League Of American Bicyclists Instructor Seminar

News!

Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition will host a League Of American Bicyclists Cycling Instructor seminar on November 3rd, 4th, and 5th at The Boys And Girls Club.

Bicycling in Asbury Park has been transforming over the 8 years years that APCSC has been in existence.

When APCSC was founded there was only one (very worn) bike lane in the city.

People were riding bikes for daily transportation or recreation with zero awareness of the need for safe infrastructure. Main Street was a speeding 4 lane highway, many businesses had been abandoned, and drivers ruled city streets.

Locals began advocating with us and learning how we can #slowthecars with traffic calming measures like bike lanes, bumpouts, mini traffic circles, raised crosswalks, and speed bumps. The Main Street road diet was implemented after an energetic 18 months APCSC campaign.

Streets that are safe for anyone at any age to ride a bike will encourage people to ride bikes.

Residents and visitors now are beginning to understand the need for safe bike riding infrastructure – for health, economic, and social benefits.

We still have a long way to go, but improvements are being made all over the city. During these years people have become aware of the need for equitable mobility for the most vulnerable road users – which is everyone outside of a vehicle.

Take a look at the Asbury Park Plan For Walking And Biking, particularly beginning on page 63 to see plans for the current work on Memorial Drive!

Our hope is that we might be able to encourage parents, teachers, and residents to be a part of a “Bike Bus” – a global movement in which adults on bikes pick up kids on bikes at “bus stops” all over town and guide them to school.

Here’s a video of Montclair’s Bike Bus In action on a recent Friday with 163 kids. 143 adults!

And in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Make Way for the Bike Bus. For the school commute, families are taking to the streets with two wheels. Some have termed the movement “kidical mass.”

This is where League of American Bicyclist Instructor training comes in!

The League Seminar will equip instructors to educate members of the community, particularly parents and school kids to ride bikes confidently and safely.

Certified LCIs are empowered to teach courses that cover youth riding, how to ride confidently and legally with traffic, how to share paths and trails, motorist education, bike handling, group riding, and more.

Membership in The League Of American Bicyclists and the Smart Cycling course are prerequisites. The courses are held throughout the year in locations all over the US.

For more information, email apcompletestreets@gmail.com if you’re interested in becoming a League Certified Instructor.

Onward~

Polli Schildge, Editor APCSC

June 29, 2021

Cities Must Become Car-Free To Survive

The auto industry has co-opted our brains with snazzy advertising, unrealistic settings where drivers own the road, selling us cars with the idea that our very identity is tied to the vehicle we drive. In this car-dominated culture people defend their entitlement to drive even when the lives of vulnerable road users are at stake. Car production now outpaces population growth globally, spewing pollution, and destroying the environment and human health in general.

City streets are car sewers, but residents of cities are incensed about lack of parking, and whether bicycle riders should be permitted on sidewalks, boardwalks, or the street itself. The small amount of space allowed for bikes (and other micro-mobility) has become the most hotly contested parts of urban infrastructure. One of the greatest successes in automotive ~~brainwashing~~ influence has been the antagonistic relationship of people walking against people riding bikes and scooters, taking the focus off the responsibility of drivers causing over 40 thousand deaths a year in the US alone.

We believe that in American cities, especially small cities like Asbury Park we can gradually reduce and eventually eliminate the need for personal vehicles by supporting alternative transportation options like micro-mobility (scooters, bikes, skateboards etc), and transit in the form of jitneys, pedicabs, and busses.

While we continue to build more infrastructure for people to get around without cars, we need to create more live-able spaces for people to safely gather, to play, to do business, and to move about the city.

#toomanycars #walkablecity #bikeablecity #placesforpeople

CITIES ‘MUST BECOME CAR-FREE TO SURVIVE’

JUNE 23, 2021

The researchers said future city planning must include a focus on reducing dependence on cars, promoting fewer and shorter trips and encouraging walking and cycling as primary modes of local transport. Public transport should be encouraged for longer journeys, the researchers argued, and cars should only be used for emergencies or special occasions.

Lead author Dr. Rafael Prieto Curiel commented: “The city of the future, with millions of people, cannot be constructed around cars and their expensive infrastructure. In a few decades, we will have cities with 40 or 50 million inhabitants, and these could resemble car parks with 40 or 50 million cars. The idea that we need cars comes from a very pollutant industry and very expensive marketing.”

September 2, 2020September 3, 2020

It’s Time To Break Up With Cars

Americans didn’t immediately fall in love with cars. It’s been a Machiavellian relationship for a century, so maybe we can break up now.

The Car Culture That’s Helping Destroy the Planet Was By No Means Inevitable

Jeff Sparrow

On the Relentless Campaign to Force Americans to Accept the Automobile

“In 1995, comedian Denis Leary recorded a track called “Asshole,” a song about an all-American guy who likes “football and porno and books about war.” It concludes with a monologue:

I’m gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado convertible
Hot pink, with whale skin hubcaps
And all leather cow interior
And big brown baby seal eyes for head lights
And I’m gonna drive in that baby at 115 miles per hour
Gettin’ one mile per gallon
Sucking down Quarter Pounder cheese burgers from McDonald’s
In the old-fashioned, non-biodegradable styrofoam containers
And when I’m done sucking down those greaseball burgers
I’m gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag
And then I’m gonna toss the styrofoam containers right out the side

And there ain’t a goddamn thing anybody can do about it … “

Yes, there is. Vote.

For those concerned about the environment, cars are an ecological catastrophe, while the current president celebrates car ownership as a true hallmark of freedom for blue blooded Americans, and the US remains the “spiritual home of car culture”. Vote.

So are we doomed to live forever in a polarized country where there is a constant war for space on the road between people walking, on bikes, and driving, and over 40 thousand people die in automobile collisions each year?

Maybe there is hope. Vote.

Cars don’t have to own us.

Here’s something to think about as American cities (and yes, we in Asbury Park) try to figure out how to keep people safe while social distancing by opening streets to people walking, riding bikes, skateboards, scooters…there could be one good thing that comes out of Covid-19.

The spaces between parked cars can be for people, not for car domination. It’s so in cities where drivers don’t rule the roads. As one Face Book commenter in the thread notes, when he drives into one of these streets he “immediately wonders whether he should be there, then sees the benefits to everyone, and drives slowly and cautiously to his destination”. With American car culture could this happen here, or would we continue to see angry, entitled drivers claiming their right to the road, endangering us all?

Here’s the link to Modacitylife FaceBook page, where you can enjoy beautiful city inspiration, listen to the audio book, Building The Cycling City, and buy the book here.

November 4, 2019November 3, 2019

Ads For Cars Are Like Ads For Cigarettes

Remember The Marlboro Man?

With 40,000 deaths by car last year in the US, “…it may be time to treat automobile companies like cigarette manufactures if they’re going to encourage this kind of reckless aggression.”

This BMW ad in Canada is no different from the multitude of ads in the US depicting cars as aggressive, powerful “beasts” on empty city streets, or zooming on winding, precipitous mountain roads. Ads show vehicles with dark, tinted windows, offering glimpses of a perfectly attired man or woman cocooned in the sound and climate-controlled, luxurious interior. Trucks and SUVs are most often shown off-road, with rugged, sporty owners off loading camping gear or surfboards, living the life. Ads work – they’re aspirational, especially ads for luxury, life-style items, and automobile manufacturers are profiting on knowing that they can continue brainwashing the public as they have been doing since the 1920s. Can we stop the killing by working to break car culture the way we have been trying to break smoking culture (it won’t be easy…now it’s vaping)?

What would an honest car advertisement look like?

By Shawn Micallef Contributing Columnist Sat., Nov. 2, 2019

“Often violent films and video games are accused of influencing behaviour, but those are fictional portrayals. Advertising is different: it’s aspirational, showing us a lifestyle we should, ostensibly, be striving for with the help of whatever product is being sold…What this ad and others like it are suggesting is that driver aggression is normal and should even be encouraged. In Toronto and other cities we’re familiar with the unleashed beast though, and it’s a killer.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/11/02/what-would-an-honest-car-advertisement-look-like.html

July 8, 2019February 23, 2020

Video: Amsterdam children fighting cars in 1972

Amsterdam wasn’t always bicycling heaven. Vehicles had been taking over city streets there just as they have been taking over streets in the US, but they did something about it…

This 1972 documentary video tells the story of a how the children in a neighborhood in Amsterdam fought for safe streets and a place to play with what we now call “tactical urbanism”.The area had become congested by vehicles. People, especially children were endangered. Does this 1972 neighborhood look like any American cities we are familiar with today? Some US cities are taking steps to change from “car culture” , into cities for people of all ages , but not enough, and not fast enough. 40,000 people are killed in motor vehicle related crashes every year in the US!

The documentary video was discovered recently, and shortened to about 10 minutes with subtitles. Watch and share.

Image from the documentary from 1972. The streets are dominated by cars and there is not a tree in sight.

“This would be a perfect area for a trial with a maximum speed of 30km/h” (18mph) explains a traffic expert of the city of Amsterdam to a child in a film that was broadcast on Dutch national TV almost 42 years ago.

“The TV documentary was made for a progressive broadcasting corporation and shows the Amsterdam neighbourhood “De Pijp” which was about 100 years old at the time. The homes were run down and small. The streets were never built, nor fit for all the cars brought in by the 40,000 people living in the small area and its many visitors. This led to an overpopulated neighbourhood with a lot of dirt and filth and especially the children suffered. The documentary is one of a series and this particular episode looks at the situation from a child’s perspective.”

The same street as seen in Google Streetview is very different. The carriage way was narrowed. The homes renovated and the trees and bicycles make the area a lot friendlier.

Automobile Supremacy

Does this sound familiar Asbury Park?

Dangerous behavior like failing to yield to pedestrians is almost never enforced. A Wisconsin study showing drivers only yielded to pedestrians 16 percent of the time, indicating that if cops wanted to, they could spend their time doing nothing else but writing failure-to-yield tickets.

A law professor lists a dozen ways that our legal system puts its thumb on the scale for drivers to the detriment of everyone else: transit users, cyclists and pedestrians. We are dominated by car culture and until these laws are repealed we will suffer the consequences.

How Driving is Encouraged and Subsidized — By Law

By Angie Schmitt Mar 6, 2019

Driving is so hard-wired into American culture, life and institutions, that it’s hard to account for all the ways it is subsidized, preferenced or otherwise favored.

Read all 12 ways that drivers rule the road- walkers and bike riders are at the mercy of cars:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/06/heres-how-driving-is-encouraged-and-subsidized-by-law/

January 16, 2019January 14, 2019

Rutgers Report: How Does Crash Reporting Influence The Reader?

Neglecting to name a driver of a vehicle, or to describe an incident with details of negligence on the part of the victim perpetuates car culture, and the increasing numbers of traffic injuries and deaths of the most vulnerable road users.

Language and Perception matters. What are crash report articles really saying?

“Inclusion or exclusion of an agent affects perception of
blame. Sentences with agents make the actions of the
perpetrator clear and reduce victim blaming.”

EDITORIAL PATTERNS IN BICYCLIST AND PEDESTRIAN CRASH REPORTING

Kelcie Ralph | Rutgers
Evan Iacobucci | Rutgers
Calvin Thigpen | Lime
Tara Goddard | Texas A&M

“Around one fifth of the 37,000 annual traffic deaths in the United States are
bicyclists or pedestrians. Despite this figure, there is little public outcry about
these vulnerable road user (VRU) deaths. Media coverage has been shown to shape public perceptions in other fields, primarily by signaling which topics merit attention (agenda-setting) and by infuencing how those issues are
interpreted (framing). This study examines how local news outlets report car crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists.”

Read the report:

Editorial Patterns in Bicyclist and Pedestrian Crash Reporting

January 7, 2019January 8, 2019

Copenhagen Wasn’t Always Bike Rider’s Paradise

Copenhagen wasn’t always a bicycle rider’s dream.

Like cities all over the US, Copenhagen once embraced car culture as a mark of economic advancement after the depression, and post WWII. By the mid-1960s streets were clogged with cars. More and more traffic fatalities occurred, and cars had a environmental impacts. Then came the oil crisis of 1973…and Copenhagen responded differently than the US. Instead of implementing the dangerous “right turn on red” to keep cars moving to save gas, Copenhagen made it less desirable to drive and easier and safer to ride bikes. While we’ve struggled more and more over the years with traffic congestion, crashes, and hard-to-find parking, Copenhageners protested, and have been getting more and more bike infrastructure ever since. Here’s how it was done.

James Thoem is a project manager with Copenhagenize, a consultancy that works with cities to create more bicycle-friendly streets. He is working on a project for the City of Detroit, creating its entire greater downtown bicycle strategy.

What Bicycle-Friendly Copenhagen Can Teach Us About Commuting

Matt Bubbers Copenhagen Special to the Globe and Mail

Published March 7, 2017 Updated April 14, 2017

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/what-bicycle-friendly-copenhagen-can-teach-us-about-commuting/article34233541/

January 4, 2019January 2, 2019

We Let The Automobile Take Over

These amazing news clips from the 20s and 30s tell a story of how the automobile took over, but not without pushback from citizens and lawmakers. The US has a long way to go to become a nation that is willing to change the car culture, but it can happen. Even Copenhagen wasn’t always the bicycling capital of the world.

THEY SAW IT COMING: The Car Was Always The Cause of All the Problems in Our City

As we start the new year, let’s take a look back at how everyone knew the automobile was a menace, yet somehow let it take over anyway.

By Ben Verde Jan 1, 2019

“The automobile has ruined our cities — choking our streets and making our communities less livable.

But Americans who care about cities saw it coming from the very first days of the Age of the Automobile. Residents wrote to their local newspapers, begging lawmakers to not capitulate to motorists or car makers as they sought to turn public streets into free parking lots. Reporters covered the rise of private ownership of cars as a scourge on our cities. Judges decried what too many people today think is normal: streets clogged by privately owned single-occupancy vehicles in the public right of way.”

See the news clippings:

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/01/01/they-saw-it-coming-the-car-was-always-the-cause-of-all-the-problems-in-our-city/

December 30, 2018December 30, 2018

America’s Ongoing Problem With Traffic Violence

The opiod epidemic grabs headlines and gun deaths have brought about calls for regulation.

The rate of traffic deaths has continued to rise but little is actually being done in the US to address the problem as a national health crisis.

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

By Angie Schmitt Aug 24, 2018

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

“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.

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