for pedestrian safety in all of Berkeley Heights, going beyond our original requests for Park Avenue! However, we need to make our voices heard again to ensure this happens and that we prevent more terrible crashes in the future. 

A group of residents, including myself, has been working to have Berkeley Heights establish a Pedestrian Safety Task Force to help make the entire town more walkable and bikable. The goal is to make our roads and walkways safer for ALL—especially our kids and our other most vulnerable users—and this includes making travel through town safer and more efficient for drivers.

The town council is considering a resolution to formally establish this task force. We were hoping it would be passed July 23, when it was placed on the agenda, but it was pulled the day of the meeting for further discussion in a conference session at the August meeting.  We really need to get this off the ground quickly so that we can get some more educational efforts ready before school starts and apply for a grant with an August deadline to fund this work. 

If you’d like to support this work, please send a quick email our council members. Share a bit of your personal story—have you had any accidents or close calls? Do you live in an area where you feel you can’t walk safely?—and ask them to vote for the task force.

Here is a link to the resolution ( #4 on the agenda):

https://www.berkeleyheights.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/208?fileID=5039

And here are the Town Council emails:

Manuel Couto mcouto@bhtwp.com

John Foster jfoster@bhtwp.com

Paul Donnelly pdonnelly@bhtwp.com

Susan Poage spoage@bhtwp.com

Margaret Illis millis@bhtwp.com

Bill Machado bmachado@bhtwp.com

Mayor Angie Devanney adevanney@bhtwp.com

Thank you so much for your help! We can get this done if we work together!

Dana Nigro

If you want to learn more, keep reading…

A few more key points about the task force effort. We want to:

Collect community input from throughout town to be sure everyone is represented.

Work collaboratively with all relevant town departments and with local business, civic and volunteer organizations.

Be transparent about the process and our recommendations.

Be sure safety recommendations are applied consistently and throughout all areas of town.

Encourage voluntary cooperation by residents, to have people want to do the right thing and understand why.

Fund the work with grants.

And here are some great things Berkeley Heights has been doing recently as examples of the type of work a volunteer task force could assist with:

The police department kicked off an electric scooter and e-bike safety campaign before the end of the school year, which has continued through summer and will be shared again before the start of the new school year.

The town received $1.27 million in Safe Routes to Schools grant funding for sidewalk improvements on Mountain Ave.

The town is applying for a NJ DOT Safe Routes to Transit grant for a Downtown Greenway to connect Springfield Avenue and the west end of town with the NJTransit train station.

If you have questions:
You can email me at dnigrobh@gmail.com