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In May, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a bike and pedestrian path connecting some of Indy’s most popular cultural institutions, had its long-awaited public coming out with a ribbon cutting and celebration. It’s one of the biggest bicycling infrastructure achievements in North America, and yet it’s still practically a secret.

As you’ll see, the Cultural Trail runs eight fantastic miles through the heart of downtown and features beautiful stone work, green landscaping, and even bioswales to absorb stormwater runoff. There is great signage and trail design with an eye for maximum safety. In many places, parking and/or a car travel lane was converted to trail space. But most importantly, the trail features ample room for both cyclists and pedestrians (most of the time in separate environments) to get around downtown, whether they’re commuting, exercising, running errands, or just going for an afternoon jaunt. It’s fun and very safe and people of all ages using it.

Across the U.S., cities such as NYC, Chicago, and Washington are doing tremendous work installing miles of protected bike lanes with inexpensive materials. Although the Cultural Trail cost quite a bit, it’s nice to know that to find extensive downtown bike infrastructure made with beautiful, permanent materials, we don’t have to look to Europe. We can go check out Indianapolis.

Across the nation, many big-city mayors of both political parties are embracing bikes and livable streets. As you’ll see, Indianapolis’ Mayor Greg Ballard, a Republican, believes that making city cycling safer and more enjoyable will attract young people and families and benefit business.

Ballard has expanded the number of miles of bike lanes from one (in 2007) to over 75, and there are plans for 200 miles of bikeways by the year 2015. In addition, the city has seen the grand opening of the magnificent Indianapolis Cultural Trail (there’s a great Streetfilm coming on that shortly), which features eight miles of safe biking and walking paths.

Mayor Ballard also does it with his body and voice. He now personally leads four bike rides per year, encouraging people to get healthy, have fun and see their city from a different perspective.

Memorial Day 2013 will always mark the beginning of a new era in NYC transportation history: the debut of the Citibike bike sharing system. 6,000 (of a planned 10k) bikes were available to over 11,000 members who signed up for a yearly pass – and many of them couldn’t wait to  hit the ground biking!

The press conference at City Hall was a media frenzy. Hundreds of reporters and cameras were on hand to watch Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan ring in the launch.  Streetfilms was there at this historical moment and put together this fun 4 minute film.

The next Streetfacts chapter is a PSA that – hopefully – enlightens the U.S. public to how over generations we have nibbled away at kids’ freedoms and their ability to roam, play, grow, and become citizens.

Most advocates know the percentage of children walking and bicycling to school have diminished greatly over the years, from near  50% in 1969 to closer to 13% today.  This despite the fact that the Safe Routes to School National Partnership cites that although distance from school being cited as the main barrier to walking and bicycling, car trips account for about half of school trips between 1/4 and 1/2 mile — which in most cases shouldn’t take kids much more than 10 minutes to walk.

We’re not gonna pretend there aren’t plenty of factors at work here:  Lack of sidewalks and safe walking routes.  No secure bike parking at schools.  The fallacy of “stranger danger”.  School districts banning these modes outright.  But all of these issues lead back to the biggest blunder: we continue to design our world for cars instead of students, children and human beings.

We are going to re-visit this issue often in the next year.

The majority of the roads and highways built in America are simply bad investments. Continuing this pattern will only ensure that wasteful projects consume larger chunks of our federal, state, and local budgets, without addressing the real need for transportation options.

This Streetfacts chapter has a bit more math than usual, but we think we’ve made an entertaining and accessible profile of how government agencies routinely justify unnecessary road projects. The example we’ve chosen to illustrate the problem is a federally-funded “diamond-deverter” interchange in Colorado. The project as proposed may look like a pretty good deal for taxpayers at first, but after crunching the numbers, you’ll see that’s not the case at all.

Much of the inspiration for this piece comes from the outstanding work of Strong Towns, an organization that emphasizes obtaining a higher return on infrastructure investments. Strong Towns Executive Director Charles Marohn, Jr. has been getting his message out through what he calls curbside chats, and we’ll soon be debuting a Streetfilm that features his work.

We continue our Streetfacts series by looking at the data on driving in the U.S. Per-capita driving has declined every year since 2005. That’s not a blip, it’s now an 8-year trend.

The reason? Neither the state of the economy nor changes in gas prices offer a satisfactory explanation. Social preferences and demographic shifts seem to be playing a role. Young people today are less likely to own a car or have a driver’s license than young people several years ago. At the same time, America’s growing population of seniors are no longer in their peak driving years.

Whatever the combination of factors, people are riding transit, walking, and bicycling more. Even Motor Trend is examining the shift away from cars.

The upshot is that we need to start making smart transportation investments that align with the new reality: Americans are driving less.

Welcome to the first of five shorts we’re calling Streetfacts. With Streetfacts, we’ll be highlighting developing trends affecting transportation and planning policy, as well as addressing the cost of “bad practices” that prevent us from shifting to a more balanced transportation network that supports more livable places.

As Streetfilms viewers know, many of the big cities in the U.S. are in the midst of expanding their bicycle networks by installing protected bike lanes. We’ve shown these projects in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., but some of the newest cities installing them are smaller cities you might not be aware of. Places like Missoula, Flagstaff, Indianapolis, Austin, and Memphis have either installed protected lanes or are breaking ground shortly.

Over the next five weeks, we’ll be publishing the rest of the Streetfacts series, which we hope will come in handy in your advocacy. And if they’re a big hit, we’ll take nominations for other topics and make another batch of Streetfacts later in the year.

Here’s one you might file under Not Ad Nauseum: a new commercial with bikes being used in a positive way to have fun, recreate and see your city.  The product being pitched?  The new Toyota Scion. Watch below.

First off, this is a very nice, hip and pretty ad.  It introduces us to Daniel Farahirad, a bicycle retailer in downtown L.A., who uses a Scion to (sometimes) transport his bike out of the city to ride and race. Compared to many of the ways car commercials demonize or make fun of cycling, it’s a welcome addition.

Read more…

Streetfilms was at this year’s National Bike Summit and asked many attendees what they thought about the political climate for bicycling funding and what they would tell Congress if they had a chance.

Much attention at this year’s summit went to Indianapolis where Mayor Greg Ballard who has overseen a drastic remaking of the city which when he took office had one mile of bike lane and now boasts 75. Plans by 2015 call for 200 total. In addition, theIndianpolis’ Cultural Trail, a multi-use path which runs through the heart of downtown officially opens in May and Streetfilms will be going there to check it out.

Just one of the many anecdotes to get excited about from this year’s events.  And if you haven’t seen it, make sure to check out our video on the Women’s Bike Summitwhich was held prior to the NBS.

For the second year running, the Women’s Bicycling Forum kicked off the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC. About 300 people attended, and Streetfilms got to take their pulse on the state of bicycling for women and collect some suggestions about how to grow the number of women who ride.

Here’s a sampling of what we heard, set to cycling scenes in a dozen cities throughout the U.S.