At metropolitan planning organizations such as the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), planning investments to support pedestrian trips for a large and diverse metropolitan area would be an intractable challenge without an open, coordinated, and cooperative approach and a strong information foundation. To address this challenge, NJTPA has adopted an innovative approach using regional analysis and priority setting to guide planning activity for a very local scale. The design and initial applications of this approach are described. Areas with proximity and connectivity features supporting pedestrian activity were identified using data available at the regional level. The data were analyzed within a pedestrian potential index (PPI) comprising four key indicators: population densities, employment densities, land use mix, and street network density, all analyzed at the census tract level. Thresholds were set to begin to find priority areas in which investment in pedestrian strategies would be more likely to generate a high return in terms of walking trips generated. The analysis also allows local planners to understand how their communities compare in relative levels of density, land use mix, and network connectivity. This information can help planners identify areas for planning activities that would address these factors and encourage walking trips. With the first results from application of the PPI, NJTPA has solicited feedback from state and local planning partners. With subsequent refinement, this analysis will be finalized for the region and incorporated in the next update of the NJTPA Regional Transportation Plan.

Phase 2 of New Jersey's bicycle and pedestrian master plan is an innovative approach to quantify bicycle and pedestrian needs at the statewide level. In cooperation with New Jersey's three metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the New Jersey Department of Transportation developed the new master plan to provide guidance to policy makers and project sponsors on the most promising locations for future bicycle and pedestrian investment. Bicycle and pedestrian priorities are identified along the two dimensions of supply and demand, that is, the suitability of facilities and the potential for nonmotorized trip making in specific locations. In addition, the project includes New Jersey's first statewide inventory of existing and proposed bicycle facilities and geographic information systems (GIS) data on trip attractors such as schools, commercial areas, and transit stations. Although the master plan uses existing analysis methods mainly, it is unique in the way that it combines these methods interdependently and in conjunction with facilities and trip attractor inventories at a statewide level. The inventories and analyses use GIS to create user-friendly tools and to display results. Final products include lists of priority bicycle corridors and pedestrian locations, which are reviewed within the collaborative MPO planning forum. The lists and analyses will be used as sketch-planning tools to evaluate the need for bicycle and pedestrian improvements to existing highway projects and to develop new bicycle and pedestrian projects. Bicycle and pedestrian analysis approaches, role of GIS, and future research needs are discussed in detail.

Innovative structuring of the decision-making process has allowed a large metropolitan planning organization, the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), to face the challenge of cooperatively developing a long-range transportation investment agenda in a complex and diverse region. The wide range of applicable geographic scales is a problem when exploring alternative strategies in such a region, so a single, multiscaled, technically based planning analysis was designed and conducted to unify decision makers around a comprehensive set of performance goals and the estimated potential effects of all reasonable actions. The analysis, built within an accelerated 10-month time frame under federal scrutiny, relied on participation by elected officials, planners, engineers, and regional stakeholders. It produced a full regionwide identification of long-term performance needs and an exhaustive assessment and prioritization of location-specific strategies. NJTPA applied this prioritization to select strategies to update its long-range transportation plan and to develop specific immediate guidance for implementation agencies.

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