Hoboken spent a year measuring Grand Street between Third and Eighth Streets. On the city's numbers the street got safer: the crash rate fell 43 percent, Citi Bike trips through the area rose 53 percent, and observers found no double parking. In a survey that closed October 27, 73 percent of respondents who live on those blocks said they opposed keeping the protected bike lane.
On November 6 the City announced how it would settle that split. The plan draws its line at the curb. Every piece of the pilot that took a parking space comes out. Every piece that sat where parking was already illegal stays.
The line runs along the curb
The pilot started in early November 2025. It moved the bike lane next to the curb, with parked cars between riders and traffic. It also marked individual parking stalls, paused weekly street-sweeping rules on the east side, and added high-visibility crossings, curb extensions, upgraded ADA ramps, bike corrals, daylighting, and all-way stops at three intersections.
The City's updated plan sorts those pieces into two groups.
Going back to how it was before the pilot:
- The mid-block bike lane becomes a striped, unprotected "Class II" lane in the street again
- The individually marked parking stalls are removed, so cars can park more flexibly along the curb
- Roughly 20 on-street spaces come back, returning parking to pre-pilot levels
- East-side street-sweeping restrictions return
Staying:
- High-visibility crosswalks, curb extensions, and shorter crossing distances
- Better sightlines at intersections
- Bike lane separation at the curb inside the existing no-parking zones near intersections
The City expects the changes to be finished before the end of the year. Mayor Emily Jabbour called it a "hybrid approach" that "preserves important pedestrian protections, provides bicycle protection within existing daylit approaches, and restores approximately 20 parking spaces."
Where the 20 spaces went, block by block
Twenty spaces sounds small for a corridor this long. The loss was spread unevenly, though, and on the blocks with the biggest losses it was easy to notice. The City's evaluation compared a September 2025 count of unmarked spaces with an October 2026 count of marked stalls:
| Grand Street block | Spaces, Sept. 2025 | Spaces, Oct. 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 block | 35 | 29 | −6 |
| 400 block | 22 | 19 | −3 |
| 500 block | 32 | 28 | −4 |
| 600 block | 27 | 25 | −2 |
| 700 block | 30 | 25 | −5 |
| Total | 146 | 126 | −20, or 14% |
The 300 and 700 blocks, at the two ends of the pilot, lost the most spaces. Part of the shortfall came from the marked stalls themselves, since fixed lines fit fewer cars than an open curb. That explains why removing the markings is part of how the City plans to recover the spaces.
The same year, measured two ways
For safety and access, the evaluation set its field measurements beside its survey results, and the two often pointed in different directions.
| Question | Survey respondents said | City measurement during the pilot |
|---|---|---|
| Double parking | 46% said it got worse | Observed events fell from three to zero |
| Emergency and truck access | 57% said it got worse | Commercial-vehicle crashes went from eight to zero |
| Safe bike circulation | 31% said it got worse | Citi Bike trips rose 53% |
The report says these differences "do not invalidate either form of evidence." It also lists what police records miss: trucks that skip the street altogether, turns that fail without a collision, and problems that never become a crash report. Deputy Director of Transportation and Parking Ryan Frances made the same point to the City Council, as Hudson County View reported:
"Both can be true and the survey is capturing how the street felt for people especially as people were adjusting to the changes. And then the data captured the outcomes, but might miss some of the things that that people were reporting such as near misses."
At the same meeting, according to Hudson County View, 3rd Ward Councilman Mike Russo said he had about 15 photos of sideswiped cars on Grand Street that were never reported to police. At-Large Councilman Joe Quintero answered that the survey was "one data point of six or seven other data points." The survey had 1,251 responses and was voluntary, and the City notes that it reflects the people who chose to respond, not a representative sample.
The final plan keeps the intersection work, which sits in zones where parking was already illegal, and returns the curb to its pre-pilot count of spaces.
The curb was carrying more than parked cars
Most of the year's practical trouble happened at the curb, and the fixes the City made along the way show who was using it. The evaluation lists several. The no-parking zone at Eighth Street was extended so 55-foot ACME delivery trucks could make the turn. Otok Bakery got a temporary loading zone. Amazon was told to stop using a Church Towers loading zone as a distribution hub. Loading-zone hours and lengths were revised.
The survey pointed the same way. Sixty-four percent of respondents said there wasn't enough legal space for loading and passenger pick-up. Forty-six percent supported daytime flex zones that turn back into resident permit parking overnight. The evaluation recommends more daytime loading and pick-up zones as part of the next step.
Weather and maintenance tell a similar story. The compact sweeper made 60 runs along the bike lane side from November 2025 to October 2026, compared with 52 in a typical year, and the pilot's snow protocol was used three times. Public-safety staff called the day-to-day effects minimal. They did flag that snow narrowed the opposite side of the street, and that in one multi-unit fire response a vehicle had to back out. The evaluation suggested temporary no-parking on both sides during major storms.
How it got from a 7–2 vote to a hybrid
The pilot started as the second phase of a water main project. Grand Street's mains between Third and Eighth, roughly 100 years old, were replaced mostly in 2023. Under Hoboken's Complete Streets policy, repaving after that work was the moment to add safety changes. Transportation and Parking Director Ryan Sharp explained this background in his presentation to the Council. The City described the pilot as part of Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.
On August 12, the Council voted 7–2 for a nonbinding resolution asking to end the pilot early. Paul Presinzano and Michael Russo sponsored it, and Phil Cohen and Joe Quintero voted no, according to Hoboken Girl. At that meeting, Hudson County View reported that Bike Hoboken Executive Director Andrew Wilson argued for keeping the design, saying the old layout had led to documented injuries of the kind the new one prevented. Mayor Jabbour kept the pilot running for its full planned year so the evaluation could be finished.
That full year ended this month. Sharp told the Council that no vote is needed to go back to the Class II lane, because that is the layout the current ordinance already codifies. Once the pilot period expires, the street reverts, and the City contracts out the restriping, which will also remove the stall markings. The hybrid the Mayor announced two days later goes further than a straight reversion: the separation near intersections and the pedestrian improvements stay.
Where protected lanes go next
The City now plans to run a community process with residents, businesses, and cyclists to choose locations for a network of protected bike lanes. The evaluation ties that network to the Green Circuit, the protected loop around the city's edge that Sharp described as being built now. Bike Hoboken's account of the Green Circuit says much of the Waterfront Walkway and the south and southwest sections are complete. Approved segments include Maritime Park, 800 and 930 Monroe, and parts beneath the 14th Street Viaduct. Two protected connections already exist. One is the Marin Boulevard and Henderson Street bikeway to Jersey City, finished in 2022. The other is the South Waterfront bikeway from Newark Street to Fourth Street.
The full Grand Street evaluation, including the block-by-block parking counts and the loading-zone changes, is posted with the City's November 6 announcement.
Changes to a street's curb, parking, and loading are part of what makes daily life on a block work, and we follow them closely across Hoboken. If you live near Grand Street or are thinking about a home along it, Hudson Realty Group can walk you through how the block you're considering works day to day. Contact Us.
