Five municipalities, including Voorhees Township, received grants to advance local bikeway projects.
The Murphy Administration today announced local aid grants totaling $1 million to help five municipalities advance bikeway projects that will improve quality of life without burdening local property tax payers.
Voorhees in Camden County received $160,000.
“The Department of Transportation does much more than just maintain roads and bridges,” NJDOT Acting Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti said. “Our local aid grants support a variety projects, including the bikeway program, which improves our communities and the quality of life of our residents by expanding bike opportunities on the county and municipal level.”
The Bikeway Grant Program is part of NJDOT’s local aid program funded through the State Transportation Trust Fund (TTF). The recent gas tax increase as part TTF renewal in 2016 more than doubled the overall amount of funds for local road and bridge safety improvement projects to $400 million — most of which goes to county and municipal aid. The Bikeway Grant Program provides $1 million in grants annually to counties and municipalities to promote bikeways as an alternate mode of transportation to support the state’s goal of achieving 1,000 new miles of dedicated bikeways in New Jersey. May is National Bike Month, which is sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists and celebrated in communities across the country.
Each municipality may submit one application, and each county may submit one countywide project application, as well. Projects are awarded on a competitive basis, taking into consideration new bike miles created, safety, connectivity, service to public, complete street policy and applicant’s past performance using other local aid funds. This year, NJDOT received 51 applications requesting $16.6 million.
The bikeway program, as well as other local aid state-funded grant programs, benefit residents by enabling local governments to significantly reduce or eliminate reliance on local property tax dollars to support their projects.
