Politics & Government

Morristown Gets $120K Safe Routes to School Grant

NJDOT-funded grant to go toward traffic calming for students going to Sussex Avenue School from the Cutler Park neighborhood.

Morristown is among the recipients of a Safe Routes to School grant, the New Jersey Department of Transportation announced Monday.

The town's grant of $120,000 will be used to implement a safe walking program on Sussex Avenue. It would provide the funds for installing "traffic calming" measures for students walking to Sussex Avenue School from the nearby Cutler Park neighborhood. It is part of a $5.7 million federally-funded Safe Routes to School package benefiting 25 municipalities.

Councilman Stefan Armington, a bicycle and pedestrian advocate that pushed for the grant, said he was surprised and pleased when he heard the town received it on Monday.

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"I had been waiting for this since last summer, though I never knew if Morristown was on the list," he said. "As proposed, the grant would fund speed humps and/or tables on some streets, raised crosswalks on others and an intersection bump out at Lake Road and Sussex."

The town will now need to work with the county, Armington said, "to see if an appropriate design can actually work at Lake Road, given the steep grades. And we’ll have to go door-to-door to make sure a majority of the residents still want these elements on their streets."

Find out what's happening in Morristownwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Safe Routes to School grants announcement was in addition to 10 state-funded Local Aid Infrastructure Fund grants totaling $1.1 million for emergency road repairs, including nearly $76,000 to Morristown for Hurricane Irene-related emergency repairs to Cory Road and nearly $26,000 to Morris Township for Lake Valley Road bank stabilization, also following Hurricane Irene in 2011.

The Safe Routes to School grants are awarded on a competitive basis. The 25 grants announced Monday will be provided to the recipients as their projects advance.

Complete lists of the recipients and grant amounts for the Local Aid Infrastructure Fund grants, the Hurricane Irene-related LAIF grants and the Safe Routes to School grants are available on the NJDOT website.


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