Our pledge distills the general changes needed into three main points:

1. The City and State should designate a slow streets network to connect people to places;
2. The City and State should cooperate to implement safe commerce zones, a.k.a. pedestrian priority zones, that are connected to the slow streets network;
3. Volunteers and community organizations should be invited to help implement the changes, rather than relying on normal City processes for implementation. Time is of the essence and multiple groups, including AoB, stand ready to assist.

Read and sign the pledge here!

This crisis is not going away, and, just as many experts have predicted, there will be multiple outbreaks, waves, and unexpected discoveries along the way. It would be foolish to continue using our streets the way they are configured now, when we can instead shift to living more of our lives outdoors while maintaining safe social distances.

We continue to witness some of our favorite people and businesses struggling. By re-allocating public space, we are providing help to some of our local businesses and we lessen the number of people who get sick. Let’s minimize the damage from the crisis and make these changes without further delay. We look forward to seeing the City’s plans.

Read and sign the pledge here!

Is signing a pledge necessary? We think it is. It’s time for multiple individuals, businesses, and local organizations to come together and help make our City safer during the pandemic. Let’s make some changes, working together.

Further reading:

• Video playlist about Coronavirus Street Changes
• Open letter to Asheville City Council asking for Changes
• Interview with members of Multi-Modal Transit about how a plan could work
• USA Today article “Tired of red tape, Asheville restaurants say city needs to act fast to save them”

The post Sign the Pledge of Support for Changes to Our Streets appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Download the MMTC COVID-19 PDF

Click here to download the pdf of the MMTC COVID-19 Streets proposal.

That linked pdf is not an official City of Asheville plan, and we know that City staff are working on their own plans that incorporate at least some of the ideas shown in this draft. We urge them to publish their plans and a timeline for making changes to our streets to make our community safer and to help ailing businesses who are now reopening.

Four important truths about the COVID-19 pandemic

1. Personal interactions and commerce are best conducted outdoors, where the risk of spread is lower;
2. People with strong immune systems and good health fare better when infected;
3. Maintaining some social distance and mask wearing is prudent and both should be a normal practice;
4. This pandemic is not ending anytime soon, since the disease will recur until we have a vaccine safely administered to a large number of people or achieve equivalent herd immunity.

To accommodate those facts, we want the City of Asheville to re-purpose the public right of way to make more space for commerce, social distancing, for people on foot, or for riding a bicycle.

These changes should be made with paint, tape, movable barricades, and other similar temporary materials. This is a form of tactical urbanism, as a crisis response.

It’s imperative we allocate some of the extra space to help our local businesses by allowing them to more easily serve customers outside. We have written to the City of Asheville asking them to act and make these changes – you can read our April 29th letter here. We also tested our sidewalks directly and found that, in most places in Asheville, it is currently impossible to follow the guidelines for controlling the spread of COVID-19.

Learn From Other Cities and Experts

Jeff Speck laid out the clear rationale for these changes in a recent presentation for the City of Boston. You can watch his excellent Boston COVID-19 presentation here.

Tampa, FL released an excellent plan. Read the Tampa plan here.

Oakland, CA created a network of low speed streets using only a map drawn by the City and volunteer actions from neighbors. Learn about how they did it in this 2 minute video.

Read about the plans already enacted by 256+ other cities, all listed in one searchable database.

Use the NACTO COVID-19 Response Kit

This kit is excellent and has been released by one of the most highly trusted authorities on City Planning and street design in the United States, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).

The NACTO crisis response guide shows street designs, materials, and examples. The guide is written for problem solvers, city staffers, and citizens who are working during the crisis. You can download the NACTO COVID-19 Response Guide here.

The City of Asheville Should Act Now

Our new downtown delivery zones are a small step in the right direction but we must go further and faster. As a City, we should not wait, because waiting means people get sick who might have otherwise avoided illness. The safest path forward is to make changes to our streets now, then test and tune as we go.

The post Released: Asheville MMTC members COVID-19 Streets Proposal appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Takeaways from Oakland:

1. The City designated the network but it was the neighbors and citizens who implemented the changes and the signage.
2. Creating a network of slow streets does not have to take a large budget or long planning process – we can tweak as we go based on what works.
3. Cars can still move about on these streets, with the knowledge that they are guests on the street and not the primary focus.

The post How Oakland created 74 miles of safe streets with support from neighbors appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.