Cycling in New York City overcame a much undeserved, unfair, zealous media bombardment in 2011. But as usual we just kept biking and NYC's numbers kept growing - doubling since 2007. And as demonstrated over and over, public opinion polls show cycling & bike lanes enjoy broad support in the general public, a fact that [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Marcus Woollen is a prime example of what bicycling can do for your mind, body and spirit. Fifteen months ago, after being declared obese by his doctors, he decided he needed to get healthy and find a way to fit exercise into his busy schedule. So he tried bike commuting from Jackson Heights, Queens to [...]
Over the last four years, New York City has seen a transportation renaissance on its streets, striking a better balance by providing more space for walking, biking, and transit. As with any departure from the status quo, it can take a while for everyone to grow accustomed to the changes. So Streetfilms decided to look [...]
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.
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.
While we were out videotaping for another Streetfilm, Gary Toth the Director of Transportation Initiatives with Project for Public Spaces (his resume includes 34 years of management experience at NJDOT) took a moment to give a short explanation on what "floating parking" is, why using it is a very smart budgetary decision by the NYC DOT, [...]
For the second chapter in our Moving Beyond the Automobile series we'll take a look at bicycling. More and more people are choosing to cycle for at least part of their commute in cities across the world. Leading the way in the United States, Portland, Oregon is up to a daily bike count of 17,000 [...]
Over the last ten years (or more) just about every major city in the U.S. has added bike-carrying capacity to their buses. While cities like Chicago, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Seattle, Philadelphia, and San Francisco can boast 100% of their bus fleet sporting bike racks, NYC comes in at 0% - the only one in The Alliance for Biking & Walking's 2010 Benchmarking report.
Since I've been producing Streetfilms (at last count 196) rarely do I come across work in our field that I find monumentally enlightening, savvy, or high-caliber. But the latest blog post from David Hembrow's "A View from the Cycle Path..." contains an embedded video produced by Mark Wagenbuur that left me in awe. The video [...]
As you may recall, many years ago I shot a Streetfilm taking about what winter weather can teach us. In many ways the snow acts like tracing paper on our streets and records road user movements: at each intersection where the snow ends up piled can teach us a lot about where people drive and [...]
New York City has some of the slowest bus service in the country. The 9th annual Pokey and Shleppie Awards, given by NYPIRG's Straphanger Campaign and Transportation Alternatives, shine a spotlight on this unfortunate fact by recognizing the slowest and most unreliable buses in the Big Apple. Tune in above to see which routes earn [...]
Streetfilms went out to talk to a few new-to-the-streets women cyclists and find out what got them cycling, what their biking experience is like and find out the role cycling has taken on in their lives. We hope you'll find their comments enlightening and thought-provoking.
Ever find yourself waiting for the next bus, not knowing when it will arrive? Think it would be great if you could check a subway countdown clock from the sidewalk? Or get arrival times on your phone? Giving transit riders better information can make riding the bus or the train more convenient and appealing. And [...]
New York City high school students traveled with community groups to Washington, D.C. to talk to lawmakers about how losing the free Student MetroCard would negatively impact their communities.
Village Voice entertainment columnist Michael Musto has been riding a bike in New York City for over 25 years, long before it was fashionable or there were bike lanes and cycletracks.
Bicycle boulevard design uses a variety of techniques to create low-traffic, low-speed streets where cyclists mix comfortably with cars. They’re very popular in Portland and Berkeley, two cities with high bicycle mode-share. Here in New York, though, they don’t seem to be part of the playbook yet. In this Streetfilm we ask: Why not?
Back in October as part of the Walk21 conference, I was very lucky to be able to accompany a small group of international pedestrian experts on an exclusive walking tour of the High Bridge, which has been closed to the public for nearly 40 years. Since Streetfilms is all about sharing, we interviewed a few [...]
On the heels of 2008's unprecedented growth of 35% in commuter cycling, this year the New York City Department of Transportation measured an additional gain of 26%, putting the total 2007 to 2009 increase at a whopping 66%!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.