Boulder Goes Bike Platinum
Add Boulder, Colorado to the League of American Bicyclists' cities to achieve Platinum Bike Status. This Fall, they were bestowed the nation's highest rank for U.S. cities and joined Portland, Oregon and Davis, California as the only three cities to have that honor.
I spent five days on a bike in Boulder in October and can testify it is close to bicycling nirvana. The resulting Streetfilm is only a taste of what is going on in the bike culture universe. You'll get to sample what its like to ride some of their amazing bike amenities including its wonderful greenway system with its emphasis on continuity and an uninterrupted commute.
Having produced Streetfilms on all three Platinum bike cities, one thing that is beginning to emerge as a sure tell tale sign you got a healthy biking city: the numbers of youngsters riding bicycles. Boulder has numerous programs to encourage kids to walk and bike and we were lucky enough to include two of them here. Don't miss our Boulder Streetfilms series as well as our long-form pieces on Davis and Portland.
Living in Bordeaux, France now with pretty nice (far from perfect) biking facilities I haven't felt too envious of U.S. facilities for a while (although bike coops are a different manner... they just don't exist in the same way here). This video makes me wish our bike networks here didn't have tons of patches in it where you're thrown into traffic or where cars day-in-and-day-out park halfway in the bike lane. Congrats Boulder.
Great video... I really like the longer ones
Love the full length feature! Lets go New York we have a long way to go.
Thanks
Ed
Totally awesome though I would have liked to have seen some footage from January or February w/ some significant snow on the ground.
I'm really jealous.
Thank GOD I'm moving back to Boulder. LA can stew in its cesspool of asphalt and exhaust without me.
Clarence, that was one of your best videos-- comprehensive, upbeat...just the right amount of looniness
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Impressions: 1) For a city of that size, that's a whole bunch of people doing green transportation planning and promotion; 2) The thoroughness with which they have minimized at-grade intersections of paths and roadways is stunning (and strikes the curmudgeon within as not easily replicated in less wealthy or progressive communities); 3) I wonder how helpful cultural homogeneity is in making change such as this.
Love, love this! I hope NYC DOT can implement continuous bike paths where possible. I know it is a tough thing to put in everywhere, but it looks like it really pays dividends down the road.
Beautiful film, and wonderful subject. I would love to leave Atlanta for Boulder!
This is great to see. Never been to Boulder, just Davis, which was absolutely amazing on a bike.
I live in "Bike Friendly Silver" Cary, NC. I've ridden in a dozen cities, and rode from Mass. to San Fran this summer, and I've got to say, to designate Cary as "Bike Friendly" is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. It's easily one of the least bike-friendly places I've ever ridden in.
It makes me sick.
As someone without a car, who commutes an average of 40 miles a week, I think The League needs to RAISE THEIR STANDARDS. I could go on forever, but I won't. Maybe I'll just move to Boulder instead.
Or Amsterdam.
Great video. Thanks for highlighting our great city! Most of the buses around town have bike racks that can greatly extend your biking range and the boulder creek path system is brilliant. The video shows a typical weekend or "rush hour". often times it can even more crowded than that.
bklyn74: because of the low humidity and sunshine, snow typically doesn't stay on the ground for more than a day or two. and yes they do plow the bike lanes first here.
Props to Clarence. However you missed the Thursday Night Cruiser ride.
why doesn't it surprise me that you totally left out of your film the Boulder Cruzers? what a major flub up... oh, yea, biking is only supposed to be serious... totally forgot... last summer they had 1800+ riders on a thursday night... this tradition is more than 10 years in the running and you totally skipped it... dumb
Since we have had two comments in a row on the Cruiser Ride, I was dying to cover it having seen videos of it before I came out, but the timeframe I had in Boulder only allowed me to A) come Fri AM thru Wed PM, and B) the week I was there was the start of what I was told was the off season for the ride anyway. But alas, that is what is good, can't cover all the great bicycling stuff in one city in just one visit as a one person crew.
Great job, Boulder! But there's an awful lot of people wearing helmets on offroad trails - what's that about?
What's it like in the winter? The trails remind me a lot of Anchorage - but of course those are only cycleable half the year.
I left Boulder after 18 years there of bicycling, and now live in Santa Monica (the beach town surrounded by LA). I am going to make sure Santa Monica planners get to see this, as we have a better climate here for cycling, but have few bicycle friendly features (the beach path is nice, but not practical for most commuting).
Great short feature here, also for anyone reading this, go see the movie FUEL.
Integrated transportation is key to our future.
Flash version 9,0 or greater is required
Why Flash ?
really need?
Why not any another documented and standard file format? like Ogg ?
it's easy to take data from here:
http://www.streetfilms.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/?C=S;O=D