Bike Safety, 'Rail Trail' Top Discussion At Fourth Ward Meeting In Ocean City

Ocean City, NJ -- Tom Heist and Andrew Fasy of Bike OCNJ spoke about a range of topics, including the need to ensure that bikers and drivers share the road safely, during the Fourth Ward meeting at the library on Saturday, the Ocean City Gazette reports.

Fasy and Heist said weekly renters need to be better informed of Ocean City’s biking laws, and residents offered a range of suggestions, according to the report.

These including giving visitors forms to sign listing the safety regulations, as well as more frequent warnings from police officers to bikers who are breaking the law.

Fasy and Heist said officers do warn bike riders and do write tickets, but must also be cautious not to write so many tickets as to scare visitors away from a community where so much business relies on tourists.

“The police have a really, really difficult job in toeing that line between ticketing people when there’s egregious behavior and talking to them and giving warnings,” Fasy said, according to the report.

Other issues included the possibility of converting Central Avenue and Asbury Avenue to one-way streets with bike lanes; fixing a stretch of Haven between 9th and 34th that has four-way stop signs on each corner; and the return of the much debated “Rail Trail” proposal.

That proposal entailed building a bicycle trail on a stretch of abandoned railroad bed that crosses wetlands between 36th and 49th streets. That debate lasted for years, but ended in 2011 when the city received a report suggested creating a rail trail would be long and costly, and made no guarantee that Ocean City would be able to secure all the necessary environmental permits.

When brought up again on Saturday, a resident suggested getting a binding referendum be put on the ballot for the spring, according to the report. While officials reiterated it would be an expensive process, they said they would help the residents in any way they could.

Read more at shorenewstoday.com.

Patch file photo