Every year the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) picks one or two cities deserving of the Sustainable Transport Award. San Francisco and Medellín, Colombia, are this year’s winners. Streetfilms worked with ITDP to document these two cities and we'll be releasing videos on each this spring. But since I just returned from Medellín, [...]
"Cities for Cycling" is a project of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to document, promote and implement the world’s best bicycle transportation practices in American cities. As part of the Cities for Cycling program, bikeway design experts take their show on the road, using the streets of different U.S. cities as their classroom [...]
The corner of Smith Street and Sackett Street in Brooklyn had a problem. Drivers approaching the intersection from Sackett couldn't get a clear view of Smith because of the parked cars blocking their line of sight. Crashes kept happening and local residents started pushing for safety improvements. After experimenting with a few options, NYC DOT [...]
In his campaign for mayor, Rahm Emanuel pledged to make Chicago a more bike-friendly city. And in office, he set his sights high, aiming to construct 100 miles of protected bike lanes in his first term. His team wasted no time. Chicago DOT installed the city's first protected bike lane on Kinzie Street before Emanuel's [...]
We are back with another installment of our hit series, "My NYC Biking Story." Recently Streetfilms spent the afternoon with Dr. Janice Turner in the South Bronx, and we toured some of her favorite waterfront trails. As a recreational cyclist for forty-plus years and a board member of Sustainable South Bronx, Dr. Turner believes that [...]
In the Dutch city of Utrecht, kids start learning about traffic safety long before they prepare for a driver's license. And not just "look both ways before you cross the street." The school curriculum includes regular field trips to the local "traffic garden." The City of Utrecht has used this facility, a streetscape in miniature, [...]
Groningen is the largest city in the northern region of the Netherlands. With 57 percent of all trips in the city made by bike, it has acquired the title "World Cycling City." In Groningen, even the large multi-lane roads have been tamed for safe cycling. At this intersection on the main ring road around Groningen, cyclists [...]
Three years ago Streetfilms brought you a comprehensive look at Bogotá, Colombia's TransMilenio, the world's most advanced Bus Rapid Transit system. TransMilenio changed the way Bogotá residents think about public transportation, becoming indispensable to the 1.7 million people who use the system daily. If anything, the bus network became a victim of its own success, [...]
Since 1998, Bogotá, Colombia has built more than 300 kilometers of protected bikeways. Streetfilms recently had the chance to explore the city's bike network with the man responsible for building it, former mayor Enrique Peñalosa. "When we build very high quality bicycle infrastructure, besides protecting cyclists, it shows that a citizen on a $30 bicycle [...]
This spring, Transportation Alternatives launched a program to promote safe cycling throughout the five boroughs. Bin Feng Zheng, 23, works for this program as an NYC Bicycle Ambassador. Bin started riding a bike just two years ago, so he knows all about the challenges of learning to ride. He's also tri-lingual -- speaking Chinese and [...]
If you follow the Twitter hashtag #bikenyc, you've probably noticed more than a few tweets from New York City Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, a.k.a. @howiewolf. In this episode of My NYC Biking Story, we'd like to introduce you to the man who's been tweeting out a flurry of facts, figures, and poll numbers related to [...]
The 50,000-bike system in Hangzhou, the southern Chinese city of almost 7 million people, blows all other bike-shares off the map.
Friday is National Bike to Work Day, and if you're looking for a little motivation to get on your bicycle, meet Lucette Gilbert. Lucette says she is in her "very late 70s" and biking since she was 7 years old. So, by my calculations, she has been riding a bike for some 70 years! She [...]
Today we launch a new series in honor of Bike Month. "My NYC Biking Stories," comprises up to ten short vignettes on people who ride in New York City. Our first profile is on Sarinya Srisakul, the city’s first female Asian-American firefighter. She is also vegan, and one of the 31 female firefighters in the [...]
In the tenth and final video in Streetfilms' Moving Beyond the Automobile series, we are talking about parking reform. From doing away with mandatory parking minimums, to charging the right price for curbside parking, to converting on-street parking spots into parklets and bike corrals, cities are latching onto exciting new ideas to make more room for people in our cities and repurpose the valuable public space that lines our streets.
Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, "the right price is the lowest price you can charge and still have one or two spaces available on each block." Depending on the demand for parking at a given location, the right price could be higher or lower than the static prices you see at traditional meters. You need a dynamic system that adjusts the price based on demand.
The Guangzhou BRT system opened in February 2010. It now carries 800,000 passengers a day, seamlessly connecting riders to both the metro system and the city's new bike-share network. For these innovations, Guangzhou won the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy's 2011 Sustainable Transport Award.
Several cities are pursuing highway removals, as a way to reclaim city space for housing, parks, and economic development. CNU has designated ten "Freeways without Futures" here in North America, and in this video, you'll hear about the benefits of tearing down the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx, the Skyway and Route 5 in Buffalo, and the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans.
On Sunday, the NYC Street Memorial Project held the 6th Annual Memorial Ride and Walk. According to the New York City Department of Transportation, 151 pedestrians and 18 bicyclists were killed on the streets of New York City in 2010.
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) provides faster and more efficient service than an ordinary bus. "These systems operate like a surface subway, say BRT advocates, but cost far less than building an actual metro." Watch this chapter of Moving Beyond the Automobile to learn about the key features of bus rapid transit systems around the world [...]
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