In February 2025, after three years of applications, site walks, public meetings, and revisions, Bernardsville became the 37th Transit Village in New Jersey. The designation from the Department of Transportation is more than a plaque: it unlocks priority scoring for grants, streamlined permitting for pedestrian and bicycle projects, and technical assistance most small towns can only dream of. “It was a long haul,” admits Mayor Mary Jane Canose, who has lived in Bernardsville since 1972 and has served as mayor since 2019. “But every minute was worth it. This is about walkability, bikeability, and finally having the resources to make our downtown feel like the true heart of the community it already is.” The train station—built in 1872 when the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad first put Bernardsville on the map—remains the geographic and emotional center of town. Wealthy New Yorkers discovered the area in the late 19th century, building grand “summer cottages” that still stand along places like Ballantine Road and Childs Road. Today the station’s copper-roofed canopy shelters commuters bound for Hoboken or Penn Station New York in under an hour, but it also serves as the borough’s front porch. The Transit Village framework is already delivering visible change: new wayfinding signs, improved sidewalks, and the first plantings of a streetscape plan that will stretch from the station all the way to Olcott Square. Perhaps the most symbolic project is a stairway— still in final design—that will climb the steep embankment south of the tracks, directly linking neighborhoods that have historically been cut off from downtown. For decades, residents in the Bernards Avenue, Boylan Terrace, and Ambar Place areas—many of them Latino and Eastern European families who work as painters, landscapers, masons, and caregivers—have faced either a treacherous hillside scramble or a mile-long detour by car. The new stairway, paired with the nearly complete Boylan Terrace Walkway, will put them a five-minute stroll from the train platform, grocery shopping, and Saturday coffee on Quimby Square. 41 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 12 BERNARDSVILLE, NJ
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