Springwood Ave: Making A Place People Want To Be

“Urbanism at it’s core is connective and fluid…”

Renaissance Village has accepted applications and residential spaces are being occupied. The objective of the redevelopment of Springwood Ave is to create an affordable place where people live, work, shop, and visit. The intention is to create a truly walkable and livable, vibrant part of the city, with commitment from the city and investment. The redevelopment of Springwood Ave connects it with Memorial Drive, the Transit Center, and Main Street, making it a great example of revitalization, connecting it “seamlessly to the surrounding area” and the rest of the city.

The Failure of “Just Add Water” Urbanism

October 9, 2018 by Arian Horbovetz

“Urbanism, at its core, is connective and fluid, creating places where people want to be, not simply via neighborhood revitalization, but by blending that localized revitalization seamlessly into the surrounding area. There must be a sort of “transition” from one area to the next that guides the resident or visitor gently, instead of assuming that a large-scale new-urbanist creation can suddenly spur arteries of growth in inhospitable urban deserts.”

“…successfully landing commercial tenants and creating an intended neighborhood effect is based largely on the overall health of the environment in which they are built. Mixed-use developments are, inherently, intended to welcome and amplify walkability.”

October 15, 2018October 13, 2018

Walkable City Rules #31: Focus On Speeding

Asbury Park is building a better Main Street and designing infrastructure for accessibility and safety for everyone. Asbury Park is committed to #slowthecars and implementing ways to achieve it.

“It’s the speed, stupid.” Roughly half of this book addresses different aspects of the street and how they are designed and managed. Many of these points may serve multiple objectives and audiences, but they all aim back, in one way or another, at a single issue, vehicle speed.

A Step-by-Step Guide for Fixing Badly Planned American Cities

An excerpt from Jeff Speck’s Walkable City Rules, a step-by-step guide to fixing America’s cities and towns.

JEFF SPECK OCT 9, 2018

Pedestrians walk over a crosswalk on Mass Ave in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Rule 31: Focus on speeding

Street improvements should be linked to keeping speeding in check.

The diagram below is one of many that can be found to communicate this relationship. (Other diagrams show people falling out of buildings, with 20 miles per hour equaling the second floor and 40 miles per hour equaling the seventh.) The basic message to remember is that you are about five times as likely to be killed by a car going 30 as a car going 20, and five times again as likely to be killed by a car going 40.

October 14, 2018October 13, 2018

Creating An Age-Friendly City

How do we stack up in our initiatives creating an age-friendly city? It can start with safe streets for the most vulnerable. If streets are designed for the elderly they are safe for everyone. This is a list Asbury Park can be on as we continue to make the city more liveable: “…more than 700 cities in 39 countries are signed up to the World Health Organization’s global network of age-friendly cities and communities to promote healthy active ageing and improve the quality of life for people over 60.”

What would an age-friendly city look like?

As the world’s population grows older and more urban, cities around the world must decide how to adapt

by Alice Grahame

With the world’s population getting older and more urban, the needs of older residents will play an increasingly important part in the shaping of cities. According to UN figures, the number of over 60s is set to double by 2050, rising from 962m in 2017 to 2.1bn. Already in Akita , Japan, one in three people is over 65. All cities will need to adapt to meet this massive demographic change.

Currently more than 700 cities in 39 countries are signed up to the World Health Organization’s global network of age-friendly cities and communities to promote healthy active ageing and improve the quality of life for people over 60. Membership doesn’t necessarily denote an age-friendly city, but that it is committed to listening and working with its older population to create one.

October 13, 2018October 11, 2018

Asbury Park Continues To Improve On Road Infrastructure

Asbury Park is taking measures to make streets safe and transportation options accessible to everyone. We’ve often thought that all of it needs to be done and it needs to be done NOW. But what we have learned is that 1. these improvements are so much more complicated than what we see on the surface, like paint and concrete. And 2. many of the improvements and changes have to be done incrementally in order to be successful.

CITY OF ASBURY PARK CONTINUES TO IMPROVE ON INFASTRUCTURE

CITY OF ASBURY PARK COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT

New Jersey Department of Transportation’s work on the Main Street Revitalization Project also continues with crews installing electrical wires and underground storm sewer infrastructure along Main Street/State Route 71. Residents are asked to use caution during 24-hour lane and parking closures, while Northbound and Southbound traffic is accommodated via lane shifts. Sidewalk access to residences and businesses will be available at all times. The project, which is anticipated to be completed in the spring of 2020, will include replacement of 18 traffic signals with new pedestrian signals, replacement of electrical utility poles, curb upgrades for ADA compliance at every intersection, upgrades of underground utilities, drainage improvements, lighting improvements and partial sidewalk
replacement. Road reconstruction, final repaving and restriping will follow a traditional road diet plan to accommodate all corridor users and will include creating a center two-way left turn lane with a travel
lane in each direction, bicycle lanes and parking.

“With the tremendous amount of improvements we’re making to our City’s streets, it’s a given that the work is going to be disruptive,” said Mayor John Moor, “ but we need to remember that the goal is to
make our streets safer and create more efficient traffic flow— and the end results will be well worth it.”

October 12, 2018October 11, 2018

A Dire Warning: Cars.

There is no time to lose. Right NOW we need to reduce use of cars. This can be done if there is the will to do it. The planet depends upon us all globally–and Americans are among the worst offenders.

LAURA BLISS OCT 9, 2018

The Planet Can’t Survive Our Transportation Habits

In light of the IPCC’s dire report, substituting some personal convenience in the present could mean that much more hope for the planet’s future.

Smoke from the Waldo Canyon fire engulfs the I-25 north of Colorado Springs, causing a traffic congestion, in Colorado June 26, 2012.

A landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Monday spelled out a grim planetary future in no uncertain terms. If greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius, the most dire effects of climate change will be unleashed. Coastlines will be submerged, droughts and wildfires exacerbated, coral reefs exterminated, severe food shortages and poverty deepened. And humanity has only a fast-closing 12-year window to make the changes necessary to avoid this fate.

According to the report, decarbonizing the transportation sector would require electrifying vehicle fleets, shifting mobility choices from low- to high-efficiency modes en masse, and transforming urban planning to curtail sprawl and make walking, biking, and transit use easier.

October 9, 2018October 8, 2018

Bicycling Infrastructure For People with Disabilities

Asbury Park has partnered with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation in an initiative to make Asbury Park a national model of accessibility.

Mayor John Moor said the partnership with the Foundation team is about a year old. He said the city and the Foundation share a goal of making Asbury Park more inclusive. “(It’s) a tribute to the ever-growing diversity and acceptance that our city is known for,” said Moor.

Laura Laker Tue 2 Jan 2018 02.30

Laura Laker Tue 2 Jan 2018

In the context of an ageing global population, mobility experts are increasingly seeing cycling as a way to help people with disabilities move around cities independently. A bike can act as a “rolling walking stick”; yet looking at its owner you wouldn’t know they had a disability: around 40% of disabled cyclists simply use a regular two-wheeled bike.

October 7, 2018October 5, 2018

Boomers

The Boomer population now around age 65 may still be driving and hate bicyclists, but lets look ahead 10 years…

“…in 10 or 15 years, it will be a different story, and all those slow-walking aging boomers will want those bump-outs, the slower traffic, the safer intersections that a real Vision Zero delivers. Instead of using seniors as a political football, we should be keeping our eye on the longer game.”

LLOYD ALTER September 25, 2018

Why aging boomers need walkable cities more than convenient parking

The fundamental issue in America is that almost anywhere they try to implement Vision Zero, almost everyone in those cities drives. They aren’t willing to be slowed down, they object, and the politicians refuse to do anything that’s going to make drivers angry.

There is no question that people with disabilities who can drive should be accommodated. But when one looks at the health benefits that come from walking, it’s pretty clear that wider sidewalks and bike lanes (which actually make sidewalks safer) are better for people of every generation.

Read more…

https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/why-aging-boomers-need-walkable-cities-more-convenient-parking

October 6, 2018October 5, 2018

What Does Vision Zero Mean?

Learn about Vision Zero from Jerry Foster of Greater Mercer TMA in an article discussing the meaning of VZ as it relates to safer streets in Princeton and in NJ. Aren’t streets and roads designed for safety…or are they primarily designed to expedite cars?

Vision Zero: A Comprehensive Re-Thinking of Road Safety

At the local level some safety advocates have recognized the urgency of the situation (National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) study showing an increase in pedestrian deaths), and are taking up the cause. Below, Jerry Foster of the West Windsor Bicycle & Pedestrian Alliance outlines Vision Zero, a safety plan that has been effective in other countries that activists are trying to bring to New Jersey.

What Is Vision Zero?

It’s not just another blame-the-victim (and enforcement) safety campaign! Vision Zero is a comprehensive re-thinking of road safety that brings everyone to the table to systematically prevent crashes and reduce crash severity — just like airline and railroad crashes.

October 5, 2018October 4, 2018

Book: Bike Lanes are White Lanes

There are all kinds of bike riders in Asbury Park. Lycra-clad roadies zoom down avenues, kids zip around in clusters on streets and on sidewalks, visitors pedal bike share bikes and beach cruisers, and residents who don’t own cars ride bikes for their main mode of transportation. Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition is focused on transportation equity: safe streets for everyone, at every age, in every neighborhood. Right now there is a Bike Walk Master Plan in final draft showing bicycle and walking infrastructure on almost every street in the city, so everyone can get to school, work, church, shopping and recreation safely!

Bike Lanes Are White Lanes

Bicycle Advocacy and Urban Planning

Melody L. Hoffmann

In this study of three prominent U.S. cities—Milwaukee, Portland, and Minneapolis—Hoffmann examines how the burgeoning popularity of urban bicycling is trailed by systemic issues of racism, classism, and displacement. From a pro-cycling perspective, Bike Lanes Are White Lanes highlights many problematic aspects of urban bicycling culture and its advocacy as well as positive examples of people trying earnestly to bring their community together through bicycling.

Buy the book here:

https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9780803276789/

October 4, 2018October 3, 2018

What is Ciclovia? Get Ready For Asbury Park ALIVE!

Asbury Park ALIVE scheduled for May 2019, is our version of this hugely popular event that started in Bogota, Columbia. A ciclovia (“cycleway”) every week brings residents out to ride bikes, walk, juggle or otherwise have fun on city streets. The cost is minimal making it relatively easy to implement weekly. In the US these events are becoming popular but usually are less frequent and more involved, with vendors, activities, music. Asbury Park ALIVE will be an event not to be missed! Stay tuned!

Asbury Park ALIVE!

How Bogotá’s Cycling Superhighway Shaped a Generation

For many families, the Ciclovía is often one of the very best things about living in Bogotá. And kids start very young.

A boy cycles along the Septima during Ciclovía. Normally a chokingly busy thoroughfare, half of the road is closed to traffic every Sunday and holiday. Laura Dixon/Madison McVeigh

“Since the 40s, when the automobile started becoming dominant, cities—or streets—have been designed for cars,” Montero said. “People have internalized that that is how cities look and so assume that’s normal, that the streets are dedicated to cars.

So, why don’t more cities adopt similar weekend cycle paths?

Hundreds of delegations have come to Bogotá to see how it works, and there are now Ciclovías across the Americas, though none as extensive or regular as here.

The big problem for most places, experts say, is the expense. In Bogotá, the district estimates the cost to be less than 10 U.S. cents per user each week. “That’s like nothing,” says Ramos. But U.S. cities like Los Angeles (which runs CicLAvia four times a year) and New York have seen costs skyrocket with organizers often liable for policing costs and insurance.”