Continuing with our  NYC bike month coverage, last week I had the chance to shoot at Recycle-A-Bicycle in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Recycle-A-Bicycle takes donated bicycles, repairs them and reintroduces them to the community through earn-a-bike programs in schools and sales from their non-profit retail locations. Although their work mainly focuses on environmental education and job training programs for New York City youth, they also host repair classes for people of all ages. Every Tuesday evening after the shop closes, Susan Lindell teaches bike mechanics 101 to women. Check out this video on Ladies Repair Night.

Traffic calming stop-animation #3.

Diagonal diverters, half closures, entrance barriers, median barriers, semi-diverters; traffic calming techniques come in all shapes and sizes. They can help create more livable communities. As demonstrated in this short animation, once the diverters are in place, traffic decreases on the side street. Cars on the side street must turn left, but cyclists can continue straight. This makes the side street safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

Related traffic calming animations:
Chicane
Raised Crosswalks

With an abysmally-low $20 million debut, perhaps the public took out their anger of rising gas prices on Speed Racer? O.K. probably not, but you certainly won’t find sadness here for the latest from The Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix Trilogy).

Originally a late 60s, Japanese animation import, Speed Racer has been juiced for 2008 with color, noise, the latest in special effects gadgetry, and, ultimately, tediousness. A poster proclaims “Speed Has No Limits” but apparently neither does boredom as it clocks in at 135 minutes, and seems woefully longer.

Ever so briefly: Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is the upstart phenom of the race circuit. After he turns down an enticing contract offer from a sponsor with questionable motives, he teams up with his one-time rival, the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox, easily the best thing to watch here) to expose the practices of the corporations that rule the circuit.

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With an enormous number of livable streets stories and activities on the horizon in NYC this summer, Streetfilms will be looking for help. So if you are very good with a camera, know transportation issues and are familiar with the current momentum of livable streets, send us your deets! The process to apply is here; as you can read please do not call or e-mail Streetfilms filmmakers directly. We will be compiling all resumes/work experience thru May 23rd and then on an as-needed basis start contacting potential freelancers for assignments. Thanks and good luck!

Job Posting - Freelancers, Streetfilms

If it’s Bike Month, then Transportation Alternatives must be hosting their annual commuter pit stops with help from NYC DOT and the five Boro President’s offices. Yesterday, it was a Queens afternoon snack and we thought we’d take the pulse of cyclists departing the QBB as they got some rehydration and filled their packs with literature (and mega safety schwag!) If you missed out, check the Bike Month calendar for future goodie giveaways and swing back here as we cover events all month long.

If you haven’t heard yet, it is bike month in New York. This year over 200 rides, tours, and events are planned. To help kick things off, City Commissioners & Transportation Alternatives held a bike ride down 9th Avenue’s protected bike lane and a press conference in the pedestrian plaza on 14th Street. Watch some highlights including: Paul Steely White and City Commissioners Janette Sadik-Khan, Adrian Benepe and Jane Beddell.

Finally cajoled into taking the long trip to Melbourne, I was told to expect a city where walking abounded, where the streets were flowing with energy, where the quality of public space would blow my mind. Little did I know my already high expectations would be pleasantly exceeded.

Melbourne is simply wonderful. You can get lost in the nooks and crannies that permeate the city. As you walk you feel like free-flowing air with no impediments to your enjoyment. For a city with nearly 4 million people, the streets feel much like the hustle and bustle of New York City but without omnipresent danger and stress cars cause.

There is an invaluable lesson here. In the early 90s, Melbourne was hardly a haven for pedestrian life until Jan Gehl was invited there to undertake a study and publish recommendations on street improvements and public space. Ten years after the survey’s findings, Melbourne was a remarkably different place thanks to sidewalk widenings, copious tree plantings, a burgeoning cafe culture, and various types of car restrictions on some streets. Public space and art abound. And all of this is an economic boom for business.

This Streetfilm is vitally important in another way: Melbourne is a new world city, it has a modern grid much like a typical American metropolis. Naysayers who do not believe a city can be radically transformed say that the already narrow streets of many European cities make it easier to have good pedestrian environments there. Melbourne proves that isn’t necessarily so.

Read up on Ethan Kent’s 2007 Streetsblog report which helped spur this trip.