Achievements and Findings

Highlights of the Forum's Achievements

East-West Access

A regional east-west corridor, CR 571, is likely to get the transit services the municipalities along it desire in part from the efforts of the Forum. The Forum's efforts also helped get a corridor study underway by DVRPC and a Congestion and Accident Mitigation Program analysis of a high crash intersection. These came about in part because of the Forum's east-west existing corridors task. This task develops a package of multimodal improvements coordinated with land use planning that help each municipality realize its goals, are agreeable to neighboring municipalities, and maximize east-west flows. The next east-west corridor will be CR 518 in Hopewell Township and Borough, Montgomery, Rocky Hill, and Franklin.
Small-scale unfunded projects were requested from the 21 municipalities and participating counties, evaluated, and a subset endorsed for action. These doable projects will cumulatively improve east-west access. This was the second round of action for the Database of Transportation Problems and Projects.
Local best practices and information on each municipality's circulation element are highlighted in a working paper to facilitate communication. Summary maps for five municipalities were prepared and added to the updated Forum Atlas, with more coming.
Provided modeling information for the SR 92, Penns Neck Improvements, and BRT projects.

Transit

Endorsed the BRT study results and helped advance next steps including transportation and land use actions municipalities and others can undertake for the BRT to be successful, made it easier for results to enter the TIP, and investigated innovative funding options.
The Forum was instrumental in starting the Route 1 BRT Study, provided support throughout it, and distributing the results.

Land Use

Facilitated coordination of related studies and projects (on-going), including through mapping land use and transportation studies along US 1 and integrating this work with the Planned Projects Status Report that comes out every other meeting.
Helped pass Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) legislation

System-wide Planning

Coordinated with the NJDOT Route 1 Regional Growth Strategy (on-going) and the NJ Office of Economic Growth Planning Through Partnerships Project to develop a next generation of major transportation projects and key land use changes for smart growth
Communicated with the Governor and legislators advocating programs to benefit Forum members (on-going). This includes press releases on reauthorization of the Transportation Trust Fund (2006), letters for property tax reform and Transportation Trust Fund reauthorization (2004), and a proposal for enhanced regional planning (2003).