Tag: bike riding

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Encourage Bike Riding During The Covid-19 Crisis

Thankfully Asbury Park residents don’t need to use public transport to get around. Because it’s only 1.4 miles sq, we can bike, scooter or walk almost anywhere. Surprisingly, Italy and Spain have banned cycling during the coronavirus crisis, even though they have well-developed bike infrastructure. It’s counter-intuitive to ban bikes – drivers of motor vehicles are responsible for 1.3 million deaths a year. During the viral pandemic there are fewer drivers, but riding a bike is safer than driving a motorized vehicle. So especially now, it should be made easier to ride bikes. “The Colombian capital, Bogotá, has begun to do this.”  Besides avoiding crowded mass transit, the benefits of outdoor exercise to physical and mental health are well-documented.
The logic for these bicycling bans is to avoid the strain on health services in case a cyclist is injured and needs to be hospitalized, but this “approaches the issue from the wrong way”. Cycling is inherently safe, and the “the danger is almost all external” – from drivers of motor vehicles. If the intention really is to prevent bicyclist injuries and fatalities, then the best way would be to reduce speed limits.

So let’s encourage bicycling, especially now.

Why not encourage cycling during the coronavirus lockdown?

Bikes allows people to maintain isolation but provide important respite from being indoors

Cycling for everyday transport has not so far been restricted outside places which have imposed hugely draconian containment measures, like China. While Italy and Spain have placed temporary bans on leisure cycling, riding a bike for permitted everyday travel is officially allowed, albeit with reports of some over-zealous police enforcement.

On Thursday, the chief executive of British Cycling, Julie Harrington, wrote to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, urging ministers to add cycling to their list of recommended activities during the outbreak.

Earlier this week, a group of nearly 50 academics and experts on public health and transport wrote an open letter to the government, urging ministers to not discourage walking and cycling amid the pandemic, noting their vital importance in the wider public health issue of combating inactivity.

Read about it~

Let’s encourage bicycling now.

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The Beauty And Frustration of Riding A Bike In The City-A Graphic Story

This charming and thought-provoking graphic story illustrates the beauty of riding a bike in the city, and also the frustration and danger – and asks whether motorist entitlement making us question our confidence in the human race.  In this case the bike rider arrives at a happy ending.

Drivers display behaviors on the road that indicate that they feel entitled, but in a weird way it’s not the fault of drivers themselves. The titans of the auto and oil and gas industries have made a concerted effort since the 1920s to  brainwash the populace, when the first affordable cars rolled off the assembly line, making them affordable and available to almost everyone, and cities built roads that accommodated cars, and marginalized people.

In the interest of promoting car culture the industry has deliberately co-opted our vernacular to take responsibility away from drivers, using words like “accident”, which is a rare, pre-ordained and unavoidable incident, rather than “crash”, which all vehicle related incidents are.   “Jaywalking” is a completely made up word intended to marginalize, and even criminalize walkers. The term “parking”, which now is only applied to parking vehicles, is originally a West Germanic word, pre-4c., meaning “fencing”, in Medieval Latin, “enclosure, park“, in old French, as well as Italian parco, Spanish parque, etc.  We even use a driving license as the main form of ID in the US.

Asbury Park, like many cities in the US is working on changing car culture with incremental infrastructure improvements, improving mass transit, adding micro-mobility options, and making it less convenient to drive in the city, and more desirable and safer to ride a bike and walk.

‘Motorists undercut any confidence you ever had in the human race’: New York cycling – a cartoon

Marcellus Hall is a New York-based illustrator

The Illustrated City: Despite its traffic, for cyclists, Manhattan is a contained sprawl that unfolds like a pop-up book, its history evident everywhere

See the story:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/sep/20/motorists-undercut-any-confidence-you-ever-had-in-the-human-race-new-york-cycling-a-cartoon

 

 

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The Auto Industry Has Co-Opted Our Language

The automotive industry has co-opted our language and we’re just becoming aware of the calculated plan. We’re people driving vehicles, and we’re also people riding bikes, and walking – and yes, riding scooters too. But guess who gets the benefit of language that absolves them of responsibility in injuries and fatalities? It’s NOT an accident.

We don’t say “plane accident.” We shouldn’t say “car accident” either.

AUTOMAKERS TRIED TO SHAPE NEWS COVERAGE OF CRASHES — BY CALLING THEM ACCIDENTS

In response to the emerging public backlash against cars (which were, at the time, largely owned and driven by the wealthy), automakers and other industry groups pushed for a new set of laws that kept pedestrians off the streets, except at crosswalks.

To get people to follow these laws, they tried to shape news coverage of crashes. The National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, an industry group, established a free wire service for newspapers: Reporters could send in the basic details of a traffic collision, and would get in return a complete article to print the next day. These articles, printed widely, shifted the blame for crashes to pedestrians — and almost always used the word “accident.”

Read how we’ve been brainwashed:

https://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/8995151/crash-not-accident

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Cities Want To Get People To Ride Bikes, Walk, And Use Mass Transit

Housing, and infrastructure for walking and biking are interrelated. APCSC believes that Asbury Park is working effectively on both.

“…access could improve even more as the city builds on its ambitious Minneapolis 2040 plan, a comprehensive effort to curb the influence of single-family zoning and add more housing density…protected infrastructure matters too. If people don’t feel safe on their bikes, they’re not going to take them.”

What Cities Are Getting Wrong About Public Transportation

ANDREW SMALL JAN 17, 2019

Cities could get more people walking, biking, and riding transit, according to a new report, if they just know where to look for improvement.

 

Despite the tireless efforts of transit planners, bike-lane boosters, and other actors in the mobility arena, the mode-share percentages don’t seem to budge much in the any given growing city as they add more people, despite massive investments in transit infrastructure.

Read more…

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/public-transportation-problems-sustainable-mobility-data/580684/?fbclid=IwAR2QQCCqUAVrisNnTAy6KrpEc5IcNzyNs0GXzFyM3ys9_gx_XufR1xUfEN8