Tag: Cambridge

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Bikes Can Be Better Than Cars For People With Disabilities

A BICYCLE IS A “ROLLING WALKING STICK”.

Automobile advocates sometimes assert that people with disabilities need to drive as an argument to negate the need for bike lanes and other infrastructure for bicycling.  But for many people with strength or mobility issues, whether elderly, disabled, or dealing with injuries, riding a bike is easier than walking, and can be safer (and healthier) than driving a car, provided that the city has established the infrastructure to keep people safe on bikes.  A bicycle is a “rolling walking stick”.

Laura Laker Jan. 2, 2018

‘A rolling walking stick’: why do so many disabled people cycle in Cambridge?

Riding a bike may be easier than walking for two-thirds of disabled cyclists, but they often remain invisible to society. Many don’t realise that more than a quarter of disabled commutes in this university city are made by bike.

“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.

For two out of three disabled cyclists, riding a bike is easier than walking, easing joint strain, aiding balance and relieving breathing difficulties. According to recent research by Transport for London, 78% of disabled people are able to cycle, while 15% sometimes use a bike to get around.”

Great read-

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jan/02/cambridge-disabled-people-cycling-rolling-walking-stick

 

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Should Protected Bike Lanes Be Mandatory?

Asbury Park is on it’s way to becoming a model city with a focus on people  instead of cars. The Plan for Walking and Biking is a comprehensive plan to build infrastructure throughout the city to enable people to get around. We have a perfect grid design in much of the city, and in the rest of the city, even in neighborhoods with narrower diagonal streets, Asbury Park is still better situated to planning and implementing infrastructure for people over cars than most cities.  We’re headed in the right direction thanks to a forward thinking transportation manager, and envisioned in our Bike Walk Master Plan…but can we go even further and implement protected bike lanes all over the city?  We hear often that it’s a marathon, not a sprint in planning and design for a city, but we NEED to acknowledge all over the US that cars are destined to be obsolete, and must be replaced with more environmentally stable mobility options – sooner than later.

Cambridge Becomes First U.S. City to Make Protected Bike Lanes Mandatory

By Angie Schmitt 

The Boston-area city of Cambridge is poised to become one of the most-progressive safe-biking cities in the country, thanks to the passage of a bill requiring protected bike lanes on all city streets.

The “Cycling Safety Ordinance” requires city streets to be upgraded to include the safest bike paths whenever a roadway is reconstructed. Advocates hope it to secure a 20-mile network of protected bike lanes in five years for the city of 113,000.

Read about it:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/04/09/cambridge-becomes-first-u-s-city-to-make-protected-bike-lanes-mandatory/?fbclid=IwAR3M1e8wOsQ0HYFfMIBj-7wOIL09df9eJrKDV7Pxvk8J8x2-6CnAAw4DCLo