Memorial Day 2013 marked a milestone in NYC transportation history: the debut of the city's bike-share system, Citi Bike. At 330 stations, 6,000 bikes (of a planned 10,000) were available to more than 13,000 members who signed up for a yearly pass - and many of them couldn't wait to hit the streets! The press conference […]
A few years ago, it was pretty big news when on-street bike parking or a bike oasis was installed in any city. Today, though it is always welcome news, it hardly merits a report. However, on New York City's 9th Avenue protected bike lane (which back in the day was NYC's first) three bike oasises […]
This is the story about how East Harlem residents and street safety advocates -- with leadership from Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito -- banded together to win complete streets on First and Second Avenues. After the city backtracked on a plan to build protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuges up to 125th Street on the East Side […]
Prospect Heights resident Steve O'Neill has been biking most of his 15 years living in New York City. Last year he added to his daily roundtrip commute to Columbus Circle by dropping his son Beckett off at school, and the new Prospect Park West bike lane helps him do that safely. As a subway trip […]
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 […]
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, […]
Regardless of age or ability, everyone deserves the right to a safe and convenient bike commute. In New York City, every day the DOT is making that more of a reality - thanks to an incredible diversity of bike facilities. The city has moved past simple, striped bike lanes and on to refreshing configurations like […]
Up until this summer, speeding was the norm on Brooklyn's Prospect Park West. With three wide lanes inviting motorists to hit the accelerator, it was a street monopolized by car traffic. That changed in a big way in June, when NYC DOT converted one vehicle lane to a two-way bikeway separated from traffic by the […]
While Streetfilms was in Copenhagen for the Velo-City 2010 conference, of course we wanted to showcase its biking greatness. But we were also looking to take a different perspective then all the myriad other videos out there. Since there were an abundance of advocates, planners, and city transportation officials attending from the U.S. and Canada, we thought it'd be awesome to get their reactions to the city's built environment and compare to bicycling conditions in their own cities.
A few years back, Randy Cohen, writer of the NY Times Magazine "The Ethicist" column, visited the Streetfilms set for a unprecedented interview with Mark Gorton about "Transportation Ethics.". Well we wanted to talk more, so this time we got out of the studio to take a two-wheeled jaunt around New York City and visit […]
It's been 15 years since Vancouver residents started petitioning for a bike lane on one of the bridges that connects to downtown. In the summer of 2009, the city implemented a test lane on the historic Burrard Bridge. Cycling advocates and wheeled commuters explain the advantages to having a protected bicycle path.
Although their proximity to car-dominated Los Angeles can't be denied, southern neighbor Long Beach has put the money and effort behind making cycling an attractive and safe mode, and it's already paying dividends. Bicycling Magazine's 2010 rankings for bike-friendly cities ranked Long Beach a respectable 23rd, but that doesn't satisfy them. In fact, their goal […]
While we were down in Washington, DC for the National Bike Summit, Streetfilms got the chance to check out some of the innovative bike infrastructure. Tops on our list: the city's first protected, contraflow lane for bicyclists. The district DOT has redesigned 15th Street NW between U Street and Massachusetts Avenue to accommodate two-way bike […]
Tens of thousands of people from nearly every nation on earth have descended on Copenhagen this month for the UN climate summit. As the delegates try to piece together a framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they're also absorbing lessons from one of the world's leading cities in sustainable transportation. In Copenhagen, fully 37 percent […]
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.