And, speaking of New York...

This showed up on StreetsblogSF. It originates with NYCBike Maps. The video shows how New York is on the forefront of cutting-edge street design with its separated bike lanes, car-free pedestrian walk ways and plazas. If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere!

NPR: Biking in New York

There will be an excellent podcast with former Bogata Columbia mayor Enrique Peñalosa eventually after I take care of some family issues, I promise! In the meantime, listen to this great NPR segment about biking in NY with The Bike Snob.

East Oakland Rides

It's going down! July 25th 2pm Lake Merritt 468 Perkins St. You don't want to miss this!! its going to be off the chain!!!

Bikes 4 Life 2nd Annual Peace Bike Ride ending at Defremery Park 3pm 1651 Adeline St Oakland
in collaboration w/ 100 yr anniversary of Oakland Park & Rec (celebration, food, and entertainment)

for more info email [email protected]
510-238-8080 ext. 310

San Francisco bike culture matures as bike plan is adopted

After nearly three years of stalemate due to a court injunction, the San Francisco Bicycle Plan has its environmental impact report unanimously certified by the Planning Department and is adopted by the Municipal Transportation Agency.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition turned out over two hundred supporters for the MTA meeting to speak in favor of the plan. Friends of Bikescape, Nancy Botkin and Mike Smith joined me and my partner Karen Franklin to discuss how the meeting went and how bike advocacy has changed over the last decade. Interspersed in this informal discussion are audio clips from the meeting.




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Photo from the sfbc flickr pool by Rhonda Winter

KQED discussion about San Francisco Bike Plan

While you wait for my take on last week's MTA meeting that approved the log stalled San Francisco Bicycle plan, here's an hour long round table discussion that aired this morning on KQED's Forum.

Guests were
• Charlie O'Hanlon, owner of Charlie's Place on 17th St. in San Francisco
• Jamie Whitaker, vice president of the Rincon Hill Neighborhood Association
• Judson True, media relations manager for the San Francisco MTA
• Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
• Rachel Gordon, reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle
• Rob Anderson, party to the litigation of the EIR, blogger and anti-bicycling activist

San Francisco Bike Plan almost back on track

On June 26, 2009, the SFMTA Board unanimously voted to adopt the long delayed Bike Plan and gave the green light to 45 new bike lanes. This was the result of three years of intense SF Bicycle Coalition advocacy culminating with a very impressive show of grassroots support at the MTA meeting where over to hundred supporters showed up to speak.

The next step is to bring this to court and have the tree year long injunction lifted so that work can begin on doubling the number of bike lanes in the city.

Congratulations all around! Now that we're back on track let's start to think about what's next!

Traffic Calming in The Chech Republic

Courtesy of Urban Repairs.

bikescape's fifth bike to work day and a rally for transit

Another year goes by and another bigger and better Bike to Work Day beats expectations. We visit the San Francisco City College Campus and chat with Gus from The Bikery. Then we bike across town to hand out goodies at the Chinatown energizer station where we meet San Francisco's only car-free supervisor, Board President David Chiu.

But its not all about bikes! It seems that across the nation, just when transit use is unprecedentedly high, fares are going up and service is getting cut. We go to protest SF's transit budget and meet with Supervisor John Avalos as we walk to confront MTA Director Nat Ford.

Also, we've got lots of news about upcoming events such as Sunday Streets in the Mission. I dropped in som audio from the last Sunday Streets event where we encountered the piano bike.




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Photo by Greg Z

Bike bloggers meet-up in Sacramento

Recently I was in Sacramento where coincidentally the Amgen Tour of California was holding its opening time trial. I stopped into the R-16 bar to have a few beers with some of my favorite bloggers. It was noisy. There was beer.

Still, I think the conversations I had with Paul Dorn from the Bike Commute Tips Blog, (right) Fritz from Cycleicious, and David Bernstein, voice of the Fredcast (left) are worth a listen. (That's your host with the headphones!)

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Photo on left by Andrew Conway. The one on the right by Fritz

Two Cities: Hong Kong and San Francisco

A visit with family offers a chance to report from Hong Kong. We visit the densest square kilometer on Earth then ride in bike paradise Lantau Island. Along the way, we meet Martin Turner of the Hong Kong Bicycle Alliance and stop in at the stylish RodaFixa bike shop.

Then back home in San Francisco, The Bicycle Coalition kicks off the Big 56 Campaign as the long awaited Bike Plan awakes from the court injunction.

Pictured: Brian and Woods from hkfixed

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If you're in Sacramento for the Tour of California this weekend...

From the Bike Commute Tips blog:

Coming to Sacramento for Valentines Day--and also the prologue of the Amgen Tour of California? Finish the day at the AToC Social Media Meetup. Join the inimitable Fritz (Cyclelicious, CommutebyBike), David Bernstein (The FredCast), Jonathan Tessler (Bicycle.net), Jon Winston (Bikescape), Paul Dorn (Bike Commute Tips Blog), and others this Saturday, February 14 at 7 p.m. at Bar R15 in Sacramento (15th and R Streets.)

This is a casual, no-host get together, meaning you're responsible for your own food and drinks. Some bicycle parking is available (one rack, nearby poles), so you may need to use your kickstand and self-lock your bike or leash it with a friend's bike. Theft danger is present, but not huge. To find us, look for cowbells, bike race media passes and paraphernalia, or helmets. No RSVP is necessary, but leave a comment if you think you can stop by.

During your visit to Sacramento, try to visit the new Bicycle Kitchen if you have time. And also try to take a ride on the American River Bike Trail, one of the premier bicycling facilities in the nation. The Amgen Tour prologue course will be open for riding at 11:30 a.m.; enjoy a ride on traffic free streets.

Getting around in Hong Kong

I'm on vacation visiting family in Hong Kong and I couldn't resist shooting some geeky transportation videos to post here. Bear in mind that these were shot on a cheap casio camera that I only just learned could be used for video. So its rough but hopefully illustrative of my uninformed impressions.

Where are the bikes, you ask? Stay tuned for a full on audio podcast to come some time in the next month.

Here are some off-the-cuff impressions of high density living, Hong Kong style in the upper crusty Mid Levels neighborhood



Here's a view of De Voeux Street taken from above on a pedestrian walkway



A ride on the MTR, the privately operated subway system which is more like a horizontal elevator than a train.



The MTR is always clean, cheap and efficient and the advertising is entertaining too!



If you have some time, the "ding ding" streetcars are a treat.



Here's a longer video from the shotgun seat on top as we trundle down De Voeux Street.



Some shaky video of the streets of Kowloon in the densest square mile on earth.

An Interview with Gary Fisher

In this episode we welcome the legendary Gary Fisher to the show for a long, rambling chat. We talk about growing up in Marin County during the dawn of mountain biking, the growth of the industry he and his friends started. We also touch on the future of bicycling as the business gears up to tap the new markets that want bicycles for every day transportation and the massive infrastructure changes that will be necessary.

After the interview there's an update on the Octavia Blvd and Market Street intersection where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority want to remove a hard won bike lane.


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Photo courtesy Fisher Bikes

An Urbanist President

One overlooked advantage of the Obama win is that we are going to have the first non-suburban or rural president in recent memory. His years as an inner city community organizer tell us a lot about how he'll lead but underlying all of that is a deep understanding of how cities work and what makes them succeed or fail. Obviously transit, walkability and cycling are an integral part of urban living whereas parking lots and freeways invariably cause its downfall. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to me that our president can actually speak extemporaneously about my heroine Jane Jacobs and has even read her book. Even Biden seemed interested!

Of course, this video was shot during the campaign season. Now that Obama's headed for the White House, He's not speaking about a big infusion of money towards transit. Let's hope its just astute political gamesmanship! Go to his website and push for the things that will result in the successful life of great American Cities.

h/t to Beyond DC

An Endless Tour with Cindy and Tim Travis

Tim and Cindy Travis have been on the road on their bikes since 2001. They checked in with Bikescape when they passed through San Francisco. Here's the interview.

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Visit Tim and Cindy's website to stay in touch with their travels and order their books here. The first chapter of The Road That Has No End is available in audio format!

Bikescape is now a member of the Streetsblog Network!
Transportation for America is the antidote to the Freeway lobby.

Press release sustainability vs. the real thing

A Conversation with Clarence Eckerson of Street Films

Last Halloween I met with video documentarian Clarence Eckerson of Street Films and Bike TV and we had a great and sprawling discussion about the role of internet-based video and blogging in transportation activism. Street Films is a part of Streets Blog, both of which are produced by The Open Planning Project.

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After our chat Clarence went out and shot this, the definitive film about Critical Mass, capturing the essence of the ride on a balmy San Francisco Halloween.

Driven to Despair

As the exurbs transform into slumburbia PBS's Now produces an excellent piece about the collapse of sprawl. It connects with real people as it dawns on them that the often overlooked nexus between the high cost of energy and the housing crises means they need to change their lives. While they still look at driving as their ticket to freedom and they don't want to sit next to others on transit, they sit as prisoners in their mcmansions, unable to finance a full tank of gas.

For contrast, host Peter Brancaccio showcases car-free and car-lite Pasadena urbanists show that yes, its possible to have a full life in Southern California without becoming a slave to the gas pump.

It runs about twenty minutes.

Sunday Streets in San Francisco

In this episode we ask the perennial Bikescape question: What is a street? Is it a place to travel through to to go to? For thousands of years streets have been a place for friends and strangers to meet, a place where the threads of community are woven, the commons. Somewhere along the way, around the time of the rise of the automobile, the purpose of the streets narrowed and they lost their sense of place, becoming instead a conduit for traffic, where each person passes through without consideration of the space, cocooned in his warm leatherette pod.

At best. At worst, its a dangerous battle zone or an inhospitable, unhuman world.

Fortunatly, as the post-car era dawns, cities are waking up to something new, yet as old as the first village - streets where anything can happen. The first modern car-free streets or ciclovias appeared in Bogota twenty years ago. There, over ninety km of urban streets close to cars every Sunday for a few hours. Now, we are seeing the meme progress into Paris, Portland, New York and, at last, San Francisco.

Bikescape, rides and walks the first Sunday Streets experiment on a lovely San Francisco day to see what develops.

The Bike Kitchen was out in force, along with some clowns from the Cyclecide bike club.
I promised a link to Don Byron who performed an album of the music of Raymond Scott.

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Activism at City Hall and in the Streets

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition leads a protest on the steps of City Hall decrying the slow pace of progress on the environmental review for the Bicycle plan as a court injunction drags on. Then we go inside City hall to knock on doors to promote the car-free Sunday Streets trial on Aug 31 and Sept 14.

Finally (at 44 mins) the SFBC hits the streets to set up a photo booth to take pictures of cyclists and their bikes to deter theft.

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