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Dutch Infrastructure Tour of Bicycle Streets & Intersections (Velo-city 2017)
updated
One reason is that pedestrians really do have the right of way in many situations. In fact, there is no law that a pedestrian can ever be ticketed for crossing the street ANYWHERE! And drivers always must yield. If they do not it is a $300 fine. And we are told the police do write some (in NYC in 33 years I can only recall seeing that happen ONCE!)
Additionally, the more miles you put in walking (I did 11 miles the morning I landed) you can see that at least in this Swedish city, they try not to put in traffic lights. Many intersections consist of no stop signs and pedestrian right of way at all corners. It all leads to drivers being more careful and civil.
The central city is so walkable and stress-free. My visit in 2017 it felt more walkable than any place I have ever been. And it feels even more amazing in 2024. After all, it is the birthplace of Vision Zero.
I was visiting The Netherlands with my family for the first time and we decided to meet up with Mark Wagenbuur (Bicycle Dutch on Youtube) in Utrecht. He took us on a great tour of all the amazing things happening around the train station including many bike improvements, open space initiatives and we even visited the absolutely amazing Railway Museum which is definitely one of the tops in the world.
I filmed it all for fun and made this great keepsake of the day. There's lots to see and you will enjoy watching in real-time how our day went. Thanks so much to Mark for not only being our guide but also for tagging along to the museum where we would have missed some really cool things if it wasn't for him.
We did a 20 mile loop of the city and I tried to show off some of the best stuff we have here. It was a rainy, cold & windy trip but I think what he saw on 1st Avenue, the new East River Midtown Greenway, one of our best 2-way cycle tracks on Crescent Street in Queens, the magnificent 34th Ave Open Street, the Kosciusko Bridge path and several other NYC DOT projects he really quite enjoyed. He was filming while he made his way around NYC and hopefully he will post some of his thoughts on the Bicycle Dutch Youtube.
But I saved my grimmest, bicycling pet peeve for the end of the ride: bicycling New York City crosstown. It was a Saturday and I thought it wouldn't be as bad as during the week, but it proved to be horrible as usual. Believe it only not we only did about 10 minutes of riding and this is just a portion of what we saw!
NYC needs to really upgrade what we are doing for crosstown bicycle lanes, especially from the Village thru Midtown. The protected lanes we have are not truly protected. They need to be wider. Safer. Hardened with immovable barriers. If you have lanes that frequently look like this it's really not encouraging people to jump on a bike. Drop me a line as I am going to be covering crosstown lanes throughout 2024.
The Alliance for Paseo Park initiated the project nearly a year ago with funding from Council Member Shekar Krishnan and a committee first spent months getting permission from the NYC DOT. They then selected 26 Queens-based artists (many living right along the open street) and over the winter chose a universal color palette each composition had to utilize.
In addition, most of the artists had no experience in painting granite and luckily, shortly after their deployment in 2022, Jackson Heights neighbor Grace Alejandra brought out some paintbrushes and expressed herself on a few of the blocks to beautify the open street. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive and she was recruited as a mentor and advice giver to those needing tips in painting granite.
The march was attended by a dozen elected officials and over 200 marchers who walked thru the streets of Corona to draw attention to current legislation in Albany, NY that if passed could allow cities to set their own speed limits, extend & expand the expiring red light camera program. In addition, speakers called on Mayor Adams to do more traffic calming - such as "universal daylighting" and the NYPD to do more far more aggressive enforcement.
In the last 4 years there have been many thousands of social media photos of the school streets in action, presentations by academics & safe streets advocates and even a few video clips and an occasional news report from Paris on them, but there hasn't been anything on the scale of even a short film.
So I set out to change that interviewing some people that could give a good amount of background on Paris School Streets. (And even two folks from the U.S. who frequent Paris I interviewed in NYC on some of our nicer places.) I didn't get everyone I wanted on film, one of my prime interviews came down with Covid(!!). But I hope you enjoy this. It is truly remarkable.
And this is only a small section of the arrondissement, remember citywide Paris is undertaking big changes to its streets both physically but also policies! Nothing was more than a mile away from the school street I filmed her at (a small tease to our next Streetfilm is given at the head of the film).
If you think your city cannot do it due to funds, that is simply not the case. All cities can re-prioritize safer places for people and do this kind of work - it just takes the "will" and "guts" like Gil Penalosa loves to say!
So I excerpted quite a few of them here (about 15 pairs) so you can showoff the dramatic changes. If you want to watch the original with interviews featuring many New York experts including NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, I highly recommend it: youtube.com/watch?v=7GgtmW-W9QY
Come along on our fun ride from her Yorkville home base thru Times Square for the play "Till Death" at Theater Row (note it has since finished it's run) as we discuss all sorts of great urban topics like WIDE bike lanes, congestion pricing, safety for riding at night, Citi bikes and how she chooses what mode of transport she will use (she also does not own a car, but will occasionally rent one - wait until you hear THAT story!)
It is an eclectic journey featuring her path thru the Upper East Side (we stopped to ride a few blocks of the new Third Avenue bike lane!) then via a dark and sparsely populated Central Park lower loop which leads us to directly into Times Square using 7th Avenue or as Amy says, "the belly of the beast"! All along hear how she says the ride to the stage helps her relax and prepare for her role and the ride home allows her to recoup energy and decompress.
One of my favorite ride alongs ever!
So I got the drop on some of the newest installed lanes and one new car-free space! Check them out here. This film stretched to twice its length and still had to leave lots of great footage out. In one instance I literally was heading to interview Derek and I immediately said, "Hey, didn't the bike lane here used to be on the other side of the street?" And my recollection (even though I was only there a few minutes on my last trip) was they did improve the street.
Paris does have the Olympics coming so it's all hands on deck. The entire city is mobilized to make the transportation system work as efficiently as possible to move the athletes, visitors, city officials and residents around during that month. But even with that being true it is stunning to see the building going on.
There are a couple of before and afters in this video that will show you the stark contrast with NYC's 3rd Avenue which was a dangerous traffic sewer with 5 car moving lanes and nothing in the way of safety for those outside a car to what NYC DOT changed it to now: featuring double-wide bike lanes, a brand new bus lane which features off-set crossing, daylighting and actual obstacles to prevent drivers from parking in this most dangerous places on the Avenue.
On Saturday I got to check out the full implementation and met up with about 20 riders to have a happy jaunt up the nearly new 2 miles of installations (it's hoped it will eventually extend the entire Avenue).
This is certainly now Manhattan's safest stretch of bicycling on any street running north and south. It has real protection and room for people to pass, pedestrians to be able to cross the Avenue more safely and bus riders to benefit faster speeds for buses with new red lanes (hopefully cameras to come shortly!)
I had a 2 hour window after landing before heavy rains were due. So I immediately went out and started shooting some reflections and observations. This was one of them. I usually don't put myself front and center but my interviews were later in my trip (all excellent!) so I did an audit and some analysis of Paris curb use - and daylighting - to show how Paris continues on its quest to repurpose 50% of car parking spaces by 2026 to other better uses.
Much more to come after Thanksgiving.
They let me know that the conversion would be mostly done by the end of October and that a perfect time to stop by might be during their Berry Spooky Halloween Event. So since it didn't rain on a Saturday for the first time in 7 weeks I went over with my family and did a brief stop to look at what's going on.
A few things stand out: 1) NYC DOT painted a good deal of intersections with a "coral" coloring to emphasize heightened awareness of all modes. It is the first use of its kind in NYC. 2) Most intersections have now implemented impressive daylighting treatments with rock boulders, Citibike stations, beautiful flower pots, bike parking & more to keep visibility. 3) Many of the street directions for cars (which should be traveling about 5mph) reverse direction almost every other block. Keeping thru traffic off. 2-way bicycle/micromobility is still retained through signage and street markings.
All in all another good example of NYC DOT attempting some innovative things on open streets and bike boulevards in the city.
And actually all three of their origin stories are intertwined. Megan started her Bike Bus on October 2020 during the midst of the Covid outbreak in Hood River. Along with Barcelona's mega popular Bici Bus, Sam cites her rides as his inspiration for first trying his out in Portland on Earth Day 2022, which has now become an internet sensation with millions of views on his video clips. And Emily saw Megan on John Simmerman's Active Towns Youtube podcast (youtube.com/watch?v=f20qkKua1Bo) which motivated her to try out a ride down dense and hectic Brooklyn's Bergen Street.
Oh, and along the ride while interviewing Megan she gave unexpected credit to Streetfilms for introducing her to the concept via a 2010 video where I rode along with Portland's Beach Bike Train (see that film here: youtu.be/DNNxwF1BPKE?si=arrX4v8q8f4JM9aV&t=167) which she said she "stole" to craft her first event.
You'll hear over and over from these three amazing individuals while we cruise through Brooklyn while they talk with conference attendees and navigate the streets.
Parking mandates are an outdated, complex, and costly policy that requires new buildings to dedicate valuable space to storing private vehicles.
Parking mandates are zoning rules that require a certain amount of off-street parking to be built in new apartment buildings or offices. As unbelievable as it seems, as a law, in most of New York City, the government requires developers to include parking spaces, regardless of whether New Yorkers actually want or need them. They have been part of the city’s Zoning Code for decades and haven’t been reformed citywide since John F. Kennedy was president.
Parking mandates:
- Raise the cost of housing by reducing the number of units that each building can rent or sell
- Cater to and encourage car ownership by making it easier to own and use a car in New York
- Create a less livable and walkable city by increasing the number of cars on the road
- May replace street-level retail opportunities, negatively impacting streetscape, safety, and economic growth
- Mandate the construction of parking lots on land that could be used for more housing, parks, or other valuable public uses
Somewhere between 400 and 500 riders turned out to ride from Union Square to City Hall. I was able to put this up a few hours after the event after riding over 10 miles to get home.
StreetsblogNYC attempted to remedy the situation a bit when last year they published "The Field Guide to Urban Mobility in New York City", which explained the classifications of bikes, e-bikes, scooters & mopeds (and also showed some completely illegal modes).
Our charming guide, Gersh Kuntzman, editor-in-chief of StreetsblogNYC, gives us a breakdown of the major users you will see and some of the issues and consequences of having so many types of speed and mobility using bike lanes and the city streets.
Take in this fantastic walking tour put together by Open Plans with knowledgable tour guides and featuring pop-up special guest like former NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan who explains to us about how the corridor changed early on!
There is simply no other historical archive of Broadway out there that features all of this insider knowledge to the process and over 30 before/afters of Broadway - most taken in precisely the same spots referenced.
I hope you enjoy this and pass along to young and old and professors and historians use this. As a personal note, in some ways, this is a sort of test to see if there is the appetite to do a full feature Streetfilm looking at how NYC's changed from 2000 thru present day. If that does happen it would include dozens of interviews combined with footage that I have of NYC from late 1990s on.....let's call this "Streetfilms Legacy: Chapter One"
We have had the pleasure of riding with Mayor Bauters prior (see here in NYC: ) but I happened to be on a Bay Area trip and got to join him for a fun, short trip to see some of what he posts about on social media. The city has lots more great plans. It is so good to see such a great mayor (we are slowly getting more and more) but Bauters is certainly at the top!
When I got back to the hotel I watched a half dozen popular REM videos and most had the same vibe: stick a camera in the front window and watch the real time station travel loop. Not saying that is a bad thing, it's certainly cool to watch that unadulterated, uninterrupted travel. But looking at my own small compilation of shots I thought there lacked much variety, artistry and really getting see what you saw out the windows.
So I decided to make my own in the end with a musical montage tribute to Montreal's REM. I hope you like it.
Streetfilms met up with Michael Rhodes the Transit Priority Manager for SFMTA to give us some quick highlights of the system. They have big things planned for the city with 30 more miles scheduled for the near future. In fact, they aim "to be the Copenhagen of bus transit priority".
Since Streetfilms was visiting the Bay Area, I had to see it for myself. And The Point Development site certainly qualifies among the best places to bike in the area. It's an old Navy base at the western flank of the city that is in the long process of being converted into new uses for every day living and residences.
Connectivity is the big deal as the Cross Alameda Trail brings riders directly to the Point Development bike network and then continues on a few minutes later to a a beautiful park and ferry landing which transports to San Francisco's Ferry Building in just 20 minutes.
For lots more information, please check out StreetsblogSF's article: sf.streetsblog.org/2023/06/27/eyes-on-the-street-alameda-point-development-first-in-bay-area-to-do-bike-lanes-right
During the NACTO conference I got to go out and ride a few tours and also take individual rides with a few others. The result is this nice look at the evolving infra and testing that the city is doing to see what strategies and materials they consider best.
And one of the most frequent reasons cited by critics is all the pedestrian plazas, open streets, bike lanes, restaurant dining, etc (add your own here). Well on Thursday I went out to collect footage for a film I am working on and I have two hours worth. And all I saw everywhere I went in midtown by foot, bike and transit was a thriving Manhattan. But more peaceful thanks to all the streets improvements.
So here is my ode to the "End of New York City". The doom and gloom armageddon that has hit it and has turned Broadway and places like it in to a miles long ghost town inhospitable to human life and activity. The NYC that will never recover that's limping along and might as well give up if its streets look like this going forth. Every day we get closer to Will Smith, Charlton Heston or Vincent Price driving down the streets wary of zombies and evil beings trying to take back the city. BEWARE!
My latest visit I got taken on a short tour by Jonathan Maus from Bike Portland to see just a few things implemented since the last time I was there. The intersections PBOT attempts to remedy often have unusual geometric challenges. Here you will see only a few since you can only fit so much in one Streetfilms.
Two projects which finished since my last visit are Portland's new crossings such as the hilariously named Ned Flanders Crossing and the Earl Blumenauer Bike & Pedestrian Bridge.
Both bridges are not only great additions to the cycle network, but you will see the approaches from both directions have been well thought out and implemented. In particular the Flanders Crossing downtown where the blocks leading up to it on both sides have been made extremely car-light with traffic calming and limited car-access.
As you watch this if you live in North America think about ways in which your city could use some of these traffic strategies. For me, NYC has a lot of great bike lanes now, but often our intersections or links between them are not the greatest. We could use some of these in their tool kits (and some new crossings!!)
His Brooklyn restaurant is the embodiment of neighborhood in NYC featuring wonderful Cathedral, seating, art, greenery and plants and nods to LGBTQ history. And it all ties in together with the fun going on in the streets.
Sit back and listen to this short tour and his remarks. And remember this happened completely organically - a happy impromptu meeting in the streets - as New York City as it gets.
Realizing he tapped an incredible desire for kids and families to have a more fun, healthy and peaceful to get to school, it became a regular Wednesday event and inspired other neighborhoods in Portland and around the world. Some rides have come close to 200, with one-third of the school participating.
I was in Portland but not there for the ride. Still I wanted to meet up with Sam to let him tell his story and thanks to Sam's footage and Bike Portland's incredible opening day video use, I was able to edit this great story celebrating one year!
So in an impromptu decision we decided to place my camera on top of post outside a school in the middle of a light drizzle and see if we had anything to say. And some of it was magic and cool. (Apologies for the perodic light taps of occasional basketballs in the background.)
We talked a lot about the love of our careers to date. How they are both so unusual and sometimes hard to explain. Of course we talked (and you'll see via archival footage) some of the changes that have happened in both NYC and PDX.
But we also talk about our views of how social media has changed things and the next generation of media makers. And so much more, all for free, all right here!!!
(As a personal aside, I used to feature myself on camera quite a lot in the first 5 years. But gradually grew to allow my subjects to tell the story and get out of the man-on-the-street mode. But of late I have been getting back in front for a few Streetfilms here or there. But I am happy this came out so well to feature Jonathan and me for nearly 20 minutes, only about 2 minutes were trimmed. I think I need to do this more often.)
As usual despite many cranks & drivers stating that bikes barely ever use bike lanes, selective anecdotes are not facts. Every time I've done these during rush hours the results are even better than I expected. In fact during this 30 minute taping from 5-530pm on Monday, April 3rd a very shocking thing emerged I was unprepared for: not one rider in the video rides the wrong way. Not one! I'm a New Yorker of course, and even I admit to seeing a percentage of salmoning (that's going the wrong way in a bike lane) but to witness this result was cool.
I think I have a theory: in NYC the best and most popular bike lanes don't have many wrong-way riders, or very few. Why? They are busy. They are safe. And there are safe options nearby to travel. The pairs on 1st Ave and 2nd Ave are a perfect example. Among NYC's most crowded. At rush hours it's a constant steady stream. You don't want to face dodging a dozen bikes per block. It's dangerous.
I actually did a taping near this spot almost in 2021. (See here: youtu.be/TMQxPyD36wc) In 21 minutes there were 171 bikes, 323 vehicles and 11 buses. And with bikes only having one lane versus the four for other vehicles (which includes a partial BUS ONLY lane) it proves that the bike lane not only is worth it - but we need to think about making them wider since they are getting real crowded in Manhattan!
You'll have to watch the video to find out, but it's a better count than 2021 and this time proportionally the results were even better for bikes. One note: the "range" for vehicle numbers is due to me having to do a manual count on paper due to the angle of the camera placement. Thus a paper count I got 545 vehicles (and 8 buses) versus later using just the straight video which I could only come up with 525, but the parked cars can shield a few here or there. So let's say I was even massively off and it was 600 - it still proves spatially bikes are a great deal for NYC.
Residents in Hell's Kitchen have been fighting a very long time to make their loud and dangerous streets safer, more livable and more equitable for the neighborhood. Led by community activist Christine Berthet they have accomplished some seemingly impossible changes to their chunk of Midtown Manhattan.
But the cherry on top is now here: in the last few months NYC's Environmental Protection and the Design and Construction finished a decade long project replacing sewers & water mains on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan and so NYC DOT took the opportunity to expand pedestrian space 10 feet in the project's footprint and to also further harden the protected bike lane there and make it safer. There are now only three lanes for moving traffic, righting a wrong many decades ago when Robert Moses halved the sidewalks to provide an additional lane to the Lincoln Tunnel.
The most exciting announcement was that NYC DOT said it would be bringing this style of street geometery to other places (presumedly Manhatttan's Avenues) and other overly wide roads throughout the city.
Check out our amazing Streetfilm, the second half of which goes deeply into the history of the movement and energy behind the Hell's Kitchen folks making it happen since 2005 (and Streetfilms was there!)
At the event we also debuted our brand new Open Plans PSA explaining our core mission. We’re calling it “Maps Can Be Redrawn” which features nearly 90 shots of the streets of the city.
It was scripted by Eric Parker and voiced by Yael Rizowy.
So for the first I put on a GoPro (first time outdoors ever using one on my helmet) and showed people how nice and car-free my 4 mile journey is to the Queensborough Bridge. I put in most of the turns and sped up the footage for parts. It's just about always this clear, very rarely will you even have a bad encounter with a vehicle.
I and doing it for two reasons: one to show people who might be timid that there are indeed some very nice routes that exist that are relatively safe and the other: we need our elected officials, city and NYC DOT to have routes like this in EVERY neighborhood that piece together extremely safe bike excursions for work, exercise, fun and errands!
At one point Prof Moreno, who is an advisor to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, about the concept of the 15 Minute City.
As you check out these archives, be aware that nearly every before shot is directly contrasted with a recent shot absent the din of what the street ambience is versus the remarkable 2011 footage of how much the constant drone of cars is present (and we're not even talking about honking or cars playing music loudly). Most of these shots were filmed on the exact same block 12 years ago.
One of the major arguments of people that are against open streets is how much "louder" the street has become. Of course any reasonable person knows that's folly. When the constant noise of motors and road tire friction is removed, what's left are sounds of humans that would naturally be there walking, talking, playing, etc. on sidewalks. This irks some people. (The exception I will admit is that on some open streets there are occasional events where there might be music played or a protest or cultural event. Those certainly will have some elevated noise levels. But they are not daily and still would argue if you had a decibel meter out there might not even reach the levels of most car noise.)
Through the next year the program was made permanent with the 34th Avenue Open Street Coalition putting out barriers daily. Eventually after community meetings, the NYC DOT allocated more funding and another group (Friends of 34th Avenue Linear Park) advocated for more permanence and better street design. Together the two groups working with community and elected leaders agreed that the street should have multiple style blocks with some around schools completely closed to cars (plaza blocks) while others should have various treatments to discourage thru travel by drivers.
In the Summer of 2022, the NYC DOT implemented a plan in which most of the 26 blocks were given just that using a unique series of closures, planters, chicanes, concrete blocks, diverters, bike lanes, neighborhood loading zones, flex posts, curb extensions and street textures to calm the street 24 hours a day, while still deploying barricades from the hours of 7am to 8pm daily.
In the late Fall, Streetfilms got the opportunity to walk some of the open street to ask Eric Beaton (Deputy Comm. for Transportation Planning & Management, NYC DOT) and Emily Weidenhof (Director of Public Space) to explain these treatments on camera and about future plans for the corridor. Please check it out!
I got to speak with the Commissioner as well as few friends and advocates I ran into also walking the Avenue. I also got some very cool footage that other news stations didn't as I brought a monopod and was able to extend it 10 feet above Fifth Avenue to show just how amazing the visual of throngs of pedestrians (both NYC residents and tourists) out shopping, seeing the holiday decorations, eating and generally strolling for the fun of it with their families.
It's no doubt with such an enormous initial Sunday success, the next two will be equally the same and next year will be bigger, longer and more dates. Here is to hoping!
Over the last year I've seen him more often as I never realized he was a big bike advocate in his community. So I recently met up with him to go for a ride and warned him I would have my camera with me just in case he wanted to talk about the newest bike and pedestrian facilities going in on Eighth and Ninth Avenues in Hell's Kitchen. Well we ended up talking quite a bit about how the lanes work and how they have supplanted older facilities which didn't work for either mode.
Charlie is also now a member of Manhattan's Community Board 4!