Register Your Bike + Bike Parking Tips

Posting this again for the beginning of the spring/summer season. Asbury Park Police launched a bike registration program last year.  If a bike is stolen it can be identified.  If you have a computer and Adobe you can do it online, or print and mail it in.  You’ll get a confirmation fast.

Just.Do. It.  This is so easy.

Register here…

http://www.cityofasburypark.com/egov/documents/1504267960_74095.pdf

Bike Parking Tips:

http://www.cityofasburypark.com/department/division.php?structureid=98

 

 

Best Bike Laws in the Country. NJ Can Learn From Delaware.

Do we want better laws for bicyclists in New Jersey?  Bicycling advocates in Delaware did, and they succeeded.  Learn how. (Spoiler: It starts with engaging the police.)

NETWORK OF BICYCLE CRASH ATTORNEYS.

WE ARE A NETWORK OF INDEPENDENT BICYCLE CRASH LAWYERS WHO SHARE A COMMON APPROACH TO THE LAW AND TO HELPING CYCLISTS. OUR BIKE CRASH ATTORNEYS HAVE HANDLED THOUSANDS OF CASES. WE KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BICYCLE ACCIDENT AND BICYCLE CRASH, AND WHY IT MATTERS.

In October 2017, Delaware’S Governor Signed The Bicycle Friendly Delaware Act, Placing Into State Law Cutting-Edge, Pro-Bike Reforms.

You say you want to change your state’s Rules of the Road even if the police are opposed? Bless your heart.

When it comes to the Rules of the Road in any state, the most important stakeholders are the police. Your state police will have a full-time lobbyist (or “liaison”) who attends every public safety committee meeting in your state legislature (and probably has been doing so for a decade or more). One way of attempting to reform the Rules of the Road in your state is to draft a bill without consulting with the police, find a willing legislator to introduce it, and let the chips fall where they may. Our comment on that strategy is “Bless your heart.” (According to Wikipedia, “bless your heart” is a phrase that is commonly used in the southern United States and which means “you are dumb or otherwise impaired, but you can’t help it.”)

Bike Delaware spent more time negotiating with the police on the text of the Bicycle Friendly Delaware Act than we did on any other aspect of the campaign. If you want to introduce a bill in your state legislature on a certain date, you should start negotiating with the police six months before that.”

Read more…

Best Bike Laws in the Country? Check Out Delaware.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool Visualization of Parking Spaces

See Just How Much Of A City’s Land Is Used For Parking Spaces

BY ADELE PETERS  

Get a look at how much space is allotted to parking in cities around the world.

“At the moment, cars spend around 95% of the time parked, and only 5% of the time in use. Huge swaths of cities, either in parking lots, garages, or street parking spaces, are used as storage for cars (while, at the same time, many cities struggle to find enough land to build housing to keep up with demand). “There’s this huge space that’s basically wasted,” says Szell.”

“The visualization is part of a project called What the Street? that inventories parking lots in 23 cities around the world, along with the space used for roads, rail lines and rail yards, and bike paths and bike parking. ”

Read more…

https://www.fastcompany.com/40441392/see-just-how-much-of-a-citys-land-is-used-for-parking-spaces

What’s a Pedestrian Scramble? Video:Japan’s Shibuya Crossing

Watch this amazing video and read about how pedestrians and bicyclists can cross the street safely while all vehicular traffic is stopped at streets in all directions in the intersection.  Prioritizing people over vehicles in a very big way!

Pedestrian scramble

 Shibuya Crosswalk, Japan

Watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od6EeCWytZo

pedestrian scramble, also known as scramble intersection (Canada), ‘X’ Crossing (UK), diagonal crossing (US), exclusive pedestrian interval, or Barnes Dance, is a type of traffic signal movement that temporarily stops all vehicular traffic, thereby allowing pedestrians to cross an intersection in every direction, including diagonally, at the same time.

It was first used in Canada and the United States in the late 1940s, but it later fell out of favor with traffic engineers there, as it was seen as prioritizing flow of pedestrians over flow of car traffic. Its benefits for pedestrian amenity and safety have led to new examples being installed in many countries in recent years.

Read more…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od6EeCWytZo

Mobility and Potential Exposure to Diversity

Travelling together alone and alone together: mobility and potential exposure to diversity

Pages 1-15 | Received 02 Jan 2017, Accepted 13 Jan 2017, Published online: 02 Mar 2017

Quantity and quality of social relations correlate with our happiness and physical health. Our (feeling of) connectedness also matters for the efficacy and functioning of communities and societies as a whole. Different mobility practices offer different conditions for being exposed to other people and the environment.

Excerpt:

“Travelling by car, using public transport, walking and cycling seem to offer radically different levels of interaction potential, especially with people outside one’s own social network and with the physical environment. This exposure potentially affects the level to which we feel connected to a certain place and society. ”

Photo 2018, Community bike ride in Asbury Park

Read more…

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23800127.2017.1283122

Thanks to Cycling Professor @fietsprofessor

Thanks to Urban Cycling Institute: urbancyclinginstitute.com

Building for Tourism vs Livability?

This article is from Strong Towns archives of most popular. Sound a bit familiar?  Asbury Park, having been “economically down on its luck but working toward a better future.”

THE BIG URBAN MISTAKE: BUILDING FOR TOURISM VS. LIVABILITY

 
BY ARIAN HORBOVETZ

“Originally posted on Strong Towns member Arian Horbovetz’s blog, The Urban Phoenix, and republished on our site in May, I have heard many people talk about how this essay voiced what they’d been feeling about their own communities, or helped them look at their towns in a new light. Arian writes primarily about issues facing small to mid-sized cities in New York state, but the topics he addresses apply to so many Rust Belt communities and truly, to any town that’s economically down on its luck but working towards a better future.” – Rachel Quednau

Read more…

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/5/the-big-urban-mistake-building-for-tourism-vs-livability

 

PBS: Grant Money For Bike Lanes Dries Up for Blue States

Infrastructure in rural areas are sorely in need of repairs and upgrades.  But what does it mean for cities in blue states?  “Of the 41 grants announced by the Trump administration, 25 totaling $271 million were awarded to projects in congressional districts represented by Republicans. Districts represented by Democrats garnered 14 projects and $190 million.”

Under Trump, new transportation grants ditch bikes, walkways

 

 

A woman rides a bicycle along a designated bike lane on Queens Boulevard in the borough of Queens in New York, U.S., May 5, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton – S1BETDQANDAB

WASHINGTON — Forget about bike-share stations in Chicago or pedestrian walkways in Oakland.

In the Trump administration, a popular $500 million transportation grant program is focused more on projects in rural areas that turned out for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. That means more road and rail projects in GOP strongholds such as Idaho, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, and fewer “greenways,” ”complete streets” and bike lanes.

The latest round of these grants has nothing for New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. Money in those Democratic heavy states went instead to projects in Trump-friendly regions: repainting a bridge in New York’s North Country, contributing to a highway project in Modesto, California, and upgrading an interstate highway in southern Illinois.

Read more..

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/under-trump-new-transportation-grants-ditch-bikes-walkways