Hi everyone! Welcome to Hoboken! So I'm Tom, I am Amy's husband. We both live in New Jersey and we find it really nice to bike over here. So as a part of the Vision Zero Cities Conference we thought it would be a really great idea to showcase some of the cool stuff happening on this side of the Hudson River. We're going to see a lot of different types of projects, whether it's pedestrian safety focused or bike focused or place making or green infrastructure. We're very fortunate to have gone over five years without a single traffic death in Hoboken. And you know, there's a lot of work still to be done. We know that can change at any time. So we're making sure that we're not putting our pencils down and being happy with that progress. This section right here used to be parking. There's so much traffic here. When I say traffic I mean mostly pedestrian traffic, people pushing strollers, people on bikes, jogger, that during peak periods in the evening when there's nice weather or on Saturday mornings, people will spill into the travel lane because there's no space. So we took out parking here for one weekend. We did it as a quick build pilot. We put up a little poster here people could use a QR code or a website to vote on whether they liked it. They didn't like it. They want to keep it permanently or just during weekends or the summer received hundreds of hundreds of responses. And overwhelmingly, I think it was like 75 or 80% of people wanted to be permanent. One thing we're proud of is our relationship with Hudson County. And actually want to county road right now, Hudson Street. Up there is Hudson Street and 14th Street. So the county is upgrading the traffic signals there right now. And because we have a complete streets program, they've agreed to also build curb extensions into that project. You were able to wash on 14 and Hudson where we had a traffic signal upgrade as part of that project. They also included four bump ups that are rain gardens. So green infrastructure, drainage improvements, street scape and pedestrian safety improvements all along. I love the day lighting. I live in a neighborhood up in the heights where they had none of it. And it was literally terrifying to try and cross the street. Because you would inch out to try and see and then the traffic was going so fast. It's a stark difference walking from Hobo and going just steps up the hill to the heights. They don't stop for pedestrians up there. The trash is a big problem. But they're fixing it. You know, little by little. Now we're getting day lighting up there and it makes a huge difference. They do a lot of that here. This town is very good about bump outs and the one like pedestrian treatments in general. So right now we are on a fairly new curb extension. It's really large because of the angled parking that we have here around 2013 where we are right now was a painted curb extensions. I had vertical delineator posts around the edge. Same thing for that corner over there. We partnered with the county. We got them to pay for upgrading those curb extensions that were painted to the concrete that you see today. There's so many curb extensions in Hobo again. Every time they redo an intersection basically they put one in. They're just everywhere. We literally saw them being built as we passed by. It was amazing. New Jersey law is that you can't park within 25 feet of an intersection and they actually enforce it and everyone follows the rules. We have the same law in New York State but New York City DOT has just decided we don't follow the rules. This is an intersection of 4th and Garden Street. That's an elementary school and a park. And so again this is somewhere where we prioritize a more significant pedestrian safety set of investments because of the proximity that we have here to these two different land uses that attract most vulnerable people in our community. The most significant investment right here on the school corner which is the curb extension rain gardens. Then we have a bike corral which is probably the cheapest one right across the street. The plan is that every time we mail and pay the road it's not just black top. It's also looking at all the users. The ADA ramps can we include complete streets, bike lanes in every intersection where we can. We add a bomb bow if we can make it work with attorney rate itself. It's a observer highway right here. It's the main arterial into the southern part of Hoboken. Before 2015 this was a four lane undivided highway with an adjacent service road. It was very hostile to any other form of transportation other than cars. We ended up making this a road diet. So now we have two lanes one lane and each direction with center turn lane and a two way protected bikeway and the brown section here is a pedestrian walkway. Before the four lanes undivided that's what we've got everywhere and that's where people are dying. If you had something like this you totally changed the game. And then typically what Hoboken kind of pioneered and now Jersey City is adopted is then we upgraded to what's called a Durabland product. It's a polymer slurry cement. It's applied by hand. It's a very manual process. It's a little more expensive but as a lot of people had mentioned it's definitely a high friction surface. It's safer when it's wet and it lasts a really long time. So since 2019 by the end of this year Jersey City will have installed over 15 miles of protected bike lanes in a very short time. We're going to get to see a lot of it today. Different kinds of barrier elements whether that's starting with delineators then moving on to a product we call tough curb and then Jersey barriers as well. So we really are experimenting with it all. So this year Jersey City installed over one mile of Jersey barriers along all our protected bike lanes. Wherever there's not parking adjacent to it it's an important goal of the city to provide as much protection for cyclists as possible. Yeah no one no one's hitting me in their big old 4 to 3.50 when I'm in a lane with the Jersey barrier right. It really makes a huge difference and not all of them started that way. In fact almost none of them started that way. They started with just the the flat's posts and those you know are okay on certain certain contexts but many of the roads where we have the protected bike lanes they're they're pretty scary without that hardening. So those have really opened up the the bike lane network to folks who might not otherwise have bike on those streets because they're a lot more comfortable now. This was the first location where we piloted the use of tough curb have definitely learned a lot about the pros and cons of it. We're still experimenting with the right amount of spacing. They're putting in the tough curbs where there's deflects post but they're on a bottom that's like little armadillos along the ground. So they're hardening that up to even where they don't have the Jersey barrier. Grand Street was a four lane section much like observer highway and a road diet was implemented leaving space for protected bike lanes but also here we had the opportunity to pilot some protected intersections. So they're a safer way for cyclists to be able to make left turns through the intersection give cyclists a space to queue while they're waiting for the green light to proceed through the intersection. So what might be fun here is if like groups of small groups of five or ten want to kind of just go through the protected intersection and just keep going in circles it could be a could be a fun filming opportunity. Grove Street which was the first protected bike lane that the city ever installed in 2019 it runs along our city hall. This is one of the streets that we have now gone back on with some Enduro Blend to upgrade again to that longer lasting higher durability higher more friction resistant surface. So just this past summer we upgraded the Washington Avenue bike lanes which are already super wide to have an Enduro Blend highly durable surface as well as Jersey concrete barriers along the entire stretch. This is nice this is yeah they did say they upgraded this right. York doesn't have anything like that as far as the protection and the thickness of it and the quality of the surface. Do you mean like this exactly look at this this is something expect on an interstate highway not on an urban bike lane. In the next month or two before it gets cold there's going to be several more lanes going in as we just learned on this tour. So we're super excited and we've already heard their drawing up their wish list for 2023. The New York app pedestrian plaza was started in 2015. Basically the city just put up some barriers and planters and close the street to cars. Had some leftover tennis court green paint and basically dumped that on the street fast forward to 2019 the city started design project for the full design permanent installation of the New York app pedestrian plaza. Construction was just finished this summer and the ribbon was cut and now you'll get to experience what's really become a great pedestrian public space. So connections between Hoboken and Jersey City are strong. However they're not safe everywhere. There's only five streets that connect the two cities even though we are have contiguous borders. Marin Boulevard is one of those main streets. It has no bicycle facilities and hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists use it every day to get between our transit hubs. But starting next week on Tuesday we're going to be installing protected bike lanes on Marin Boulevard.