Lessons from Salt Lake City
A little video from the US showing that even in what is considered the most conservative state in the US, when you present a real vision for Public Transport that people will vote for it and even agree to higher taxes to enable it to happen sooner (not that we are suggesting that with the Congestion Free Network).…
21 Comments San Francisco: Reclaiming Streets With Innovative Solutions
Another great video from Streetfilms: Tom Radulovich, the executive director of the local non-profit Livable City, describes the recent livable streets achievements in San Francisco as “tactical urbanism” — using low-cost materials like paint and bollards to reclaim street space.
That willingness to experiment was a big reason that the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) gave its 2012 Sustainable Transport Award to San Francisco (an honor shared with Medellín, Colombia).…
Rethinking the automobile – video
This is an excellent, if rather lengthy, video by Streetfilms about the impact of automobiles on our cities: A description:
For more than 100 years New York City government policy has prioritized the needs of the automobile over the needs of any other mode of transport.…
Protected bike lanes
I have discussed previously the importance of not only making cycling actually safer through the provision of cycle lanes, but also making it feel safer by ensuring those lanes are constructed to a high standard and provide some real shielding from vehicles.…
Bogota’s TransMilenio
If you’re looking for a great example of how a vastly improved public transport system has transformed a city – Bogota, the capital of Colombia in South America – is a great example. And here’s a neat video from Streetfilms on the Transmilenio BRT system that Bogota has constructed over the past decade: While I get annoyed at people who think that Bogota is proof that BRT is always better than rail (Bogota is a pretty different place to Auckland) there are some aspects of Bogota’s system that clearly have filtered through to projects like the Northern Busway, and could be further implemented in future bus priority projects.…
Contested Streets: Breaking New York City Gridlock
Here’s a really interesting video on the history of transport issues in New York City. What’s quite fascinating about New York is the fact that, despite an extremely extensive public transport network and the kind of densities that work so well with that transport system, the city has spent much of the last 50 years trying to destroy itself to make life easier for cars to get around.…
Complete streets
This is a fantastic video from Streetfilms on New York City and their approach to remaking streets as “complete streets” over the past few years. The key with complete streets is providing mobility and accessibility for all types of transport: pedestrians, cyclists, public transport and cars – instead of cars and pretty much nothing else.…
Traffic calming
I’m a huge fan of the video series being put together on Streetfilms at the moment – about “moving beyond automobiles”. One recent video looks at traffic calming techniques – innovative ways of slowing down vehicles to make the road safer for pedestrians: I really like narrow streets, as I have outlined in previous posts.…
Pricing parking right
Here’s another great video from Streetfilms, this time focusing on parking – the issue that I like to call the “elephant in the room” when it comes to land-use and transport planning. It has a huge impact, but for some reason it gets ignored 99% of the time. …
Better cycle lanes through ‘floating parking’
Last month I wrote a rather controversial post about the importance of making cycling not only actually safer, but also making it perceived as being safer. In that post I argued that our current tendency to focus on providing cycle lanes in a bare minimum manner – generally by just slapping on a bit of green paint and putting up a few road signs – may be nice for the stereotypical ‘lycra-clad road warriors’, but it’s unlikely to really help expand the proportion of the population that chooses to cycle.…
Processing...