New Jersey Statewide Trails Planning

New Jersey Trails Playbook

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) are developing the New Jersey Trails Playbook – a series of statewide trail planning guidance documents, with the goal of ensuring that all residents, no matter where they live or their accessibility needs, have safe and equitable access to quality recreational trails. This initiative expands on NJDEP’s recently published 2023-2027 Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan, entitled Outside, Together!  The conclusions of this strategic plan were clear – trails are a priority for New Jerseyans. Outside, Together! outlined the need to update statewide trail planning documents to enable government, nonprofit, and private land managers to better serve the needs of New Jersey’s trail users and local communities, to improve community connectivity, and to increase outdoor recreation and active transportation opportunities. The benefits of trails and greenways have also been emphasized in recent NJDOT planning and assistance efforts, such as through the publishing of NJDOT’s Planning for Greenways Guidebook in 2019.

The Playbook will serve to provide updated trail planning and management guidance that reflects current needs, priorities, and available resources, allowing the state to better meet the increasing and changing outdoor recreation and active transportation needs of the public. The Playbook will provide guidance on identifying and securing trail funding, executing trail projects, ensuring trail user safety, and laying the framework for enhancing New Jersey’s system of trails.

The New Jersey Trails Playbook will provide a framework for advancing New Jersey’s trail networks, positioning the State to take on more of a leadership role in coordinating statewide trail development. The series takes a holistic, comprehensive approach to trail planning and guidance, allowing New Jersey to provide more equitable access to trails, greenways, shared use paths, and other related infrastructure, protecting and empowering our most vulnerable communities. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide a resilient statewide system of trails that better connects us to our communities, to our businesses, to nature, to healthy lifestyles, and to each other.

Public engagement is an essential component informing New Jersey Trails Playbook. The first survey in a sequence of public outreach efforts to inform statewide trail planning, funding, and policy was the Statewide Trail Needs Assessment for Trail Planners and Managers. This survey was designed for those who develop and manage trails, to help the state better understand and meet the outdoor recreation and active transportation needs of the public. The second survey, the New Jersey Trail User Survey, was intended for all of New Jersey’s residents and trail users. The survey addressed key topics, such as trail use, motivations for using or not using trails, and importantly, the impact that trails have on New Jersey’s economy. New Jersey Trails Program staff are analyzing the results of both surveys and will be including findings in the guidance documents, as well as releasing a report of survey findings.