Who doesn’t love parks, am I right?

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The latest reader poll asks “What’s your favorite outdoor space?” and we’ve previously polled y’all on your favorite park in Rahway. Now, I’ve found a super cool data tool by The Trust For Public Land (TPL) called ParkScore. Not unlike Walk Score — which I’ve  revisited over the years — it draws together all kinds of data to compile a score for cities about parks.

Rahway’s ParkScore offers up all kinds of interesting data. Where to begin? According to TPL, 97.5% of Rahway residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park — considerably higher than the national average of 55%. TPL breaks down the data across various demographics, including age, income and race. Rahway scores no less than 96% across any category.

TPL estimates that only 743 residents live beyond a 10-minute walk from a park within Rahway. That’s out of 29,582 residents.

Despite its 13 parks (both county and municipal), where Rahway is behind nationally is the 8% of land that is used for parks, compared with the national median of 15% (probably a familiar pattern in densely-populated states).

The coolest part of TPL’s ParkScore page is exploring the map, where it drills down into the data. The ParkServe app even lets you create a new park and see how it affects the analysis.

Three areas come up as priorities (purple in the map to the left) for new parks but none at the “very high priority” level. One “high priority” area (darker shade of purple) is between the railroad tracks and north to Pierpont Street, stretching mostly from about Walters Street to West Hazelwood Avenue. Two “moderate priority” areas (lighter shade of purple) are around Stacy Place in the north corner of town at the Linden border, and another around East Scott Avenue and Rutherford and Lufberry streets.

Priority areas for new parks are “areas in a city outside a 10-minute walk to a park are prioritized based on population density, density of low-income households, density of people of color, air pollution respiratory hazard, urban heat islands, and health (mental health and physical activity).”

The app identifies two “optimal new park locations” within Rahway (the two numbered, green circles in the map above) to reach more residents within a 10-minute walk. Optimal new park areas are the top areas where a new park would help increase those served within a 10-minute walk. “Optimized ‘points’ are areas that are 1/4-mile in radius to account for land availability.”

One optimal area is on either side of the train tracks stretching from Cherry Street and Hazelwood Avenue. The other is farther south, just south of Brennan Field actually, straddling the river around East Inman Avenue and Mill Street and stretching over the Middlesex County border.

To determine a city’s ParkScore rating, points are assigned for 14 measures across five categories: acreage, investment, amenities, access, and equity. For each of the 14 measures, points are awarded on a relative basis, based on how a city compares to the 100 largest U.S. cities.

In New Jersey, Newark (42) and Jersey (46) ranked within the top 100 cities, with New York City ranked No. 11. Not surprisingly, Washington, D.C., ranked No. 1, followed by St. Paul, Minn.

In the past 25 years, Rahway has added at least three four parks:

• Berzenic Park at Central and St. Georges avenues, which was the location of the previous municipal library before it was flooded again during Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999;
• Bezega Park on Allen Street, behind Rahway Animal Hospital, was created sometime in the mid-2000s;
• Myron Ross Park on Essex Street, along the Rahway River in 2009; and,
• Sal Mione Park on New Church Street, created in 2019 after a swath of flood-prone homes were purchased through the state’s Blue Acres program.

It will be interesting to see what a downtown strategic plan will come up with, as part of its analysis will examine if the Rahway River can also be “used to provide connections through the creation of a river walkway.

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