Striping Webb Street

Webb at Deal Lake Drive. The yellow boxes mark the setback required by state law.

Webb Street is a five-block street in the northern part of Asbury Park. It is in a mixed-income neighborhood and runs north-south, two blocks from the beach. On the south end it is anchored by The Asbury, a new hotel, and on the north end it stops at Deal Lake.

The northern four blocks of Webb were recently repaved, and more recently the paint crew showed up and worked its magic, trying to help cars and people find their proper places.

Webb does have an issue. Lots of people live here, and many of them have cars (this is New Jersey, after all). Then in the summer the "New Yorkers" show up to go to the beach, and they're very fond of Webb because it's close to the sand, and there are no meters (for now). So the striping didn't just include individual parking stalls and zebra stripes for the pedestrians - there are oceans of yellow stripes, carefully arrayed within yellow box borders, designed to protect the sight lines at intersections, and also to protect driveways.

Try telling the judge you didn't know it was a driveway.

It's well known that New Yorkers are not great respecters of clear space, whether at the corner or in front of driveways. (The locals tend to refer to all visitors as "New Yorkers," regardless of what the license plate says. I took ten minutes the other day and noted Auslander license plates from Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.  Oh, and New York.)

The stripes get curvy so motorists can turn without agita.

Curiously, there have been complaints that all this paint is marring the beauty of a historic neighborhood, and detracting from the attention that should be paid to the lovely old buildings in the area. I have two thoughts. One is, nobody ever seems to complain about parked cars doing the same thing. Second, as regular readers of this blog probably know, I find asphalt to be extremely boring. I think the white and yellow stripes add visual interest to a road surface that looks essentially like a black hole is space. And I think the white and yellow also go very well with the green of the many lawns in the area.

Victorious by the Sea. That's the building's name.

Here's an 1883 Victorian, surrounded by white and yellow stripes. I think it's doing just fine. For Asbury Park, this is a really old house. The town wasn't founded until 1871. (This house recently moved from the east side of Webb to the west side, but that's another story.)

See also The Pavements of Asbury Park, What Streets Can Learn From Boardwalks, Pop-Up Railings for Crosswalks, A Poor Man's Bumpout, Gordon Cullen and the Outdoor Floor.