Bicycle & Pedestrian Programs

Our goal is to promote safe walking and cycling as a means of healthy transportation for people especially children and to reduce traffic congestion, and air pollution.

We are funded by New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), and Highway Traffic Safety (HTS). The services are provided at no cost to you.

EZ Ride’s Bike & Ped Team covers Monmouth County, Bergen County, Union County and the urban areas of Passaic County and Essex County. Click here to see a chart listing the towns we and other TMAs cover: http://www.saferoutesnj.org/about/regional-coordinator-tmas/

Call us at 201-939-4242 ext. 5. We can help you with bike and pedestrian safety presentations, poster contests, bike rodeos, and other events to encourage walking and biking.

The prizes we usually offer are a bike bell, helmet, reflective string bag, or bike lights.

We can work with student groups of all sizes. For larger groups, we suggest setting up multiple presentations and/or events and splitting students by age and /or grade.

In a grade K-8 school, we usually group K-3 and 4-8 students. Another option is assemblies for K-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8 for large groups of students.  We want to make our presentations as effective as possible. Our material is age appropriate. For young students, we focus on walking safely and for older students, we focus on the dangers of distracted pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers.

Grades 3 and up.

Approximately 30 minutes. EZ Ride’s interactive presentations involve the audience and typically consist of a video clip, PowerPoint presentation, and walking demonstration.

We request you to provide speakers, video projector, screen, microphones, and a laptop with Microsoft PowerPoint. We show a short video that needs sound and we prefer PowerPoint for our visual presentation. If you do not have the equipment, please let us know.  

For school groups, EZ Ride provides colorful safety bookmarks and bilingual ( English/Spanish) letters for parents that summarize the presentation content.

A walk/bike audit assesses how walkable/accessible an area is for pedestrians or cyclists. It is conducted in the area around a gr K-8 school neighborhood after school to consider the needs of pedestrians and cyclists and recommend infrastructure changes.  A community task force team is needed to conduct the audit.  The assessment forms we use are:

http://saferoutesnj.org/documents/walk_assessment.pdf

http://saferoutesnj.org/documents/bike_assessment.pdf

Check out the following NJ SRTS videos for information about a walk audit and a bike audit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc20KKFIh58&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEmJ3yNz_dg

A school travel plan is a report that we can help you develop based on a community task force’s observations from a walk or bike audit. Typically, it contains six components: 1) School Description, 2) Working Groups & Partnerships, 3)Map Your School Neighborhood, 4)Walk/Bike Barriers & Opportunities, 5) Goals & Actions, & 6) Evaluation. Click here to learn more: http://www.saferoutesnj.org/resources/stp/

Yes, we have presentations geared to high school and college groups.  We have grants to work with all age groups: preschool students, seniors, summer camps, scout groups and more.  

EZ Ride can provide a limited number of free youth helmets for those who do not have a helmet and are present to be fitted at your school or community on-bike event. We only have helmets sized for toddlers to youth extra large.

A bike rodeo or a  safe skills biking course is a safety event that allows students to practice basic bike skills in a safe space. It includes a pre-ride safety check, helmet fitting, bicycle handling, safety drills, and instructions on how to ride in traffic.  We suggest you start with a Bike Safety Presentation and then schedule a bike rodeo. The bike rodeo is designed for children who know how to ride a bike and are in grades 3 and up.

You need to provide a safe paved space such as an empty parking lot or work with your police to close a street. Students need to bring their own bikes to the rodeo.

A walking school bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults. It can be as informal as two families taking turns walking their children to school or as structured as a planned route with meeting points, a timetable and a schedule of trained and background-checked volunteers.

Yes. We have a toolkit to help you start your own WSB with suggested forms for parent consent, student registration, volunteer application, attendance, policies, responsibilities, student pledge/rules and more.

Schools and municipalities who participate in the SRTS program will receive a framed certificate according to their level of accomplishment.  Schools who achieve the Gold level will receive a Walk/Bike to School Day Flag/Banner which they can display at their school or use for Walk or Bike to school day events.

There are four levels of SRTS Recognition for Schools and Municipalities: First Step, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. EZ Ride can help your school or municipality to meet the criteria and can nominate you for an award. All requirements must be met by January 31st every year.  For more information, please visit http://www.saferoutesnj.org/levels/

The benefits include:
1. State recognition on the saferoutesnj.org website

2. Schools and municipalities can earn certification points when applying for the Sustainable Jersey Grants program.

3. Award winners are invited to EZ Ride’s annual Recognition luncheon (no cost to you) and are recognized and presented a certificate.  Gold school winners will receive a Walk to School day banner/flag.

StreetSmart is a free education and enforcement campaign for pedestrians and drivers. It uses marketing, community education and enforcement to reinforce these five messages: Stop for Pedestrians, Obey Speed Limits, Use Crosswalks, Wait for the Walk, Heads Up & Phones Down.  EZ Ride can connect you to the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) and work with your police department to develop plans to support a Street Smart campaign.

A bicycle locker or bike box is a locker or box in which up to 2 bicycles can be placed and locked. They are usually provided at places where numerous cyclists need bike parking for extended times, and where the bikes might otherwise get damaged or stolen.

We manage the bike lockers at the train stations of Cranford, Rahway, Roselle Park, Summit, Maplewood, and Westfield. A bike locker costs $7.50 per month with 7% tax. You need to pay a key deposit of $50 which is refundable if the key is returned. Renting a bike locker for 6 months costs $98.15 and we bill you twice a year in January and July. For more information call 201-939-4242, ext. 5.

Complete Streets is a transportation policy that a municipality can adopt to ensure that their city streets are designed to be used for all users including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities. For more info click, here: http://njbikeped.org/services/what-is-a-complete-streets-policy/

The SRTS program is affiliated with Sustainable Jersey.  If your school or municipality achieves certain levels of the SRTS recognition program, you win Sustainable Jersey certification points that can help you as you apply for Sustainable Jersey grants. For more info on Sustainable Jersey for schools or municipalities, see these two sites:  

http://www.sustainablejerseyschools.com/grants-resources/sustainable-jersey-for-schools-grants-program/

http://www.sustainablejersey.com/certification/why-get-certified/