AREA — For Stephen Dunn, a longtime member of the Elizabeth Fire Department, a single slip-up on the commute to work could change everything.

“I haven’t driven a car to work in almost three years,” said Mr. Dunn, who navigates the five-mile stretch between his home in Kenilworth and the firehouse where he works twice a day by bicycle. “We spend our lives sitting in our cars, but we only do it because we don’t think we have any other options. We’re really hoping to change that.”

A few years ago, Mr. Dunn, along with a network of dedicated pedestrians, cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts, joined together to form Union County Connects, a nonprofit organization that is working to establish a safe and comprehensive system of walking trails throughout the region.

“The ultimate goal is to develop a walkable nexus that will allow people to utilize current and future trails, sidewalks, roadways and bridges to get from one community to the other,” said Mr. Dunn, adding that the organization currently is working to expand local access to resources like rail trails (unused railroad beds that have been converted into walking paths) to help lay the groundwork for a more wide-ranging and cohesive infrastructure down the line.

“These railroad tracks were laid down a hundred years ago, maybe more, to do exactly what we’re trying to do now. They connect one side of the county to the other and allow people to get from point A to point B without having to get in their cars,” Mr. Dunn said. “A lot of the framework is already here. We just want to expand on it.”

Last year, the Union County Board of County Commissioners announced its intentions to convert approximately 2.5 miles of one of these long-sincevacated railroad beds into a pedest rian-and-bicycle-friendly thoroughfare thanks to a recentlyformed partnership with the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT).

The $1.65-million, grant-funded project, county officials said at the time, will ultimately serve as a valuable local connection port to the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000-mile pedestrian and bicycle route that stretches all the way between Maine and Florida.

“The county’s involvement is a big win for us,” said Mr. Dunn, who spends a large amount of his free time clearing brush and debris from overgrown trails. “The other piece of this is that, eventually, these trails will give people from all over the county the chance to walk or bike to public transit hubs without having to navi- gate as many dangerous roads as they do now.”

Meanwhile, as Mr. Dunn and other volunteers work to advance as many local off-street access routes as possible, state legislators are trying — with mixed results — to address existing pedestrian-safety challenges across the state.

According to a report issued by the State Attorney General’s Office in January, 366 pedestrians have been killed in motor-vehicle accidents in New Jersey in the last two years alone.

Earlier this year, a bill that would have created a state-level roadsafety commission was pulled from the Senate calendar after advocates managed to successfully argue against a series of last-minute amendments that would have fundamentally altered the intended purpose of the legislation.

“I have been working in support of this bill for the last two years, and we thought we were making progress,” Mr. Dunn said, “but at the last minute, the NJDOT added all of these caveats that basically took the teeth out of everything that was being proposed.”

In its original form, submitted to the Assembly and approved prior to the Senate vote, the bill called for a “comprehensive and coordinated action plan” that would “help achieve the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all public roadways in the State by 2040 through engineering, education and enforcement systems that analyze physical transportation designs.”

In the Senate version of the bill, however, the original concept was replaced with a federally-mandated review of the state’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan to identify shortterm and long-term data-driven strategies that “could” reduce traffic fatalities.

“The initial action plan was a cornerstone principle of this legislation,” said Mr. Dunn, whose views are shared by representatives from organizations like the New Jersey Bike and Walk Coalition and the Vision Zero New Jersey Alliance, a coalition of New Jersey residents that works to advocate for more stringent traffic and safety laws.

Other amendments, including the removal of a “high-injury network” to help track areas where motorvehicle accidents are most likely to occur, also felt counterproductive to advocates like Mr. Dunn.

“We want to encourage people to walk, to ride their bikes, but it’s hard to do that when we know that, at least as of right now, New Jersey’s roads just aren’t that safe,” he said. “There is a lot of work that needs to be done at the state level, but in the meantime, we plan to keep moving ahead to do what we can to help move things forward through projects like rail trail conversions and connected walking paths.”

To learn more about Union County Connects, visit unioncountyconnects.org.