Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The National Bike Summit begins tomorrow, bringing together an estimated 750 cycling advocates. They’ll hear from NYCDOT Chief Janette Sadik-Khan, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and they’ll descend on Congress in droves, plastic bike pins fastened to their lapels, to deliver a message about safe cycling access.

We’ll be covering the Bike Summit like other Washington reporters cover the State of the Union. For people who care about sustainable transportation, this event is a high point of the year.

As bicycling infrastructure improves, advocates refine their demands. These days, the call is not just for bike lanes, but separated bike lanes. Bike Summit attendees are sure to be talking about it. Yesterday, Streetfilms released a new video about floating parking and separated cycletracks. And last month, Harvard’s School of Public Health released a study about the superior safety of separated bike tracks.

So why does the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials still advise against cycle tracks on safety grounds? AASHTO’s design manual is the “bible” used by traffic engineers and planners around the country, along with the FHWA’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and it can be hard for localities to get approval — or funding — for projects that deviate from the prescriptions laid out in these guides.

A group of urban transportation officials, called Cities for Cycling, has been working to update AASHTO’s Bikeway Design Standard Manual and the MUTCD for years to include better cycling infrastructure. Eric Gilliland, executive director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, the sponsoring organization for Cities for Cycling, says the Harvard study confirms the benefits of separated bike lanes. “The trend, it seems, in bikeway planning is to provide more of a buffer between bicycle traffic and main street traffic, from a safety standpoint but also from an encouragement standpoint,” Gilliland said.

Read more…

In the second chapter of Streetfilms’ Moving Beyond the Automobile series, we’re taking a look at bicycling.

The benefits of cycling are simple: It helps reduce congestion, meet sustainability goals, and improve public health. With Portland leading the way, many American cities have seen the share of people biking to work rise substantially in recent years [PDF]. For this video we spent some time with leading thinkers in New York, San Francisco and Portland to discuss how safer cycling infrastructure is helping more people make the choice to bike.

This series is made possible by funding from The Oram Foundation’s Fund for The Environment & Urban Life.

Streetfilms was out in Portland at this year’s Rail~Volution conference, putting our finger on the pulse of the sustainable transportation world. We spoke to a healthy dose of this year’s attendees, including advocates, bloggers, planners, transit industry reps and members of transportation agencies across the country. Among those we heard from was Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who helped push Rail~Volution — now in its twentieth year — to national prominence in 1995. Well over a thousand folks attended the four-day event.

In addition, almost 500 people came to Portland’s famous Bagdad Theater to watch a program of short films on the big screen, eight of which were Streetfilms! Our fan base continues to grow, and an event like Rail~Volution brings home how much people look to Streetfilms as an inspiration and educational tool. It’s a great feeling.

In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks program has launched an initiative that may someday alter the way many dense U.S. cities decide to treat the streets of their commercial strips.

Taking the PARK(ing) Day concept to a more permanent, logical level, the Parklets Program has begun experimenting with trial spaces allowing businesses to convert parking spaces into outdoor public spaces and cafes. The first was installed in March outside the Mojo Bicycle Café on Divisdero Street where two parking spaces were reallocated to people-space; now cafe tables & chairs, benches, bike parking, and plants sit over a raised platform over the asphalt. If all goes well thru the evaluation period, the idea is to eventually turn the process into a regular permitting process that business groups and communities can apply for. It looks good: owners of Mojo say business is up 30% and they have had to hire more staff.

The Pavement to Parks program has already transformed a number of community spaces in the Castro, Showplace Triangle and Guerrero Park. We briefly look at those as well in this video.

Washington, D.C.'s Bikestation is one of the sleeker and more fully-featured bike parking facilities that Streetfilms has ever seen. Located at Union Station, the Bikestation provides secure parking for more than a hundred bicycles, offers repair, rentals, lockers, and a changing room. Members get 24/7 access.

Have a look and see how D.C. has made their biggest transit hub even more multi-modal with top-notch bike parking.

Last week, hundreds of bike advocates descended on Washington D.C. for the tenth annual National Bike Summit -- the largest one yet. Hosted by the League of American Bicyclists, the summit is always a great opportunity for advocates to share ideas and make the case for cycling on Capitol Hill. This year attendees encouraged their senators and representatives to sign on to several key pieces of legislation, including the Active Community Transportation Act, Safe Routes to School Act, and the Urban Revitalization and Livable Communities Act.

Streetfilms attended the summit and had the chance to talk to several participants. Check out this wrap-up for insight into some of the big bicycle initiatives happening around the country. You'll hear from conference host Andy Clarke, Representative Earl Blumenauer, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the FTA's Peter Rogoff, and more.

In New York City, Mayor Mike Bloomberg is expected to announce his verdict on Times Square's new pedestrian spaces very soon. Will the changes be permanent? This morning Bloomberg told radio host John Gambling that we'll find out sometime next week. In the meantime, the media has focused on rumors that Midtown traffic speeds may not have increased across the board, without paying much attention to the tremendous difference this project has made for hundreds of thousands of pedestrians every day.

It's been eight months since this part of Broadway went car-free, and maybe it's hard to recall just how bad Times Square used to be for everyone walking around. To really appreciate what we have today, you've got to take a trip back in time to see the crowded, dangerous mess that used to fester at the crossroads of the world. Naturally, the moment calls for a Streetfilms retrospective.

Meet Gabe Klein, who was appointed to direct Washington D.C.'s Department of Transportation (DDOT) in December 2008. With a background that includes four years working for Zipcar, Klein was brought in to look at the city's mobility problems from a fresh perspective. As he says:

Cars are a part of our daily life here in D.C., but what we want to do is try to equalize the playing field. Encourage people to walk, to bike, to bike share; or instead of owning a car -- car share.

D.C. already has one of the lowest household car-ownership rates of any major U.S. city, so actively promoting these modes is essential -- as Klein points out -- to helping people move about with freedom.

Seattle's South Lake Union Streetcar is a 1.3-mile line that opened in December 2007, the first leg in the city's commitment to new transit and light rail. It passed the half million passenger milestone in its first year, surpassing ridership projections.

The streetcar features many top-of-the-line tech amenities, including real time arrival message boards, solar-powered ticket vending machines, and human-activated doors to save energy while the train is in layover mode. If you go to the Seattle Streetcar web site, you can find out the next arrival time and actually watch the streetcars moving via GPS trackers.

As you'll see in the film, development is booming along the South Lake Union corridor. "If you build it, they will come" certainly seems to apply here.

In November 2006, Danish planner Jan Gehl met Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton in Times Square to reflect on the state of the city's public spaces. In this Streetfilm by Clarence Eckerson, EIC Aaron Naparstek catches up with Gehl in the new Madison Square to talk about what has changed in the intervening two years, and what can still be done to make New York a world-class pedestrian city.