Greater New Brunswick Transportation Study
What is it?
The Greater New Brunswick Transportation Study examined the transportation challenges of the New Brunswick region and performed a high-level assessment of possible transit solutions that could address some of these challenges. The study is a data-driven evaluation of potential improvements that could improve local mobility in an area that experiences high levels of traffic congestion.
The study investigated opportunities and assessed the feasibility of a new transitway and new transit services, as well as improvements to existing transit services. A variety of transit modes were considered to identify innovative, high-quality solutions for the Greater New Brunswick region.
The Summary of Conceptual Transit Opportunities Report can be downloaded here.
What is the study area?
The study area included the City of New Brunswick and surrounding communities in both Middlesex and Somerset counties (Map 1).
What corridors were evaluated?
After an in-depth study of the area’s existing transit services, demographics, land use, patterns, transportation network and physical conditions, the Project Team performed a market assessment to understand existing and projected travel demand. The largest travel flows were found between Bridgewater Township and Somerville, Downtown New Brunswick and the Rutgers Busch Campus, Downtown New Brunswick and East Franklin, and Downtown New Brunswick and the Rutgers Cook-Douglass Campus (Map 2).
The Project Team evaluated the corridors that connect these large travel markets (Map 3). The team established screening criteria, based on factors that create effective transit and local stakeholder input, to evaluate the corridors. By screening for factors such as access and connection to other transit services, current and future population and employment density, connection to regional destinations, first and last mile connectivity, and transit propensity of the population, the Project Team was able to compare corridors against one another using common metrics and determine which corridors could be further developed into transit routes.
What are the recommendations?
The Project Team utilized the identified corridors and previous analyses to develop potential service options for future improvements to the transit system in GNB. In some cases, corridors that were previously analyzed separately were combined to create more robust service options. The options included the development of service concepts for new and modified local bus service and the potential for BRT and LRT applications, as shown in Map 4. The recommendations are operator-agnostic and assume that any of the potential services could be provided by NJ TRANSIT or a local or private entity. The services identified by this study are concept level only and would require further analysis, design, and coordination with stakeholders prior to implementation.
Project materials
Download the Greater New Brunswick Transportation Study Kickoff Presentation here.
Download the Greater New Brunswick Transportation Draft Corridor Concept Presentation here
Download the Greater New Brunswick Transportation Corridor Recommendations Presentation here
Download the Greater New Brunswick Transportation Summary of Conceptual Transit Opportunities Report here