Incrementalism Is Best

Asbury Park is doing it the right way…even though many residents would like to see infrastructure for walkers and bicyclists in place yesterday. But incrementalism doesn’t mean small or slow. This article describes almost every strategy we’re doing in AP, from striping bike lanes and traffic calming infrastructure, establishing a bike share, angled back-in parking, organizing an open streets event, and planning a community info gathering. Incrementalism is most effective for the safety of bicyclists, pedestrians and the health of a city: #slowthecars.

OUR STREETS ARE AN EMERGENCY SITUATION FOR CYCLISTS. WHY SHOULD WE FIX THEM INCREMENTALLY?

  BY KEA WILSON

WHAT INCREMENTALISM ISN’T

“So before I talk about how Strong Towns-style incremental development is exactly what our cities need to make our places more bikeable and more financially productive, let me tell you what incrementalism isn’t.

Incrementalism isn’t an excuse for a lack of urgency. If a stroad in your neighborhood is truly dangerous and draining your community resources, someone has to do something, and — for reasons we’ll explore in a minute — an incremental development mindset can actually make it easier to do something quickly and make a more meaningful change.”

Read more…

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/7/25/our-streets-are-an-emergency-situation-for-cyclists-why-should-we-fix-them-incrementally

Faulty Reporting: Blaming The Victim

The Walker Is Not To Blame

The auto industry has successfully continued to hijack the American lexicon, influencing police reporting and journalism.

People who walk in any condition, whether drunk, using drugs, young, old, texting, or otherwise distracted, or people with physical or mental disabilities are not to blame when then are injured or killed by drivers. Highways and even local roads and streets have  insufficient or totally lacking infrastructure for people. Cars are prioritized to our peril.

No, “Drunk Walking” Is Not Causing the Rise in Pedestrian Deaths

By Angie Schmitt July 6, 2018

A new report from PBS News Hour violates the most basic precepts of good journalism in a pathetic attempt to pin the rise in pedestrian fatalities on people who drink and walk.

Stories like this cause real harm. They give officials in cities like Austin cover not to do anything but blame the victims. They perpetuate the marginalization of people with no choice but to walk on dangerous streets, who are more likely to be poor, black, or brown.

Read more…

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/07/06/no-drunk-walking-is-not-causing-the-rise-in-pedestrian-deaths/

Parking Irony: Socialism In The US?

City councils in many cities are ditching parking minimums (which almost always provide excessive space for storing cars) to allow for more space for people to live. This (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek article illustrates the ongoing issue in many cities as socialism, like it or hate it…

Parking: Where we embrace socialism in the US

How we embrace socialism for car storage in the public right of way

By Joe Cortright  

The production of parking spaces has exceeded the quotas established in the five year community plans. Comrade Scharnhorst has produced a new report that showing that in Seattle, there are 1,596,289 parking stalls, more than 5 parking spaces for every household: indeed, a triumph of the planned economy!  (Now if we could just figure out how to get one house per household?)

Read more…http://cityobservatory.org/parking-where-we-embrace-socialism-in-the-us/

Let’s Reconnect With Our Streets

Get ready to connect with the streets!  Stay tuned for Asbury Park’s Open Streets Event!

“As Jane Jacobs observed in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”: “The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. Most of it is ostensibly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all.”

By Allison Arief July 3, 2018

Not too many years ago, I was having dinner with my in-laws in Orange County, Calif. My mother-in-law was complaining about her new neighbors, an all-too-common pastime for any resident of a gated community with an HOA. The neighbors’ crime? “They let their children play in our cul-de-sac,” she lamented. “Everyone knows streets are for cars.”

Read more…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/opinion/lets-reconnect-with-our-streets.html

Designing Cities For People The Book: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality

Public spaces need to be designed so that people don’t die.

“Humans make errors and willingly or unwillingly break rules. This is a given that cannot be changed. So roads and streets should be designed in such a way that this natural human behavior does not lead to crashes and injuries.” — The Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research

Sustainable Safety

Sustainable Safety (“Duurzaam veilig” in Dutch) is the name of the Dutch approach to achieve a better road safety.

Read about it:

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/sustainable-safety/

The Book:

Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality  http://www.modacitylife.com/building-the-cycling-city/

 

American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

Parking is real estate and drivers seem to think they deserve more of it–at incredibly low prices.

American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it’s not pretty.

“Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used.”

Satellite images with surface parking highlighted in Philadelphia (left) and Seattle (right), via the Research Institute for Housing America.
Read more…

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/07/12/american-cities-are-drowning-in-car-storage/

Can We Create Good Alternatives To Driving?

Two-wheel takeover: bikes outnumber cars for the first time in Copenhagen

“People see that the fastest way to get around town is on a bicycle…”

Denmark’s capital has reached a milestone in its journey to become a cycling city – there are now more bikes than cars on the streets. Can other cities follow?

“The next step… is to create good alternatives to the car. ”

“You can’t just prohibit cars and then deal with it … That’s why we’re expanding the metro and investing in bike infrastructure. Give people options and then slowly take away space from cars and give it to bikes.”

Read more…

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revolution-bikes-outnumber-cars-first-time-copenhagen-denmark?CMP=share_btn_tw

Stop Subsidizing Driving

RATHER THAN DEMONIZING DRIVING—LET’S JUST STOP SUBSIDIZING IT

  BY JOE CORTRIGHT

WE’VE BEEN ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION.

Our research tells us that lots of problems stem from the way we use cars. We price roads wrong, so people overuse them. Cars are a major source of air pollution, including carbon emissions. Car crashes kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, injure many more, and cost us billions in medical costs and property damage. And building our cities to accommodate cars leads to a suburban development pattern that pushes us further apart from one another, creating infrastructure costs that drown our cities in massive maintenance expenses.

Read more…https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/7/11/rather-than-demonizing-drivinglets-just-stop-subsidizing-it