What Is Asbury Park Waiting For? Advocating for Quick Build. And what the heck is a “sneckdown”?

Hello friends of Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition,

Hoping that you’ve all been safe and healthy during these winter months.

In a communication today with The City Of Asbury Park administration we discussed the removal of bollards during the recent mini, almost non-snow storm, and the delay of DPW putting them back because of the threat of another (zero) snow event. Instead of being taken away with the first forecast of snow and stored for the entire winter (snow or not) as in previous years, they were moved to the side of the roads, But it’s taken time to get them back in place where they do a critical service making streets safer for people walking and rolling. Essentially putting peoples’ safety at risk while protecting plows and bollards.

City officials too often neglect to improve road infrastructure, using snow plowing as the excuse that mini-roundaboutscurb extensions, (aka “bulb outs), speed bumps, pedestrian islands will impede plows.

First, safety road improvements can easily be designed not to interfere with plowing.

Second, the snow in our area is negligible, but even in cities where there is snowfall, it can be beneficial to safety with the snow itself creating a road narrowing effect, called a “sneckdown”,

The “portmanteau mashes up “snow” and “neckdown,” an engineering term for a sidewalk extension or street island designed to damper drivers.”

This is what happened in Asbury Park when one bollard was not removed during a snowfall. It’s a snowy mini-roundabout, creating a road-narrowing, traffic calming effect.

In addition to being a snowy safety measure, DPW wouldn’t have to spend time picking bollards up and putting them back.

Recently across the US there have been advocate and administrative meetings, and articles published about how to quickly implement measures to make our streets safer.

On Jan. 25th I attended a great meeting with the NJ Bike & Walk Coalition SAFE Network “Streets Are For Everyone”.

The topic of the SAFE Network meeting was Quick Build Demonstration Projects.

Advocates from several municipalities shared projects they’ve completed, most with with help from technical assistance grants.

This Free Complete Streets Technical Assistance grant expires Feb. 2nd. We do not know at this time whether Asbury Park has submitted an application.

Crashes occur regularly in the city, especially during the tourist season. I’ve seen the aftermath on multiple occasions, and I’ll be some of you readers have too.

We don’t know current crash data in Asbury Park, or numbers of injuries or deaths.

We do know that there’s a terrible speeding problem in Asbury Park.

Some residents have protested traffic calming measures like speed bumps and mini traffic circles with the mistaken belief that they’ll lose street parking. So far no other prescribed solutions have been installed, and we don’t know of projects slated for implementation. (Not for lack of inquiring, so we’ll let you know when we find out.)

We know that “Quick Build” tactical urbanism projects work to make streets safer.

Take a look at Red Bank’s report on their project.

Pedestrian Safety Demonstration Project Borough of Red Bank, Monmouth County, NJ

The NJBWC meeting was right in line with an opinion piece in the Washington Post yesterday, by Janette Sadik-Khan, former Transportation Director on NYC, and Kate D. Levin.

Gift article: Washington Post: Want safer streets? Paint them.

Opinion Want safer streets? Paint them. By Janette Sadik-Khan and Kate D. Levin January 29, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. EST

Lastly, a piece was published today in Strong Towns:

No One Should Be the Second Person To Die on a Dangerous Street

As I noted above, we don’t know whether there have been recent injuries or deaths on Asbury Park streets.

Many streets are poorly lit, like intersections on Memorial Drive and other streets are wide and invite speeding.

Do any of the city leaders walk or ride a bike throughout the city day or night, and have a true sense of this reality that many people face every day?

This dark intersection looks exactly like many in Asbury Park.

Here’s a great example taken from the Strong Towns article showing before and after, how a simple paint project can make an intersection safer.

We do have the power to make our streets safer, and in doing so save the lives of people in our communities.

It had been true for many years, according to the previous traffic engineering guide, that cities had to adhere to specific standards in street design to allow for the movement of vehicles over the safety of people, including requiring a certain number of fatalities in order for infrastructure to be built.

This guide, the Manual Of Uniform Traffic Control Devices has been updated, allowing municipalities much more leeway in making changes for safety.

There is grant money available to do Quick Build projects, and the projects themselves are not costly – usually only paint, then easy next steps as described in the featured articles.

What is Asbury Park Waiting for?

Onward.

Polli Schildge, Editor

 

A Strong Town Right Now

APCSC is a member and supporter of Strong Towns.

Strong Towns is an international movement that’s dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient.

Throughout the past 5 years we’ve utilized tools and resources from Strong Towns. We’ve learned and shared ways to build a better, more equitable city for everyone. Now we’re facing the real, imminent challenges that face cities everywhere – it’s all about how to take care of one another.  Let’s be the best we can be right now “to make our systems more bottom-up and responsive. To make them more humane.”

We’re about to witness the best humans have to offer.


by Charles Marohn

“What you imagine as overwhelming or terrifying while at leisure becomes something you can cope with when you must-there is no time for fear.”

— Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“I think we are about to witness the best humans have to offer each other.

That’s what Solnit documents in her book. During times of stability, society seems to accept the grinding decline of these failed systems. Yet, during times of distress, leaders – especially at the most adaptable local level – step forward and fill the gaps left by incompetence and inflexibility. We need to support these people because, despite the scariness of the unknown, this is an opportunity to reshape the direction of our entire country. To make our systems more bottom-up and responsive. To make them more humane.

Read more:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/3/15/were-about-to-witness-the-best-humans-have-to-offer?utm_campaign=031620+Monday+Jab+-+General+List&utm_medium=email&utm_source=autopilot

Is Asbury Park A Strong Town? Here’s The Test

Think of the reasons that you love Asbury Park. Four cities were in the semi-final round of The Strongest Town. (Voting is now closed, and results are in as of April 6. Stay tuned.). Would Asbury Park someday be able to see our name on this list?  Could we win? Take a look at the The Strong Towns Strength Test.  Click on the underlined questions for details.  How do you think we would score? Asbury Park might only score a 1 out of 10 right now – We have work to do, but with your support of APCSC advocacy we are moving in the right direction!

Preview the upcoming New book by Charles Marhon, Jr., Strong Towns.: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.

Strong Towns Strength Test

  by Charles Marohn

We understand that cities are complex, adaptable systems that defy easy or precise measurement, so we asked ourselves: are there simple observations we use to signal that a city is either a strong town or on its way to becoming one? If you went to a place and had a little bit of time, could you scratch the surface and get a sense of how strong and resilient it was?

Here are ten simple questions we call the Strong Towns Strength Test. A Strong Town should be able to answer “yes” to each of these questions. (Click on the underlined questions to read a step-by-step guide for answering that question.)

  1. Take a photo of your main street at midday. Does the picture show more people than cars?

Read more…

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/11/15/strong-towns-strength-test

What Are We Going to Do About It?

If you wouldn’t let your kids ride a bike or walk across town in your city, or if you, as an adult are fearful of riding your bike around your town or for a bike ride to another town, there’s something seriously wrong.  And the tragedy is that we know what it is. It’s cars. We know cars kill.  We know that streets and roads are engineered to move cars quickly, and not to enable people to move about safely. So what are we going to do about it?  Check out the podcasts.

We Need a Sea Change in How We Think About Roads and Streets

March 12, 2019

“You are grossly negligent if you show a conscious indifference to the safety of others. In other words, you’re aware that the safety of others is endangered, but you don’t do anything to act on that knowledge.”

— Charles Marohn

#8 in our Greatest Hits collection of the best Strong Towns Podcast episodes you may have missed the first time around, here’s “Gross Negligence” from June 2015. In it, Chuck Marohn describes:

  • An exercise from army basic training in which he had to crawl through a trench while an expert marksman sent bullets whizzing nearby. No parent would let their child do this. So why do we accept that this is basically the condition of being on the sidewalk of an American stroad?
  • Why we tend to associate speed with mobility and economic opportunity—and why we’re wrong.
  • The incoherence of common responses to tragedy on our streets, such as a proposal to remedy an unsafe highway through a park in Buffalo by simultaneously making it more like a city street… and more like a high-speed road.
  • What we would do if we actually wanted to make safety the number one priority on our streets.  The podcast:  http://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/greatest-hits-7-gross-negligence/
Read more…

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/12/we-need-a-sea-change-in-how-we-think-about-roads-and-streets

APCSC: A Safe And Healthy 2019 #SlowTheCars

Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition wishes everyone a safe and healthy 2019. Enjoy this collection of articles about what’s happening to make streets safe for people in cities all over the US and the world.

APCSC supports Strong Towns and has also adopted #SLOWTHECARS. We couldn’t have said it better:  Why Slow the Cars?

Strong Towns advocates for financial solvency and productive land use in American cities. Places that are built for people, using traditional development patterns, can help us achieve both of those goals. On the other hand, neighborhood streets with wide lanes, huge clearance zones and other dangerous design features cause thousands of pedestrian and car passenger deaths every year. Dangerous roads do not make productive use of our land or our lives. Furthermore, they depress investment in our cities by making our neighborhoods less pleasant places to be.

People are the indicator species of success. We know that pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods are more economically productive, healthier and safer.  We need to build places where people want to be.

THE BEST OF STRONG TOWNS 2018

Read more…

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/12/7/why-we-need-to-talk-about-car-aggression