Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition
Transportation Equity in Our City
The threat of tornadoes, thunderstorms, and high wind turned out to be nothing at all, and we had a great time!
Stay tuned for the August Slow Roll!check out APComplete StreetsCoalition.com.Send your email address to apcompletestreets@gmail.com to get on the mailing list!
We recently had a meeting in Asbury Park about the problem of speeding, and slowing drivers on our streets, a proposed traffic calming measure, specifically mini roundabouts, and how speed limits are determined.
Our Transportation Manager attempted to explain to the attendees what the 85th Percentile Rule is as they questioned why we can’t change speed limit signs. We just can’t. Or at least not without great difficulty.
In simple terms it’s an engineering calculation that the speed limit is determined by the actual speed that people drive. It’s hopefully soon-to-be edited Manual For Urban Traffic Control Devices, MUCTD.
The 85th Percentile Rule is horrible. It’s not about safety.
It’s about expediting the movement of vehicles.
Here’s a simple, short video with great graphics with Transportation 4 America director Beth Osborne, who joined Wall Street Journal correspondent George Downs to explain why one controversial method for setting speed limits results in higher and higher speeds.
It’s also clearly explained in the excellent site for National Association of City Transportation Officials, NACTO. These folks get it.
We have city planners who are hamstrung by these regulations, but we can get around them with creative solutions to #slowthecars like mini-roundabouts, speed humps, street narrowing…and we have the grant money do do it.
Let’s get on the same page about saving lives and saving the planet.
Onward.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
The purpose of this project is to support Safe Routes to School (SRTS) safety and access improvements by implementing traffic calming measures on Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue between Prospect Avenue and Comstock Street. The project Design and Construction cost is funded by federal funds administered through NJDOT Local Aid Transportation Alternatives (TA) Program and Design Assistance.
PROPOSED PROJECT LIMITS AND IMPROVEMENTS MAY INCLUDE:
ANTICIPATED PROJECT SCHEDULE:
Design Phase Completed: 2022
Construction: 2023
VIRTUAL PUBLIC MEETING INFORMATION FOR WEDNESDAY 12/15/21:
The City of Asbury Park will hold a Public Information Center (PIC) to provide local residents and businesses with information on the 2018 SRTS Asbury Park – Traffic Calming, Bike and Pedestrian Safety Upgrades, Third Ave & Fourth Ave between Prospect Avenue and Comstock Street project. You are encouraged to actively participate by providing comments at the meeting, by mail, or by email.
PARTICIPATION INFORMATION
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
From 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Brief Presentation at 6:05 PM and 7:05 PM
The purpose of the meeting is to provide an opportunity for input on the project. The Public Information Center will be held online:
Participate on a Computer / Smart Phone:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5773006012162768396
– OR –
Participate by Telephone:
Call In Number: +1 (631) 992-3221
Access Code: 962-301-191
You will have an opportunity to review exhibits, ask questions and discuss any concerns. Property owners with rental units are advised that tenants are also invited and encouraged to participate.
PUBLIC COMMENT DUE BY 1/5/2022:
If you are unable to participate in the public meeting on 12/15/21 or want to provide comments after the meeting, please click here to provide comment by January 5, 2022.
We have an idea…
Vehicles have taken over our waterfront landscape, and we believe that people can take the space back. One way that people are succeeding in creating places for people on city streets is tactical urbanism.
That’s the message of “The quick way to make pedestrian plazas,” a new video by City Beautiful, a YouTube channel that features the strategies of tactical urbanism for the edification of city planners and livable-streets advocates. It mixes boosterism with some helpful pointers, such as best practices for dealing with Americans With Disability Act requirements and businesses that need freight loading zones.
There was a time in the early years of Asbury Park before cars were prioritized, that our waterfront was for people. Imagine restaurants and cafes, musicians, activities, and people strolling, bicycling and scootering along a car-free Ocean Avenue. Some have cited possible difficulty getting trash pickup and deliveries, and inconvenience to customers if they have to walk to their establishments. We know that businesses thrive all over the world where traffic is eliminated or reduced.
There are a (limited) number parking spaces on our waterfront, causing a continuous flow of vehicles all season with drivers circling, looking to snag an empty space. This constant (often torturously slow) movement of vehicles is the definition of traffic. The effect of traffic everywhere is environmentally disastrous, leading to disease, and catastrophic numbers of injuries and deaths yearly to people outside and inside vehicles.
We believe that city leaders get that we need to do something about traffic and we’re working on a solution to create a safe, inviting car-free, or much more people-centric Ocean Avenue. We’re looking for ideas for jitneys, pedicabs, other ways to get people to their beach destinations. Help us reimagine Asbury’s waterfront. We might also want to consider some tactical urbanism!
AP city council was willing to change their position after APCSC persistently presented the benefits of a road diet. After 18 months they voted unanimously to accept the NJDOT Main Street plan, including the road diet. The work is almost complete, and is leading to continued improvements to make Asbury Park a truly walkable and bikeable city, and safe for everyone to get around, especially the most vulnerable.The Publisher of Tri City News was also willing to change his position from calling APCSC “Wild Eyed Fanatics”, to becoming one of our biggest supporters!
Summer doesn’t end until September 21st, but in past Septembers the Shore towns became quiet after Labor Day Weekend. This year has been different in so many ways, in addition that visitors may be staying in towns along the Jersey Shore through the end of the month, and perhaps even longer because work and school may have been halted, delayed, or virtual.
There will be a continued, somewhat reduced volume of automobiles on the roads during Covid, but since March, even though there have been fewer vehicles miles traveled (VMT), there have been MORE fatal traffic collisions. These crashes are mostly due to excessive speeding, and partly a result of more open-feeling roads where drivers feel more entitled to run stop signs, cruise though right turns at traffic signals, and behave more aggressively toward other road users, specifically people riding bikes.
Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition strives to educate drivers and people riding bikes to ensure that we can all stay safe. While Asbury Park is gradually implementing infrastructure to #slowthecars and make it safer for people who ride bikes, there is a lot of misunderstanding about how bicycle riders may use the roadway, where, and how.
In every jurisdiction in NJ bike riders may “use the full lane”, meaning that people on bikes have the rights and privileges of people driving. If a bike rider is causing a significant slowing of the flow of traffic, the bike rider should move to the right if practicable, and people on bikes are NOT required to give way to drivers.
Asbury Park is implementing bike lanes which so far are mostly painted outside of parked cars next to moving traffic. These lanes are useful for indicating that bike riders may be present, and they serve as traffic calming to #slowthecsars, but paint doesn’t protect. The vast amount of asphalt is still devoted to motor vehicles, leaving a narrow slice of roadway where driver side doors may swing open (the “dooring zone”), causing bicyclists serious injury or death. In places where there are no bike lanes at all, there may be grates, or debris in the shoulder, so people on bikes should ride on the roadway, ride predictably, and NOT hug the curb. Use bright bike lights, especially on the back, even during the day.
Bike lane in the “dooring zone”.
Finally, on signage:
In many cities like AP, where the jurisdiction or DOT has built infrastructure and put up signage for bicycling, there’s the ubiquitous yellow “Share The Road” sign, which is intended to mean that drivers should defer to people on bikes, but it’s often read the opposite way, that people on bikes should share the road with drivers. Even more problematic, are signs in Asbury Park that state “Bike Lane Ahead” or “Bike Lane Ends”. Drivers may easily misconstrue these signs to mean that people on bikes are only permitted in these areas on the bike lanes, and not to ride on the roadway, and that they must somehow vaporize when the bike lane disappears.
No more Share The Road signs.
BEST sign!
Misleading sign indicating that bike riders are only permitted here.
Misleading signage indicating that bike riders are not permitted beyond this point.
Let’s urge city leaders to address the need for more, and better infrastructure for people riding bikes. Help APCSC educate about bike riding. And meanwhile let’s get on our bikes and ride! There will be more driver awareness when there are more people riding bikes.
Onward!
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This NYTIMES article, filled with great graphics and data has evoked many responses from readers, and inspired other opinion pieces like this from StreetsBlog.
What are your thoughts about minimizing or eliminating automobiles in Asbury Park? How do you envision our city in 2 years, 5 years, or 10? We know that real estate has been strong, even during the pandemic, and gradually we will see more condos built on iStar’s lots, meaning more people, and undoubtedly more cars, unless we start now to mitigate car use and parking availability. Within the past couple of weeks traffic we’ve seen traffic escalate back to pre pandemic congestion in the business district and waterfront. Drivers are speeding in every neighborhood in the city.
APCSC believes in a walkable, bikeable, livable Asbury Park where everyone, especially the most vulnerable can access every part of the city without the dangers associated with motor vehicles.
Read on…
“Automobiles are not just dangerous and bad for the environment; they are also profoundly wasteful of the land around us, taking up way too much physical space to transport too few people. It’s geometry.
In most American cities, wherever you look, you will see a landscape constructed primarily for the movement and storage of automobiles, not for the enjoyment of people: endless wide boulevards and freeways for cars to move swiftly; each road lined with parking spaces for cars at rest; retail establishments ringed with spots for cars…”
50 cars: 55 square feet per person.
One bus: 9 square feet per person
50 bicycles: 15 square feet per person
Read it here:
In most American cities, bike and walk advocates beg for validation and funding like a “charity case”, and end up getting acknowledged and funded as such, resulting in insufficient or piecemeal infrastructure. We commonly see bike lanes that abruptly end, unprotected bike lanes that don’t offer leading bicycle intervals or leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs and LBIs), or safe left turns, and painted lines “that put cyclists between fast-moving traffic and parked cars with doors that capriciously swing open”, so only experienced riders will brave them, and discouraging new riders. This kind of bike and walk design and implementation continues to give drivers the sense of entitlement that roads are intended for them, and discourages people from riding bikes, scooters, and walking, thereby creating more traffic congestion perpetuating the inherent safety, health, and environmental issues.
As advocates for safe, complete streets, do we dare to go big to make environmental, social, and safety gains we hope to achieve? If American bike and walk advocates are “pitching ourselves as a niche, special-interest group”, we are “tacitly agreeing that cars are and should be the dominant mode of transportation…”
The auto industry has dominated since the 1930s by promoting plans for highways and streets for cars. Asbury Park is a 1.4 mile square city, where we have envisioned a plan for biking and walking, a network of infrastructure that can be a model for cities all over the US. Let’s do it big. Onward to 2020 and beyond!
“More often than not, bike infrastructure is created reactively. Typically in response to a collision or near collision with a car, an individual or advocacy group identifies a single route that needs better infrastructure. We gather community support and lobby local officials for the desired change, trying as hard as we can to ask for the cheapest, smallest changes so that our requests will be seen as realistic.
What’s the problem with this model?
It’s like imagining a bridge and asking for twigs—useless, unable to bear any meaningful weight, easily broken. And it’s treating bike infrastructure like a hopeless charity case.
This makes bike infrastructure seem like a small, special-interest demand that produces no real results in terms of shifting to sustainable transportation, and it makes those giving up road space and tax dollars feel as though they are supporting a hopeless charity.
But when roads, highways, and bridges are designed and built, they aren’t done one neighborhood at a time, one city-council approval at a time. We don’t build a few miles of track, or lay down some asphalt wherever there is “local support” and then leave 10-mile gaps in between.”
Read it:
Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition founding member, Polli Schildge standing in the left turn lane on Asbury Park’s Main Street road diet!