Safe Streets JC Presents 10-Point Plan to Prioritize Safety in Mayor Solomon’s First 100 Days
JERSEY CITY, NJ, JANUARY 23, 2026 – Safe Streets JC announces a 10-point plan for prioritizing street safety as Jersey City Mayor James Solomon recommits to eliminating deaths and serious injuries caused by traffic violence.
“The new administration has a mandate to make our streets safer. We are encouraged by the reinstatement of a traffic division and recommitment to Vision Zero,” said Talya Schwartz, president of Safe Streets JC. “Six people were killed on Jersey City streets by vehicles last year, and many more were injured. No one should have to fear for their life when crossing a street, catching a bus, or riding a bike. Our plan offers a blueprint for immediate action on the most important safety issues that will save lives.”
Mayor Solomon and the city council members were elected on a clear mandate to improve safety conditions on city streets. On Day 1, Solomon announced a reinstated traffic division and recommitted the city to Vision Zero by appointing his Chief of Staff Laura Bustamante to lead the Vision Zero task force. Safe Streets JC applauds these announcements.
Jersey City residents should feel safe walking, riding, and driving. In order to truly achieve Vision Zero, we will need commitment, staffing, and funding. Here’s a list of 10 additional high-priority quick wins the new administration can put into place to show that they are serious about improving the situation on the ground.
1. Fully staff the infrastructure department with experts and build sustainable organizational capacity for a Vision Zero city
Without transportation planning experts committed to Vision Zero, the default for legacy traffic engineering practice has been to build roads solely focused around car capacity and speed without regard to safety for all road users. From stop signs to leading pedestrian intervals, many uncontroversial improvements are held up by lack of capacity to study, design, and communicate about potential changes. Hoboken, a mile-square city just one-fifth the size, has a similar transportation staff size to Jersey City, and on top of that, Jersey City has seen an exodus of transportation staff who have not been replaced.
2. Fund infrastructure improvements and parking availability with parking reform
Improvements can’t be made without staff, but they also can’t be made without funding.
Update the commercial parking tax. This commercial parking license tax of just $0.025 per square foot largely does not affect residents and has not been updated either for inflation or the increased demand for parking since the 1990s. Reflecting the decades of no increases, updating the fee to $0.10 per square foot could raise millions that Jersey City can use to fund rapid safe streets improvements. The fee should also be tied to future increases in inflation.
Direct parking enforcement to restore full pre-pandemic levels of parking enforcement. This must include restoring enforcement for parking meters, loading zones, permit parking, and booting and impounding scofflaw vehicles. Municipal court fees have declined by $6 million dollars since 2018 ($16.8 million in 2018 vs $10.9 million in 2024). This decline has been largely attributed to a decline in parking enforcement, leading to lost revenue for the city while letting dangerous behaviors run rampant.
Start an automated parking enforcement pilot on our busiest corridors. Hoboken’s recent pilot kept loading zones, bus stops, and bike lanes clear while generating substantial revenue to continue to make the city’s streets safer. This is a scalable way to deter illegal parking and will further fund the city.
Study permit parking reform to balance supply and demand, focusing especially on households’ second, third, or fourth vehicles parked essentially for free on the street. This will improve parking availability for residents while also providing more room for safe loading and unloading.
3. Announce and install hardened safety infrastructure at every killed and seriously injured (KSI) crash location from the last three years.
We recommend starting with Summit and Sip, Mallory and Communipaw, and Jersey Ave and 6th. Summit and Sip and Jersey and 6th both lack left-turn calming and were locations where two people were lost last year. Summit and Sip also has a raised intersection, but it appears to have settled with its slope barely noticeable and does not discourage unsafe turn speeds. Communipaw regularly sees unsafe speeds from drivers coming off of state highways.
4. City commitment to 20 mph speed limit and to non-distracted driving.
Speed kills and even at 30 mph, the survival rate for pedestrians can be as low as 50% vs around 95% at 20 mph and indeed vehicles traveling in the 30s have been involved in recent pedestrian deaths:
Provide a timeline to the commitment for rollout of the 20 mph speed limit
Ask all city employees who are not handling emergencies to obey a 20 mph limit effective immediately.
Announce that using a cell phone while driving will be a fireable offense and that JCPD will start enforcement of distracted driving.
5. Announce a new Street Safety Playbook.
All roadway resurfacing should incorporate the new safety playbook with hardened daylighting, leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs), left-turn calming and left-turn restrictions. These are known treatments that save lives. They should not require additional community input and should become the default on all new construction.
6. Reduce Turnpike cut-through traffic.
Restore bus-only left turns at Marin Boulevard and Christopher Columbus Drive, put up signs, and paint the lane red. This is one of the most dangerous pedestrian intersections in the city, receiving constant complaints over the last few years, and left-turns here only attract cut-through highway traffic.
Morning no-left turn restrictions on Columbus were effective at decreasing cut-through tunnel traffic. Left-turns are one of the most dangerous intersection behaviors and have been a theme in recent crashes. Study permanent restrictions and other locations where modal filters and turn restrictions can effectively calm neighborhoods and keep highway traffic on highways.
Work with the City Council to implement expanded permit parking zones that will discourage highway traffic that mis-uses city streets instead of commercial lots as free parking.
7. Buildout a fully staffed Traffic Enforcement Division
Transparently share numbers monthly and release all KSI crash reports to the press and public as soon as they are ready.
Provide e-ticketing devices and license plate readers for all patrol vehicles to increase automation and efficiency.
Create accountability for the parking enforcement division and direct them to reliably enforce illegal parking in crosswalks or daylighting areas, on sidewalks, at bus stops, in bike lanes, and address double parking around Journal Square, on Columbus, and along all bus corridors.
8. Announce new efforts to manage illegal truck parking
100 commercial loading zones. Commercial trucks and large vehicles are a recurring theme in serious crashes, but they often do not have safe places to park. Work with local businesses to create 100 new badly needed commercial loading zones throughout the city—particularly in front of all large buildings and in commercial zones.
High-visibility enforcement of all loading zones and metered parking to dramatically reduce corner parking, double parking, and bike-lane parking
A task force to come up with a micro-delivery hub pilot program to reduce truck traffic on neighborhood streets.
Ensure construction and utility projects do not block bike lanes without offering accommodation.
9. Get stuff done: Quick infrastructure improvements
Replace worn and destroyed traffic calming infrastructure and implement authorized infrastructure. Over the years, many intersections with traffic calming flexpost, bike racks, or even paint have been worn away or destroyed. These do not need new designs but simply need new equipment. Replace all broken and missing flexposts and install stop signs and no turn on red signs that were already authorized.
Paint missing crosswalks. Many intersections throughout the city are missing one leg or more. Paint the missing crosswalks such as at the Sip Avenue and Journal Square Transportation Center bus entrance, along Central Ave (Zabriskie, Ferry, Sherman), West Side Avenue (Roosevelt/Lexington), and many others. Many intersections for various reasons have only painted three legs of the intersection, leaving one of the crossings without crosswalk markings. High-visibility crosswalks are a simple and effective countermeasure in decreasing crash risk.
Utilize all incoming grants to the fullest extent on Monticello, Summit, Communipaw, and other projects. These projects need to be maximalist projects, including left-turn calming, LPIs, full daylighting, bioswales, raised sidewalks, improved bus stops, lighting, and bike lanes.
Advance shovel ready projects like the Franklin Street Protected Bike Lane.
10. Create a new city position: Safe Routes to School Coordinator.
A key daily danger for many families is the daily walk or bike to and from school. To address these dangers:
This new role would work with schools on creating safe conditions around the schools, identify improvements to drop off and pickups, recommend school streets, and provide support and education to the school community, especially about the benefits of walking and biking to school.
The coordinator would also work with collecting and addressing community input on dangers that families are facing on their journeys to school and that crossing guards are observing on a daily basis.
Media Inquiries
Colin DeVries
845-616-2269
colinmdevries@gmail.com