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2006
December 2006
The New Jersey Department of Transportation has awarded the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center a $15,000 contract to study New Jersey’s system of public and private heliports. The research, which will be conducted by Director Martin E. Robins and Ph.D. student Robert Checchio, will study the effectiveness of the current state policy of managing these aeronautical resources in meeting the needs of business and personal travelers.
November 2006
The Dodge Foundation awarded the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment $20,000 for the initial phase of a project in the New Jersey Highlands. The goal of this first phase is to develop a dialogue between NJDEP and the Highlands Council on the use of green building and other innovative technologies to address water quality issues associated with failing septic systems in the Highlands Preservation Area. If successful, the result would be an MOA between them that would provide a platform for expanding the use of these concepts into new development that is now severely restricted because of water quality concerns in more than half of the Highlands region.
November 2006
The American Planning Association has just published a new Planning Advisory Service report coauthored by Center for Government Services Director Stuart Meck titled An Economic Development Toolbox: Strategies and Methods, PAS Report No. 541. The report also cites publications of various Rutgers faculty members (among them Greenberg, Burchell, Listokin, and Krueckeberg).The report is especially suitable for teaching economic development to graduate students, or for training local officials. Click here for site.
July 2006
The Center for Government Services has launched its new Planning and Zoning Resource Center providing local officials easy online access to state laws, regulations and other documents they need to perform their work. The Resource Center was created in response to a state law requiring training for all municipal planning and zoning board of adjustment members. To visit the Resource Center, click here.
July 2006
The Federal Transit Administration awarded the National Transit Institute a $4,257,000 grant for Rutgers FY 2007; the full amount approved by Congress. In its reauthorization of the federal transportation bill in 2005, Congress stipulated that NTI remain housed at Rutgers. In July, National Public Radio featured NTI's anti-terror training program for transit systems on All Things Considered.
July 2006
The Heldrich Center and the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission have launched Ready for the Job II, an initiative that will refocus ongoing research on the workforce skill needs of industries important to New Jersey’s economic future. The new effort will explore how emerging workplace trends affect the skill requirements of jobs at all levels of New Jersey’s high-tech innovation economy. A final report, to be released in August 2006, will give New Jersey policymakers and other stakeholders the knowledge and tools they need to improve education and workforce systems for the state’s workers.
June 2006
The Professional Development Institute (PDI) was created in June within the Center for Government Services to promote better continuing education and improve the work of practitioners. The Institute will provide technical assistance in online education to other Centers in the School and oversee two existing professional development initiatives: Bloustein Online Continuing Education for Planners and The Leading Institute. PDI will also explore issues that enhance or hinder the professional development of those who work in planning or public policy.
May 2006
The Alan M.Voorhees Transportation Center published the third issue of its Transit-Friendly Development e-newsletter in May and hosted its second statewide Transit Village Symposium. VTC has become a national leader in its research and evaluation of new development anchored around train and bus stations.
March 2006
The Center for Energy, Economic and Environmental Policy (CEEEP) in March published the first report from its Strategic Issues Forum, New Jersey's Energy Infrastructure: Investing in our Future, a study outlining some criteria policymakers can use to evaluate infrastructure policy and decisions focusing on linkages with New Jersey’s energy infrastructure. An appendix catalogues the various elements of the energy infrastructure located in New Jersey.
March 2006 The National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment in March completed the first phase of its work to develop a brownfields technical assistance program for Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and other Community-based organizations (CBOs) working in low-income neighborhoods. The work is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
January 2006
The Brookings Institution in January published a report on National Freight Policy co-authored by VTC Director Martin Robins and Anne Strauss-Wieder. VTC has won grants for additional freight studies from the NJ Motor Truck Association and the University Transportation Research Center at CCNY.
2005
VTC surveyed 7,500 New Jersey motorists with driving suspensions to determine whether current laws are creating unintended consequences. VTC was hired to serve as secretary to Motor Vehicles Affordability and Fairness Task Force.
The New Jersey Department of Transportation awarded the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) a third annual contract to monitor the state’s Transit Village program. Under a contract with NJ TRANSIT, VTC also launched a new e-newsletter, Transit-Friendly Development.
The Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) successfully completed a study that enabled the Turnpike Authority to consolidate its planning functions with the Garden State Parkway. The Authority has retained VTC to further its work assisting the Turnpike with its planning.
The Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) completed its successful public outreach program and management of the Environmental Impact Statement process for the NJ Department of Transportation’s Route 1 Penn’s Neck project. The public outreach program overcame local opposition, which had stalled the project and built consensus behind a design. VTC prepared the final Environmental Impact Statement that gained federal approval, enabling the state to advance the project to preliminary engineering.
The NJ Department of Transportation has awarded the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) a fifth annual contract to run the NJ Pedestrian and Bicycle Resource Center for $350,000. Under its current contract, VTC has undertaken research projects into legal issues involved with crosswalk safety, pedestrian infrastructure and pedestrian lighting. Also, this year, the website for the Center was relaunched at: http://policy.rutgers.edu/njbikeped
With the New Jersey Foundation for Aging, VTC conducted a year-long series of policy forums to explore issues the challenges and needs of persons who cannot or choose not to drive, with a focus on senior drivers. A final report was issued in April 2005.
Beginning in 2002 with funding from the Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey DCA, the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment instigated and continues to support a neighborhood revitalization effort in Plainfield's West End. Recently, Center staff provided technical, planning and grant-writing support, along with community organizing, in the formation of a new resident-based community organization that is partnering with established local CDCs to begin to renovate housing, construct affordable housing and improve social services in accordance with the neighborhood plan.
With funding from the Mushett Family Foundation, the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment is working to develop a community-based approach for childhood asthma interventions in the Elizabethport neighborhood in Elizabeth, NJ. After performing a needs assessment, Center staff are focusing efforts on creation of a case management system for improved asthma care, community education programs, and pursuit of funding and support for a new, expanded community health center.
Working with colleagues from Vanderbilt, UMD and Rutgers, Center staff took the lead in developing a system for locating hazards and tracing their exposure paths at the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons facilities. The DOE has required that this system be used by all of its former weapons facilities. We now review the results of those efforts for the DOE.
Working with colleagues from UMD and Vanderbilt the Center has developed an approach for examining the human risk and economic costs and benefits of alternative remediation and final disposal options at the Idaho DOE site where high level and other nuclear waste products are buried and encapsulated. The approaches we have been presented to the facility managers and community advisory panel, which is reconsidering their existing environmental management decisions
Jay Petillo and Dr. Ann Dey conducted an ethnographic study of Newark for the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Surveillance of HIV Risk and Prevention Behaviors with Injection Drug Users national study from September 2004 to May 2005. The Unit developed a statewide Resource Directory for HIV/AIDS services. The new directory can be found on the Unit website (http://hpcpsdi.rutgers.edu/) in a database format (searchable by type of service, location of service and name of agency).
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