Brand new bike lane installed on Fulton Avenue between Ocean and Garfield in Jersey City
Jersey City’s new Mayor Steven Fulop is making good on the implementation of new bike facilities announced by his predecessor!
In December 2012, Jersey City officials announced that the city would implement 54.7 miles of on-street bike facilities, including 35.2 miles of bike lanes and 19.5 miles of sharrowed bike routes. The 2012 press release listed nine street segments that were on the repaving list for summer 2013. These streets would receive bike facilities during the repaving process, theoretically starting in June 2013. The initial bike facility segments are shown in Google maps here.
Then there was this little matter of an election in between. A new bicycling mayor, Stephen Fulop, won. The summer repaving came and went with no new bike facilities. It would have been very easy for Fulop to make excuses, such as “that’s what the last guy promised” or “it got lost in the transition shuffle.” But, thankfully, Fulop has stepped up and promised to make good on implementing Jersey City’s bike plan beginning in September 2013. September saw slow progress – only partial implementation of sharrows on Old Bergen Road.
This week Jersey City took a few more promising steps forward on bike facility implementation: new bike lanes on Fulton Avenue and Woodlawn Avenue! These are the first new Jersey City bike lanes in 2013; also the first bike lanes completed by the Fulop administration. This actually doubles the number of Jersey City streets with bike lanes; the total went from two to four. Through mid-October 2013, Jersey City had only two bike lanes – on Lincoln Park and on Grove Street.
Fulton and Woodlawn were included in the list of bike plan streets due for 2013 re-paving. They were repaved during summer 2013. In late October they received new bike lanes. The two one-way streets form a couplet. Only the recently repaved blocks of the streets received bike lanes, so the overall couplet isn’t quite complete, but the new bike lanes are already in use. It’s great to encounter brand new thermoplastic bike lane striping! The city’s prompt follow-through on installing these bodes well for continued implementation. Fulop has pledged to implement a total 60+mile on-street network by mid-2014.
New Fulton Avenue bike lane at Bergen Avenue
The new Fulton Avenue bike lane is currently in two segments, both one-way westbound: a 0.2-mile bike lane from Garfield Avenue to Ocean Avenue and a 0.1-mile bike lane from Martin Luther King Jr Drive to Bergen Avenue.
Jersey City’s new bike lane on Woodlawn Avenue near West Side Avenue
The Woodlawn Avenue bike lane is one-way eastbound. It extends from 0.4-mile from West Side Avenue to John F Kennedy Blvd. In the overall bike plan, to be implemented by mid-2014, both bike lanes in the Fulton-Woodlawn couplet will extend all the way from Garfield Avenue to West Side Avenue.
Jersey City has also been getting going on installing sharrows on some bike route streets. Bikas previously reported the half-completed sharrows on Old Bergen Road. Recently the city partially installed sharrows on two additional streets, both part of the summer 2013 repaving group:
Sharrows underway on Bergen Avenue
Partial sharrows are now on Bergen Avenue, from Montgomery to Communipaw.
Sharrows underway on Bowers Street
Partial sharrows are also on Bowers Street, from Central to JFK.
Bikas applauds Mayor Fulop for the latest progress, and looks forward to the full bikeway network emerging!
B.I.K.A.S. 
dave paco Abraham
11/05/2013
Sounds excellent. I’m hopeful the lanes will increase throughout the neighborhood and help connect better to others in Jersey… and all the way into New York via the Harbor Ring Route. http://harborring.org/harbor-ring-map/map-2/