A Bonanza of School Streets Resources for you to use!
School Streets in Paris sets the bar for the world!
If you want the tools to fight for school streets in your town, city or nation, well you’ve come to the right place! Streetfilms can boast it’s made the most popular videos worldwide in a spectrum of cities showing how it’s done. First up is Paris where they’ve been implementing the most ambitious & green school streets program since the pandemic and promise to hit 300 installations by the end of 2026. Check out our most watched Streetfilm below.
School Streets can be in many forms, see Ghent where they have morning and afternoon closures!
While at the Velo-City 2024 event in Ghent, Belgium we were happy to document a tour of how they are able to provide safe school passage for families & kids on bike as well as pedestrians. Some are a temporary hour-long morning-afternoon closure while others have intense re-designs of streets to slow or divert traffic off. Take a look.
London installed two School Streets around a sports facility which seats 27,500!!
Think about all the stadiums and sports arenas you have ever been to. Could you ever imagine putting school streets around them? Well in London’s Lambeth listen to how Councillor Rezina Chowdhury tells us why it was vital and it works so very well (and provides a place for spectators to hang out before/after cricket matches!)
I realize it’s not always about videos. Sometimes photos can get the point across more quickly and are easier to post. So I’m providing some collages throughout our posting here to see and use. First up are some snaps I took while documenting Paris School Streets.
Paris school streets. Feel free to use this on social media or wherever.
In NYC, Open Plans is pushing for more school streets!
There are close to 1 million school students in New York City and it is vital we keep our children as safe as possible. So in the last few years Open Plans has lead the charge to put more pressure on NYC DOT to instal school streets. There is great hope the new Mamdani administration will greatly expand the small program (see: School Streets For All report!). Below see three that Open Plans has been involved with.
Barcelona: Sometimes it’s about just taking over the streets.
Barcelona has been a leader with its ambitious superblocks program (see this early Streetfilm that helped popularize that program) but another thing that they have going on is their bicibus initiative started by parents & organizations to help guarantee a safe journey to school in a fun atmosphere. This is a video that will make you smile. Often.
Below are some nice stills from three different cities doing a variety of school streets. The first row is taken from the Ghent film embedded above, the second was a summer visit to an installation in Montreal, Canada and finally stills from the Lambeth Oval - also featured above.
First row: Ghent school streets. Second row: a fun street in Montreal. Third row: installations in Lambeth, London.
Another London School Street featuring Sam Balto!
You may have heard of “Coach” Sam Balto who started the fantastically popular Bike Bus movement in Portland, OR (yes, much like the Bici Bus.) He filed this report for us in London when he got a tour of some of their school streets.
Our very first NYC School Streets film!
Our first video on school streets looked at NYC’s 34th Avenue open street when it morphed from just an open street to a 1.3 mile stretch with several plaza blocks outside the six major schools that run along it. This was an important first attempt to present some sobering data from StreetsblogNYC's Jesse Coburn and contrast it with the experience of students using a safe conduit to get to school daily.
And here are just some of the 100s of photos I have taken over the years of the 34th Avenue open street and how wonderful it has been for the school streets/plaza blocks that are now permanent there.
