Municipalities in New Jersey continue to sing the praises of NJDOT’s Transit Village program, which helps towns support walkable, transit-oriented downtowns but has been cut out of the department’s fiscal year 2012 capital program. In the spring/summer issue of the Cranford Downtown Management Corporation’s Downtown Cranford magazine, Cranford DMC Director Kathleen Miller Prunty touts a $500,000 Transit Village grant the town received from NJDOT in February, which will be used for pedestrian walkways and landscaping.

When the grant was first announced in February, Cranford Mayor Dan Aschenbach said the grant would allow the town to “creat[e] well-defined pedestrian routes to the train station and through the downtown.”

Prunty said “These improvements will help to create a much needed pedestrian-friendly link between the south and north areas of the downtown,” and said the grant would help the town use its train station “as a connector rather than barrier.” The Riverfront, a mixed-use development including at least 108 residential units, is planned near the train station.

Cranford was first named a Transit Village in 2003, and leveraged a study paid for by its 2003 grant to win these improvements. Although NJDOT officials recently claimed the Transit Village program “didn’t get any big bang for the buck,” evidence from town after town seems to refute that.