Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition
Transportation Equity in Our City
“Compared to the cost of roads, pedestrian- and bike-friendly streets are the budgetary equivalent of change found between sofa cushions”
Jeanette Sadik-Khan, author of Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution. Former NYDOT Commissioner. #streetfight
An article from Fast Company in 2015.
“After over a hundred years of living with cars, some cities are slowly starting to realize that the automobile doesn’t make a lot of sense in the urban context. It isn’t just the smog or the traffic deaths; in a city, cars aren’t even a convenient way to get around.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/3040634/7-cities-that-are-starting-to-go-car-free
The health of a city depends upon affordable housing for diverse communities including cultures, colors and religions, young people, artists and musicians who contribute immeasurably to vibrancy and livability.
http://www.moderncities.com/article/2017-feb-artist-displacement-and-the-resurgence-of-cities
It’s 50 years since the first bike lane in the US. Asbury Park has only 1 faded bike lane in the “door zone” on Grand Ave. We’re working on it–Some residents ride every day to work and daily transportation, others for recreation. Ride your bikes in AP and show city officials that bike riders are here to stay and deserve safe infrastructure.
Asbury Park is not different from Seattle and many cities in the US in fear that multi-modal streets will snarl traffic. In our car-centric culture we’ve become used to responding to more traffic volume with wider roads to carry more cars, which only creates more demand and on, and on. Check out the graphic demonstrating that a car-oriented, wider street does not allow more capacity.
“…it is impossible to remake city streets so they can carry more cars. Everything we do to meet demand creates even more demand.”
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/03/07/truck-crash-on-freeway-paralyzes-traffic-seattle-times-ditch-the-bike-lanes/
We advocate building spaces for people rather than for cars. Building housing for people rather than building parking spaces.
“…it begged the question that, perhaps, it’s time to re-examine parking requirement for new residential construction – that maybe blanket requirements are not the best options.
“We are certainly not advocating getting rid of parking everywhere,” said Hart. “We’re just trying to explain to these communities that parking requirements in these communities maybe shouldn’t be locked in to every development.”
Added Lee, “Three parking spaces could be a three-bedroom unit and that means more units in total, which is what everyone is scrambling to build as the housing demand increases in our areas…These are things people want and they are limited by potentially outdated zoning requirements based on data that isn’t reflecting the current trends.”
Great short video explaining parking minimums! (Happens to be Ottowa, Canada, but it’s the same in the US).
“Level of Service” criteria give engineers an incentive to minimize auto delay, often at the expense of pedestrian service (which isn’t measured). That’s how we get designs with 30 second delay for cars with 120 second delay for pedestrians.”
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/03/03/how-engineering-standards-for-cars-endanger-people-crossing-the-street/
Think of city streets as places, not just a way to get through a city as fast as possible. City streets were designed for people–automobiles came much later, but now they dominate. Let’s change the focus back to people.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/how-a-vitality-fellow-captured-the-imagination-of-a-city
