VIDEO: Fake News – Why Jaywalking Is a Crime

Jaywalking: How the car industry outlawed crossing the road.

The idea of being fined for crossing the road at the wrong place can bemuse foreign visitors to the US, where the origins of so-called jaywalking lie in a propaganda campaign by the motor industry in the 1920s.

“Clowns were commonly used in parades or pageants to portray jaywalkers as a throwback to rural, ignorant, pre-motor age ways.

Another ruse was to provide local newspapers with a free service. Reporters would submit a few facts about local traffic accidents to Detroit, and the auto industry’s safety committee would send back a full report on the situation in their city.

“The newspaper coverage quite suddenly changes, so that in 1923 they’re all blaming the drivers, and by late 1924 they’re all blaming jaywalking,” Norton says.

Soon, he adds, car lobby groups also started taking over school safety education, stressing that “streets are for cars and children need to stay out of them”. Anti-jaywalking laws were adopted in many cities in the late 1920s, and became the norm by the 1930s.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797

AND THIS!

Adam Ruins Everything (or fixes everything, depending on how you look at it) reveals the derogatory origins of jaywalking and explains how the auto industry made it illegal.

Watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s

We Need YOU! Sea Hear Now Music Festival Bike Parking

The Sea Hear Now Music Festival is happening this weekend, and we need YOU!

The Festival is promoting bicycle transportation by providing a large self-service bike parking area to be overseen by APCSC and Second Life Bikes. *All bikes must have locks*. Please sign up for a two-hour time slot to help at the bike parking area at the link below:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0f4cafad29a5fd0-free

When: September 29th and 30th (Festival hours are 12:30pm to 10:30pm). Where: Bike Parking will be located on 5th Ave, behind the Wonder Bar, not too far from “the action” in Bradley Park and beyond. What: Welcome bicyclists and *confirm they have a lock*; assist at the information table; *sell bike locks*, bike lights and other merchandise; and ask for a suggested $5 donation to support the APCSC Bike Light Campaign to light up all Asbury Park bikes! Please look at the schedule and choose a two-hour time slot.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/-free

Feel free to reply to apcompletestreets@gmail.com with any questions. Thank you for your support!

Polli Schildge

#asburyparkcompletestreets

http://www.apcompletestreets.org

@asburyparkcsc

 

 

LeBron and Complete Streets

“Riding a bike is a favorite early memory for many people. For children, getting their first bike brings their first taste of freedom and independence. It’s also fun and a great equalizer — something kids can enjoy whether they are rich, middle-class or poor; or live in a city, suburb or rural area.

Getting that first bike was just as memorable for Akron’s own LeBron James. “It was way of life. If you had a bike, it was a way to kind of let go and be free,” he shared in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. James credits his success to bicycling, and he’s sharing that with the children at the I Promise School by giving free bikes and helmets to all 240 students.”

Read more…http://www.ohio.com/akron/editorial/commentary/emiko-atherton-complete-streets-liberate-the-city

 

#SLOWTHECARS Ride and Open House tonight!

#SLOWTHECARS Ride and Open House

Today, Tuesday, 9/18/18
5:30 Bike Ride is ON (Weather Channel says no rain after 4pm)! Open house is ON at 7!
Music by Stringbean! Door Prizes! Food!
Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition hosts our first open house tonight, Tuesday, 9/18! Meet at Asbury Park Brewery on Sewall Ave., just off Main St. for a 5:30 bike ride around town, and stick around for a gathering of friends and neighbors at 7pm to socialize and learn about what’s happening on city streets now and in the future. If you can’t make the ride no problem, come at 7 to hear from Asbury Park’s Transportation Mgr, Mike Manzella about the Bike/Ped Master Plan! Everyone is welcome. Not necessary to sign up but nice if you would…see the event on our FB page: https://www.facebook.com/events/296989621086414/
Thanks To Our Host, Asbury Park Brewery

Is Vision Zero a Failure?

The term Vision Zero has become a cliche.  As long as streets are designed to expedite the movement of cars it’s doomed to fail.  Can we change it?  We need to be engineering streets and roads to move as many people as possible, not as many cars as possible.

Vision Zero: has the drive to eliminate road deaths lost its way?

“As Kate Fillin-Yeh, strategy director at the National Association of City Transportation Officials, puts it: “Designing 60mph streets didn’t work in a city context, but people didn’t know what better was. The thing we should be thinking about is how many people can we move, not how many cars.”

“If you have a programme focusing on the things that save lives, designing streets to protect people biking and walking, you will have a successful vision zero.” Focusing on education alone, she says, “won’t achieve anything”.

Read about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/17/vision-zero-has-the-drive-to-eliminate-road-deaths-lost-its-way?CMP=share_btn_fb

Self-Driving Cars Not Ready For Prime Time

Self-driving cars are failing at detecting humans doing human things. So blame the humans.

THE SELF-DRIVING CAR THAT WILL NEVER ARRIVE

Aug 20, 2018

“If that weren’t enough, self-driving car engineers themselves seem to finally be growing frustrated enough with the whole endeavor that they are engaging in some wild reality-distortion-field tactics. They have begun to blame the cars’ lack of success on non-negotiable aspects of reality. The problem is not that self-driving AI is bad at driving, their logic now goes; it’s that people are bad at walking. The Bloomberg report from Thursday detailing this tension included these devastating paragraphs:

With these timelines slipping, driverless proponents like Ng say there’s one surefire shortcut to getting self-driving cars on the streets sooner: persuade pedestrians to behave less erratically. If they use crosswalks, where there are contextual clues—pavement markings and stop lights—the software is more likely to identify them.”

Read more…

https://theoutline.com/post/5964/the-self-driving-car-that-will-never-arrive?zd=1&zi=uzjjbzsx

Goodbye Cars…

The continued saga of the end of cars.

The Modern Automobile Must Die

If we want to solve climate change, there’s no other option.

By EMILY ATKIN 

“So far, Germany has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 27.7 percent—an astonishing achievement for a developed country with a highly developed manufacturing sector. But with a little over a year left to go, despite dedicating $580 billion toward a low-carbon energy system, the country “is likely to fall short of its goals for reducing harmful carbon-dioxide emissions,” Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. And the reason for that may come down not to any elaborate solar industry plans, but something much simpler: cars.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/150689/modern-automobile-must-die

How America Killed Transit. Service Drives Demand.

Transit in the US has continually cut service to improve the bottom line, effectively causing customers to prefer driving, further reducing revenue. Streets, roads, and highways are more and more clogged with vehicles, and the automotive industry has shown recent interest in alternative transportation. The government can make good on promises of investment in transit, and voters should demand it.

How America Killed Transit

Streetcar, bus, and metro systems have been ignoring one lesson for 100 years: Service drives demand.

JONATHAN ENGLISH 

“One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.”

This has not happened in much of the rest of the world.

“What happened? Over the past hundred years the clearest cause is this: Transit providers in the U.S. have continually cut basic local service in a vain effort to improve their finances. But they only succeeded in driving riders and revenue away. When the transit service that cities provide is not attractive, the demand from passengers that might “justify” its improvement will never materialize.”

Read more…

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-killed-transit/568825/

Driving Us To The Grave

These statistics should be a wake-up call for the US. While the automotive industry continues to promote driving as a lifestyle, and gas prices are low, the love affair continues while people die.

America’s Car Culture is Literally Shortening Your Life: Study

The U.S. has been falling behind its peer nations on traffic safety and now life expectancy as well. There’s a connection. Graph: WHO

“Driving is driving us to the grave.

Life expectancy at birth declined steeply in the U.S. in 2015 and 2016, a new British Journal of Medicine study reports — a finding that was attributed partly to the opioid crisis, but also to America’s ongoing traffic violence problem.”

“So while the opioid addiction grabs headlines, cars have quietly remained a leading killer. In 2015, for example, the U.S. traffic fatality rate jumped 9 percent. And in 2016, it jumped again 5.6 percent, wiping out nearly a decade of improvements. It was the biggest two-year jump in 50 years.

Traffic fatalities have long been a leading cause of death of Americans, and in 2015, they were the 13th leading cause of death in the U.S. overall. But because cars kill a disproportionately high number of younger people, they rank seventh in total years of life lost.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/08/24/americas-car-culture-is-literally-shortening-your-life-study/

What’s Up With NJ Transit?

NJ Transit Makes Deposit on Its Future While Digging Itself out of Hole

New Jersey Transit Allocates Money for Future While Cleaning Up Present Mess

“But even as canceled trains have made commuting hell in North Jersey this summer, and as South Jersey prepares to go for months without regional rail service so personnel and equipment can be used elsewhere for other purposes, the agency has managed to set aside some seed money for future rail expansion.”

Read more…

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/nj-transit-makes-deposit-on-its-future-while-digging-itself-out-of-hole?utm_source=Next+City+Newsletter&utm_campaign=15c62fbdd5-Issue_286_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcee5bf7a0-15c62fbdd5-44033881