Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Well it's February 14th. And I just decided that for the first time ever Streetfilms was gonna do some happy, loving Valentine's Day biking imagery for a card to our subscribers and fans.
I sifted thru about 30 Streetfilms over the past ten years and lifted out lots of scenes of happiness from some of our videos from NYC, USA and around the world.
Bikes = Love
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Utrecht is a city with unbelievable momentum for altering how its city center integrates with people. They've been slowly pushing the car out for decades in favor of bicycling and transit. But in the last few years it has turned up the dial.
For one, they are removing multiple roadways and converting them to bikeways, featuring green spaces and restoring the city's canal which was removed in the 1970's for a highway. They are on the verge of having 33,000 bike spaces with the opening of a to-be 12,000 space facility under Utrecht Centraal, which you are legally allowed to bike thru! They are encouraging more bike use with new routes and the Dutch way of bicycle streets. And they have built the symbolic Dafne Schippersbrug, a technological feat of creative imagination that features a multi-use path that lands on top of a school.
You have got to see it all and that is one reason why this Streetfilm clocks in at 13+ minutes, the 2nd longest video we have produced of all time (only Groningen - also in the Netherlands - is longer).
It was such a joy bicycling around the city. Everything felt reachable by bike or transit. That's why 98% of residents own at least one bike and the city center boasts a 60% bike mode share. Transit abounds, whether it's buses, trains or trams (a new one is opening as we speak).
The lesson for the world is that Utrecht has put the health and well being of its citizens first, not car travel. That transportation plays an integral role in doing that so making traveling simple and easier by bike or bike/transit/walk combo is far better than having people driving around in metal boxes polluting, hogging road space and making it dangerous to road users. Cars create far more problems than they solve. And hopefully Utrecht can export that lesson to the world.
Sure, you cannot make your city become Utrecht overnight. It takes decades of planning and smart policy. But if your city isn't so friendly to people, bikes and transit you can get started today. And then maintain that commitment to change.
The most incredible thing I learned? Utrecht works so well that taxi/car service/Uber is hardly a thing there.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
As you may know I have been editing a monster Streetfilm on Utrecht debuting soon. It will likely be at least ten minutes in length!
But I just hate when really, really good stuff gets left on the cutting room floor and I only get to see it. So a lot of times I release bonus videos or extended shorts of my journeys and I have done many from my Netherlands visit in June.
Usually the extras come after the debut of the initial anchor Streetfilm, but I wanted to get this wonderful personal tour from Mark Wagenbuur out as a sort of teaser. Better known to most as "BicycleDutch" on Youtube, Mark has been a prolific documenter of all things bike and The Netherlands for a very long time. If somehow by now you have never seen his work, you must head over to: bicycledutch.wordpress.com
Anyway, as I was getting to, Mark will probably only be featured for 60-90 seconds in the busy final film, but I wanted to show much of what he talked about road removal and the ideas around keeping drivers out of the city center. So enjoy this!
Monday, May 27, 2019
When I posted I was headed to The Netherlands once again to visit (and for my first time to Utrecht,) as usual I got a lot of recommendations on what to look at. One of the first people to contact me was Rebecca Albrecht, who moved there with her husband Paul from Boston about three years ago and couldn't be more delighted to live there.
She mentioned she lived on a Dutch play street (woonerf) and when I looked at the photos she had snapped from the window of her bed & breakfast, my first thought was: maybe this would be an opportunity to get a unique angle from residents since I had ridden on so many similar streets in Amsterdam and in Copenhagen but didn't want to be too nosy.
When I arrived the street was full of neighbors and children and they wanted to talk to me about their lovely street. But this is not something exceptional as over 2 million Dutch people live on play/living streets. So take a gander but be warned: you will want the same thing for your block.
Friday, November 30, 2018
"Protected Bike Lane Bonanza" Screenshot from Vimeo (Click to go there!)
Well congratulations to us! We've now posted our 100th Streetfilm that features elements, designs or pilots of protected bicycle lanes all over the world. But really it is congratulations to you, too, since you just have that much more evidence to show your elected leaders and cities that this type of safe design works.
Just go to this link on Vimeo where our programmed channel is neatly organized all 100+ films for your perusal. Here: https://vimeo.com/channels/protectedbikelanes
To celebrate, I thought I'd point you towards some of my personal favs and those with useful content. It's extremely hard to choose, but here are my Top Five. Please don't be limited by these!
I made this Streetfilm over 8 years ago and it still holds up smashingly well. I've lost count of the hundreds of messages I have gotten over the years (especially the first three years it was up) of advocates, politicians and neighborhood leaders who told me having this film to screen/share totally changed the game in their fight for better lanes for their city/town/state. And at nearly 350k plays (that I can count) it's the fifth most popular Streetfilm of all time.
Best story from this trip: Within minutes of arriving to my hotel I saw my first platoon of about 30 cyclists heading towards me. It's like I had seen a bike unicorn and I hurriedly raced to capture it on film, severely spraining my ankle in the process. Of course the same scene of bikes continued over and over. All day. Dopey me. Thankfully, biking proved to be the easier method of getting around as I was walking was so badly I probably should have been on crutches the 5 days!
A few years ago London's first Bicycle Superhighway lanes opened to much fanfare and immediately were filled up during rush hours by thousands of commuters. In fact, the Central Business District now has almost equal numbers of bikes and cars entering daily. There were scores of photos and short clips of huge masses of cyclists dominating the Twitterverse but really almost no substantial video reports of the lanes. So I felt it was my duty to get there this past summer and talk to many London residents about them and see for myself these immensely wide, beautiful structures that admittedly can make you get jealous!
And a related Streetfilm that details how an advocacy group formed to organize business leaders to push for the lanes is also a great watch!
This is a straight forward, nuts and bolts documentation of some of the work NYC DOT pulled off in what once seemed like an impossible task: to create a safe and working protected bike lane on Queens Blvd, once named "The Boulevard of Death". This was following Mayor de Blasio's allocation of millions of dollars to reformat the roadway in the wake of his passionate support of Vision Zero. Then at NYC DOT (now the head of Oakland, CA's DOT) Ryan Russo detailed the how every-block-is-different design came about.
I really wanted to make this as a historical document and thought it would be a little dry, especially a 10 minute film with only one speaker. But this ended up a pretty popular Streetfilm with scores of curious folks around the country watching and other city transportation departments and students studying it.
Made in 2013, it is the third most popular Streetfilm of all-time! At this point in my life I had been to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, two cities that do bicycling right. But I absolutely fell in love with the silence and breathtaking beauty of Groningen in the north Netherlands. For one, I laughed while walking the mile from the train to check into my hotel. Why? I didn't see one car! People seemed so happy. It was like Disneyland for bikes.
Besides the excellently designed bike infra, there is also a traffic circulation plan built in to the city that forces cars to detour to longer routes making almost every trip you can do either faster by bike or competitive to the point that you might as well not own a car.
Okay, the fifth one is actually a tie (yeah, I 'm cheating a bit). But both of these Streetfilms have been very important in the struggle for holding on to very important bike lanes implemented by NYC DOT that were under assault from local communities vehmently opposed to losing parking and road space. In both cases, families and groups in favor of the lanes wanted to provide a powerful visual of the lanes in use, so they both planned celebratory rides that put children out front.
The top is the Prospect Park West Family Bike Ride, which in April 2011 was under attack by a Brooklyn group called "Neighbors For Better Bike Lanes", who - shockingly - really weren't for better bike lanes at all! They were suing the city for their removal (eventually they lost over and over) and had uncomfortable ties to former NYC DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall. That's the skinny, but you can read all about it here in the Streetsblog archives.
The bottom is almost the nearly the same video but seven years later in the Sunnyside community of Queens where the struggle to initiate an integral pair of protected bike lanes on Skillman & 43rd Avenues went bonkers. It featured tons of Community Board drama - which still continues today - and a similarly themed "group" called "Queens Streets for All" which is really just about fighting for free car parking on the two streets.
Watch both videos and you'll see why if you have a bike lane in your neighborhood you should bring out families!
So those are my picks. Enjoy the list which gets automatically updated with each new protected bike lane Streetfilm we produce. As always these films are free to share or embed anywhere, used in their entirety in journalistic endevaours or even screen in your community (however, we do require permission if you choose to re-edit parts of video in other productions.)
Friday, October 13, 2017
With so many of my friends posting Facebook photos and Tweeting short video snippets of what they are seeing while in Amsterdam at the PPS Placemaking Summit, I thought this would be an excellent time to compile in one place most of my Streetfilms I've shot there since my first visit in 2013, great films to watch right now whether you are there with them or not.
"Bicycle Anecdotes from Amsterdam" at nearly 370,000 plays was a fun one to make and very quickly edited together with little effort. So much so that I thought it would be entertaining but by no means did I expect it to become our 4th most popular film of all-time (out of over 800!) But it has a lot of nice moments in it. (Side note: partly due to it, I ended up buying a Fre8 WorkCycle thanks to seeing them being made in the shop while being able to chat with Henry Culter. See above photo!)
Of course, our universally loved Streetfilm on Gronigen proved to be groundbreaking and now is heading towards a half million Streetfilm plays across all media we can track. We had read stories (50% bike mode share!) and seen a few short snippets of the great downtown of Groningen on Youtube before deciding to work in a visit. We were glad we did. Even four years later, if you type in "Groningen" and "bicycling" into search engines, our film is the first to pop up. And in the aftermath of my visit there were dozens of stories on Groningen, many citing or even embedding our Streetfilm in their coverage. (BTW, a reminder: anyone can embed our linked videos in their reports or websites.)
In 2017 I was able to return to The Netherlands while attending the VeloCity 2017 conference and I fell in love with the city of Nijmegen. I had been planning to just shoot a few shorts while there on all sorts of tours and interviews with people. But while roaming around on foot downtown, I couldn't believe how car-free the city was and how there were a series of steel bollards that kept cars out most of the time. Simply amazing. So I rushed to grab enough interviews towards the end of the conference to produce the result above!
Additionally, the Arnhem-Nijmegen region boasts the quickest, safest continuous bikeway I have ever ridden. You are gonna want to watch that too!
Jumping back to Amsterdam, I actually assembled this fun montage in a few hours one night after my first full day of shooting to get people psyched for my videos to come. It too was a very modest hit!
At this point, I'll leave you with the linkage below to even more Streetfilms. Please enjoy them! And go to the Netherlands if you want to see great bicycling infrastructure! And for those still waiting for more? I do have a long gestating film from Rotterdam I hope to have ready, eventually.
"Danish Infrastructure Tour of Bicycle Streets & Intersections"
"Journey from Assen to Groningen with David Hembrow":
"From Netherlands to America: Translating the World's Best Bikeway Designs"
"Groningen's Green Phase For Cyclists"
"Amsterdam Draws Bike Boxes to Better Organize Bike Parking"
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
By now you may have seen a few of my newest Streetfilms debuting from my visit to The Netherlands for the Velo City 2017 conference. The above video is a great resource in case you've ever wanted an on-the-ground tour of cycling by Dutch engineers but haven't the opportunity to do so. It's difficult capturing events like this in real time while moving with a group, but there is certainly enough to soak up in this Streetfilm and learn a great deal about logical design for cyclists and intersections from the best, so check it out.
I saw much on this journey spending time in a few cities. My first stop - unexpectedly - was the city of Rotterdam. When a vocal group of Twitter followers from Rotterdam found I was spending an extra day in the Netherlands (to save big time on my roundtrip airfare) they cajoled me into an amazing tour. José Besselink, Urban Planner for the City of Rotterdam, and Monique Zwinkels, Inner City Manager, Municipality of Rotterdam organized a fabulous journey by bike to sample some of what the city has to offer, especially looking at its core urban livability concept City Lounge. We had a few fun moments I was able to pop up quickly while on the road.
The above is kinda silly, but shows my great love for transit running over grass. It's something I have also experienced in Oslo and Cambridgeshire (buses); there's just something about it that brings out the kid in me. And it jives with my son, since he loves the video too.
This next video speaks to the testament about how much more dense cities all over the world are getting and how cars are becoming increasingly a bad technology to use in cities. The ANWB, which you can think of as the Dutch AAA car-federation for motorists, now has a fleet of cargo bikes they use to rescue or fix driver cars in the central city of Rotterdam. They had only been operating a few days when we ran into this gentleman. Oh, and also they will fix bikes, too.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
The 2017 Velo-city conference in the Netherlands this June was full of excitement, information, and enlightenment. And the pinnacle was seeing Dutch bike infrastructure first-hand, with guides who know it inside and out.
On the final day of Velo-city, I joined a bike tour around the city of Nijmegen and its outskirts, led by three Dutch infrastructure experts. We got their insights into the design of bicycle streets where cars are guests, how intersections prioritize bike travel above motor vehicles, and a grade school where more than 60 percent of students arrive by bicycle.
Without a full crew and weeks of advance planning, it was tough to capture everything that makes this bike infrastructure work so well. So I focused on the important things, and I think this Streetfilm will help viewers see just how seriously the Dutch treat street design and safety for people on bicycles.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
It's no secret that the Dutch have the best bicycle infrastructure on Earth. And it keeps getting better.
While attending the Velo-city 2017 conference in the Netherlands, I got to ride the Arnhem-Nijmegen Cycle Superhighway. Imagine being able to bike 11 miles between two downtowns and not have to stop once for cars -- that is what the superhighway provides.
The Arnhem-Nijmegen route is one of a few cycle superhighways in the region. I brought my camera along on one group ride and got to chat with Sjors van Duren, the program director for Velo-city 2017, about what makes it attractive compared to car travel.
Interestingly, there was already a bike route between the cities of Arnhem and Nijmegen when the cycle superhighway was built. It's perfectly safe and usable -- a stellar piece of infrastructure that I would welcome with open arms here in NYC. But it has several junctions where you need to come to a full stop. That's where the cycle superhighway comes in.
So watch this Streetfilm and get the tour. By the time it's over you'll want a cycle superhighway for your hometown.
Friday, February 7, 2014
By now if you haven't seen our Streetfilm "Groningen: The World's Cycling City" you should check it out.
One of the folks you'll see featured in that video is David Hembrow who has been reporting on cycling in the Netherlands for many years via one of the smartest transportation blogs out there "A View from the Cycle path". It's full of great knowledge you will want to devour. He also leads group bike tours of many cities in the Netherlands.
I was very fortunate to get to spend some time with him and we got along famously. Above is a video with some anecdotes and biking montages during our 20 mile bike journey from Assen to Groningen. It's only a small taste of what you'll experience in the Netherlands, but I think it will leave you craving more.
He currently has up a blog post full of all sorts of references and links to other posts that will give you a wealth of information about Groningen. Good stuff!
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Here we present our final -- and most informative -- Streetfilm from Amsterdam. It provides a nice cross-section of commentary on life in the City of Bikes. If you’d like to skip directly to a certain section, use this table of contents:
0:17 Rejecting the Automobile
2:15 A bike system that works for everyone
4:05 There's a science to what looks like "bicycle chaos"
5:55 Coming to The Netherlands from the United States
7:33 Dutch Bicycle Culture
Make sure you check out our other Streetfilms from Amsterdam: No Amsterdam is Not "Swamped" By Bikes, Amsterdam Draws Bike Boxes to Organize Bike Parking, and Some Things You Might See While In Amsterdam.
I still find it amazing that a five-year-old in Amsterdam can ride straighter and with more confidence than the average American adult!
Monday, October 21, 2013
By now if you haven't seen our Streetfilm "Groningen: The World's Cycling City" you should check it out. Like, now! It has broken every single Streetfilms viewing record - it had nearly 40,000 plays in just its first week!
One of the folks you'll see featured in that video is David Hembrow who has been reporting on cycling in the Netherlands for many years via one of the smartest transportation blogs out there "A View from the Cycle path". It's full of great knowledge you will want to devour. He also leads group bike tours of many cities in the Netherlands.
I was very fortunate to get to spend some time with him and we got along famously. Above is a video with some anecdotes and biking montages during our 20 mile bike journey from Assen to Groningen. It's only a small taste of what you'll experience in the Netherlands, but I think it will leave you craving more.
He currently has up a blog post full of all sorts of references and links to other posts that will give you a wealth of information about Groningen. Good stuff!
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
It's no secret that just about anywhere you go in the Netherlands is an incredible place to bicycle. And in Groningen, a northern city with a population of 190,000 and a bike mode share of 50 percent, the cycling is as comfortable as in any city on Earth. The sheer number of people riding at any one time will astound you, as will the absence of automobiles in the city center, where cars seem extinct. It is remarkable just how quiet the city is. People go about their business running errands by bike, going to work by bike, and even holding hands by bike.
The story of how they got there is a mix of great transportation policy, location and chance. You'll learn quite a bit of history in the film, but essentially Groningen decided in the 1970s to enact policies to make it easier to walk and bike, and discourage the use of cars in the city center. By pedestrianizing some streets, building cycle tracks everywhere, and creating a unique transportation circulation pattern that prohibits vehicles from cutting through the city, Groningen actually made the bicycle -- in most cases -- the fastest and most preferred choice of transportation.
It does feel like bicycle nirvana. When I first got off the train in Groningen, I couldn't stop smiling at what I saw around me. In an email exchange with my friend Jonathan Maus from Bike Portland, he described it as being "like a fairy tale." This jibed with my first thought to him -- that I had "entered the game Candyland, but for bikes!" In fact, for our teaser I originally titled this Streetfilm "Groningen: The Bicycle World of Your Dreams," before I talked myself out of it. Although there is a magical quality about being there, in reality there is nothing dreamy or childlike about it. With political will and planning, what they have done should - and can be done - everywhere.
In our Streetfilm you'll see the 10,000 (!) bicycle parking spaces at the train station, some of the incredible infrastructure that enables cyclists to make their journeys safer and quicker, and you'll hear from many residents we encountered who go by bike just about everywhere they travel. But as one of my interview subjects, Professor Ashworth, wanted me to point out: the three days I was there were bright and sunny, and the hardy people keep up the bicycling through the cold winters. As with many bicycling cities, there area also big problems with cycle theft, and residents are always yearning for more bicycle parking.
I think most of us would trade some of those problems for a city with 50 percent mode share (and up to 60 percent in the city center!!).
Thursday, September 5, 2013
When I first moseyed off the train in Groningen and began the mile walk to my hotel, I remember laughing often as I looked around in little boy amazement. For years I had pictured how the world of Groningen would appear and this was the first time in my life where reality exceeded imagination. It really is bicycling nirvana. It's like the board game Candyland with bikes instead of sweets. Or maybe better yet: Willy Wonka & The Bicycle Factory.
I'm 46 and I've never been to Disneyworld, but I kinda felt like I had wished upon a star.
Okay seriously - schmaltz aside - I can't accurately convey the profound joy and silly happiness I fondly recall when I think of my three days in Groningen . In fact, I've been a little overly-concerned the Streetfilm I've been working on will not visually do the city justice. Since many of you have inquired how editing has been going, I wanted to give you a small bit of what I was surrounded by. So here's a short montage tease lifted from my current 15 minute rough cut.
As you can surmise from the trailer, 50% of all trips in Groningen are done by bike; and reach as high as 60% within the city itself. The city has 190,000 inhabitants, 75,000 cars and around 300,000 bicycles. That's pretty extraordinary, but not car-free by any means.
How can bike mode shares possibly go that high? Well wherever you go in The Netherlands great care is taken to make your bicycle trip safe, swift, and convenient. You prefer to ride a bike no matter the distance because it will be faster, healthier, and cheaper! Here's a good example in this graphic from the still-uncompleted Streetfilm, comparing car & bike travel times from my hotel to shoot my first interview in Groningen.
My Streetfilm will contain lots of great moments. An IKEA's bicycle parking. A crossing over a canal that goes the extra mile to accomodate cyclists. Bicycle parking for over 10,000 at Central Station. The amazing, omnipresent cycle tracks and car-free (and light) areas of downtown. And of course words from the denizens of Groningen telling you why it's so great to ride a bike. In the Netherlands it's nothing special to be accommodated as a rider. It's just expected. Read more...
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Amsterdam cycling advocate Marjolein de Lange regales us with this tale from 2006 about how cyclists came up with a very simple solution (draw bike box outlines directly on the pavement!) to better organize the chaotic, random bike parking outside of a popular supermarket which is used by many blind patrons, physically challenged individuals and seniors. It's so simple and shows how sometimes engineers might over think a simple solution to a problem.
Marjolein tells us these are now common in many shopping areas in Amsterdam and other cities. Although I will add one comment: this also only works well in cities where nearly all the bikes do have kickstands.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.