This year the New York City Department of Transportation measured a 26 percent jump in commuter cycling. Coming on the heels of 2008's unprecedented 35 percent growth, that puts the total two-year increase at a whopping 66 percent.

Much of the growth in cycling can be attributed to the installation of 200 miles of bike routes in the past three years, including innovative facilities like the cycletracks on Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, which separate car traffic from cyclists. Safer streets get more people to ride, who encourage their friends to ride, and more riders on the road means cyclists are more visible and safer. The virtuous circle is in effect here in New York.

With triple the number of cyclists on the road since 2000, we thought now would be a good time to get a reality check from riders: How's it going out there? Overwhelmingly, folks we interviewed said it is getting quite crowded on New York's streets and bridges. Good thing bikes aren't space hogs!

"The tide is turning," Transportation Alternatives Paul White exclaims towards the end of this most recent Streetfilm, "In fact, it's already turned."

White is celebrating the good work underway in New York City during a tour of the city's bike facilities with the head of the Congressional Bike Caucus, Portland's Earl Blumenauer.  To their credit, the tour wasn't just a review of NYCDOT's greatest hits; but also included a ride on the 6th Ave. bike lane, which might be the most dangerous one in North America.

However, the tone of the video is triumphal. Blumenauer himself notes that change is in the air across the country.  In addition to New York and Portland, he ticks off a list of cities who's activists are paving the way towards sustainability.  Chicago.  Washington, D.C. Los Angeles.  Better biking isn't just for college towns anymore.

The Streetfilm ends with a call for action.  At some point Congress and President Obama are going to agree to a transportation funding and policy bill.  Even though Congress is hearing more and more from Livable Streets advocates, it's going to be incumbent on all of us to give them the cover to buck the auto industry when the time comes.  Hopefully someday soon a visit from Blumenauer won't be cause for celebration because every city will have its own contingent of bike-friendly Congressmen.

(editor's note: Streetfilms has undergone a re-design and looks pretty nice.  If you haven't been over there in some time, make sure to check it out at.)

Bike lanes: In some cities people are literally dying to have them and some people go so far as to mark their own. Here in New York City, it feels like every time I get on my bike there is a new bike lane - sometimes on the left, sometimes buffered, and sometimes completely separated from automobile traffic.  To understand these lanes, I had the opportunity to go for a ride with the NYC DOT bicycle boys. They explained the classes of bike lanes and showed off some of these inventive facilities.  You can use Ride the City to find a safe bike route in New York City and watch this video to see what lanes are used on your route.

Bike lanes: In some cities people are so desperate for them they'll go so far as to mark their own. (Editor's note: We know.)  Here in New York City, it feels like every time I get on my bike there is a new bike lane -- sometimes on the left, sometimes buffered, and sometimes completely separated from automobile traffic.

With all the remarkable recent livable streets improvements in New York, it's no surprise the tenth annual Walk21 Conference chose the Big Aplle. Visitors and attendees salivated over new pedestrian infrastructure and public spaces, including tours of the recently opened High Line and a special visit to the soon-to-be-restored High Bridge. Featuring a plethora of speakers, design charrettes and walking workshops, the three-day event drew experts from the UK, Austria, Japan, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Italy, and Australia, among other places.

We were able to speak with the organizers as well as conference registrants, and also got a chance to chat with headliners such as Jan Gehl, Janette Sadik-Khan, Kristina Alvendal (Vice Mayor of Stockholm), and Gil Peñalosa (Walk and Bike for Life, Ontario) about the future of walking and the vital importance of this conference in inspiring world leaders.

We just love when we hear Streetfilms motivational stories from around the globe. Our latest report comes out of Boulder, Colorado.

Last year, I traveled there for four days to document the city's League of American Bicyclists Platinum Status. As is usual on one of these trips, we try to designate one night for a screening of Streetfilms, and nearly 100 people turned out to an event graciously hosted by local bike shop Full Cycle.

One of the films we screened was Portland's "Intersection Repair." A few days ago I received an email from Cara Priem, who thanked us for the event. "I was in attendance," she wrote, "and was inspired by your 'Intersection Repair' video to do the same thing in our Boulder neighborhood."

As reported by The Daily Camera, that neighborhood is Martin Acres, in south Boulder, where residents painted a 30' by 30' street mural a few weekends ago.

This is what Streetfilms is all about: trying to inspire, educate, entertain, and inform through the medium of video, and providing a resource for cities to see what others are doing better. If you'd like to arrange a Streetfilms showing in your city and have a venue, just drop us a line at info@streetfilms.org.

Finally, another Boulder news item. I just checked out a new film called "Boulder Bike Story," put together by Mathew Barlow of Bikes Belong, which contained a startling fact: In 2008, Boulder devoted 46 percent of its transportation budget to bikes, transit and pedestrians. If more cities were doing that kind of funding split, we could solve a lot of problems fast.

Chalk up more bikeway innovation to the folks at the NYC Department of Transportation. Now nearly complete, the Sands Street approach to the Manhattan Bridge is now safer and more enjoyable thanks to a first-of-its-kind in NYC: a center-median, two-way, protected bike path. Frankly, the facility is a perfect solution to counter the dangers posed by a tangle of roads and highway on-ramps that burden the area. Dramatic before and afters tell the delicious story.

We'll also take you back into the archives to April 2005, when following a severe injury to Transportation Alternatives' then Deputy Director Noah Budnick, advocates held a passionate rally to ask Mayor Bloomberg to not only improve bike access to the Manhattan Bridge, but to all East River Bridges. Four years later, there's much to be proud of. As Ryan Russo, NYC DOT Assistant Commissioner for Traffic Management points out, back in 2005 about 800 cyclists used the bridge daily. In 2009, those numbers have soared to over 2600. That gives us a serious case of happiness.

You've been asking for more ways to get your Streetfilms fix, and now you've got 'em.

In addition to now posting all of our new films directly to YouTube, we've started podcasting on iTunes and Miro, making it easy to enjoy the latest and greatest from Streetfilms just about anywhere. Currently, our top 25 films are available for download and we're working on getting the entire Streetfilms collection up pronto.

In other exciting news, Streetfilms is Twittering away, keeping you up to date on where we are and what we're working on. Follow us and you'll get instant notification about our latest films and ways you can contribute.

And via Twitter, you'll also get instant access to our newest creation: "Streetfilms Shorties." These are little fun bits of video -- sometimes just one shot, never longer than a minute -- we may have captured while out and about that doesn't yield a full traditional Streetfilm, but are intriguing. These shorts will only appear on our YouTube account and we'll immediately Tweet them. Wanna see our first stab? Check it out above.

Finally, we'll have some very exciting news in mid-October concerning the Streetfilms site as a whole. So stay tuned.

This week's newest offering from Streetfilms highlights the fantastic tradition of "Sunday Streets" in San Francisco.  As Ben Fried notes in the New York write-up of the film, in both cities last year's ground-breaking idea is this year's "traditional event."

Film maker John Hamilton explains how some mediocre weather didn't stop the event from being a gigantic success, again.

Despite a blanket of fog, the last San Francisco Sunday Streets of 2009 was, from all accounts, a smashing success, one of the most popular so far, with thousands of people enjoying four activity-filled hours of pristine car-free space through Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway. Kids, families, bicyclists, skaters, dancers, and even the MTA Chief Nat Ford came out to enjoy the carfree zone.

Note to L.A. City Hall, these events are catching on around the country and have universally been hailed as great successes.  As an added bonus to trying it here, we don't have to worry about a "blanket of fog" on a Sunday in the Summer.

For anyone that's missed the news, the Bicycle Film Festival is coming back to Los Angeles this week with events running from Wednesday until Friday.  Anyone familiar with the Festival knows it's about a lot more than just bicycles or films.  This year's festival includes a concert featuring rock band Deerhunter on Wednesday, an arts show opening on Thursday and running all weekend and street party on Sunday.

And of course, as the name suggests, there are going to be films.  Shorts and full lengths will be featured, and for the first time, after making literally hundreds of films, a Streetsfilm will be part of the festival.  And the best part?  It's one of ours.  That's right, Streetfilms might be based out of New York and has only made a handful of films out here, but when looking over their body of work the Bicycle Film Festival selected the film about our bicycle co-op scene as the one that will be shown to thousands of people around the world.

For a full list of Bicycle film festival events all in one place, read on after the jump.  For more details or to order tickets, visit the Bicycle Film Festival website.

BFF LOS ANGELES
AUGUST 26 - 30
TICKETS AVAILABLE at WWW.BICYCLEFILMFESTIVAL.COM
LA FESTIVAL PASS
WEDNESDAY 26 AUGUST
BIKES ROCK!
Doors at 8:00PM
Center For the Arts, Eagle Rock - 2225 Colorado Blvd
Featuring DEERHUNTER 

THURSDAY 27 AUGUST
JOYRIDE ART SHOW
6 - 10PM
BFF Storefront Gallery - 4316 Melrose Ave. near N. Heliotrope
Featured artists include: Agathe Snow / Aiko / Ashira Siegel / Camilla Condida Donzella / Cheryl Dunn / Chiara Clemente / Erik Foss / Fast Eddie Williams / Geoff McFetridge / I Love Dust / James Newman / Jonas Mekas / Julia Chiang / Kelsey Brookes / Kenzo Minami / Kenny Scharf / Mear One / Mike Giant / Scott Campbell / Steve MacDonald / ETC.
AFTERPARTY - @ R Bar (3331 W. 8th Street) - password is JOYRIDE

FRIDAY 28 AUGUST
FILM SCREENINGS
DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT - 251 South Main St. near W. 3rd. St.
  7:30 PM | PROGRAM 1 - Where are you go
 9:30 PM | PROGRAM 2 - Fun Bike Shorts
AFTERPARTY - TBD

SATURDAY 29 AUGUST
FILM SCREENINGS
DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT - 251 South Main St. near W. 3rd. St.
  3:30 PM | PROGRAM 3 - The Third Wheel
  5:30 PM | PROGRAM 4 - Keirin Queen/Onna Keirin Oh
  7:30 PM | PROGRAM 5 - I Love my Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes
  9:30 PM | PROGRAM 6 - Urban Bike Shorts
AFTERPARTY – STAR TRACK @ The Short Stop (1455 W. Sunset Blvd.)

SUNDAY 30 AUGUST
BFF ANNUAL STREET PARTY
12 - 8.00PM
N. Heliotrope Dr. at Melrose Ave. East Hollywood
This is going to be the party of the year!
Fun bike games, bunnyhop contest, track competitions, free-style competitions. Great Music too!!
JOYRIDE ART SHOW IS ACROSS THE STREET. 

Born in the streets of Oakland, scraper bikes first gained attention as a trend in bicycle customization that spread with viral speed, thanks to YouTube. Since the Scraper Bike video debuted two years ago, they've become much more: a practical means of greening urban space, a social movement, and a rallying point for young people organizing against violence in their communities.

Tyrone "Baby Champ" Stevenson, who styles himself the Scraper Bike King, says the first scraper bikes were created by Oakland teens who coveted, but could not afford, scraper cars -- souped-up sedans painted with bright colors and with rims so large they scrape the undercarriage. Scraper bikes are such a hit that many teens skip the cars and keep pedaling well past the age of 16.

On July 25, Stevenson organized the second annual "Bike 4 Life" ride to call for an end to violence in Oakland's neighborhoods. "We're trying to bring together a gun truce," he says, "because a lot of people in our community are dying from guns." This Streetfilm features scenes from the ride and more from Stevenson about the movement he helped launch.

Recent pilot programs in New York City and San Francisco demonstrate something that Livable Streets Advocates have known all along: by opening "car space" to the public, one can dramatically reduce car traffic and increase livability and sense of community.  While it's true that the concepts demonstrated by our friends to the north and the east are seemingly alien to the folks at City Hall these days; we've learned that once Livable Streets activism reaches the tipping point, things can happen quickly. Thus, we need to continue to celebrate and highlight some of the success stories in other cities.

The New York example is the more dramatic of the two case.  The above video, narrated by Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton, is a tour of Broadway's car-free squares.  As Mark says, the counterintuitive truth is that taking away space for cars can improve traffic while making the city safer and more enjoyable for everyone on foot. There are sound theories that help explain why this happens -- concepts like traffic shrinkage and Braess's paradox which are getting more and more attention thanks to projects like this one.

When the plan to create these plazas at the expense of car-travel lanes was first announced, some of the local press in New York predicted doom for Broadway travelers.  One paper even went so far as to call the soon-to-be-created traffic disaster "Carmageddon."  Unsurprisingly, Carmageddon has been forestalled.

In San Francisco, new pedestrian plazas on 17th Street are having a similar effect.  The San Francisco Great Streets Project has surveyed residents surrounding the new plazas and found that...

...residents of the Castro neighborhood who felt a strong sense of community character rose from 76% to 89% after the plaza opened and those who considered the pedestrian experience of the area as positive rose from 79% to 84%.

Their survey also found that people were spending more time in the plaza, views of the plaza turned it from a "route" to a place and destination, and residents of the Castro neighborhood now want more...more open space and more outdoor amenities.

The SFGSP also has some great "before" and "after" pictures of the plaza that really demonstrate the sweeping changes a little investment can make in a community.

(editor's note: this post leaned heavily on the writing of Clarence Eckerson Jr. in NY and Matthew Roth in San Francisco.)

From our friends across the country comes a Streetfilm highlighting some of the "Livable Streets Education" outreach in Brooklyn.

If you don't have the time or inclination to take four minutes to watch a film about some of the cool things happening 3,000 miles from here; at least take a couple of seconds to watch a young-man rap about the dangers of idling cars at the beginning of the film or the now-famous "anti-idling" rap and dance available at the 3:15 mark.

Meet Gabe Klein who was appointed new director of Washington D.C.'s Department of Transportation (DDOT) in December 2008.  With an interesting background which includes four years working for Zipcar, Mr. Klein was brought in with the idea of looking at the job from a fresh perspective (check out: Potholepalooza!) and innovating solutions to many mobility problems D.C. faces.  Right off the bat, you'll love a lot of what he has to say:

"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."

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

Yes, this film is more "New York Centric" than I would usually cross post here, but I thought the simple illustration of the value of bus-only lanes was a good one and one we could use again. 

The film tracks the growth of New York City, and the number of people taking the bus into the Big Apple from New Jersey over the decades but notes that the bus access to the Lincoln Tunnel and other crossings has remained static.  As more and more people commute into the city from New Jersey; the Port Authority who controls the bridges and tunnels, New Jersey who controls the roads leading into crossings and New York are going to have to figure out more ways to get more people into the city.  Sometimes the most obvious answers are the best ones.  Just increase bus capacity and this particular congestion problem is solved.

Full disclosure: in addition to the obvious ties between LA Streetsblog and Streetfilms, this film's narrator was my boss when I worked at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

The entire family of San Francisco city agencies responsible for maintaining its streets made an unconventional decision to close a portion of a street to cars and convert the new space into a simple, yet elegant, public plaza.  The project combines all the important elements of plaza creation that have been successful in New York City and elsewhere: take space from cars, use simple treatments to convert the space into a pedestrian sanctuary, including movable furniture and leftover granite blocks from city salvage yards, and engage commercial interests around the plaza to help maintain and care for the new public realm.

Though some neighborhood constituents voiced skepticism that the plaza would be empty at best, or filled with miscreants and vagabonds at worst, the plaza's success is hard to dispute. In fact, so many people are using the new space and enjoying the tables and chairs, the businesses around the plaza have contemplated leaving the furniture out later than sunset, which was the initial closing time agreed upon between them and the Castro/Upper Market Community Betterment District.  This film takes an in-depth look at the construction of the plaza with some of the agencies responsible for it, and includes some entertaining man-on-the-street interviews.

Everyone knows that Phoenix has a huge sprawl problem. But now transit-oriented development is on the upswing in this Sun Belt metropolis. In December, the Phoenix region opened one of the most ambitious transit projects in recent U.S. history: a 20-mile light rail line with 28 stops serving three cities (Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa). Future plans include an extension within three years, with several new corridors being studied. 

The Valley Metro vehicles are handsome and comfortable, and thus far ridership has far exceeded initial projections -- with as many as 40,000 riders per day, compared to the expected 25,000. Each station features amenities and art installations. In addition, with many folks using the light rail as an intermodal step in their commutes, bicycles are welcome aboard. 

Ever wonder what folks working for sustainable transportation at the federal level are up against on K Street? For this Streetfilms exclusive, we were granted unfettered access to Veronica Moss, lobbyist for the Automobile Users Trade Organization (AUTO). Veronica gave us a few precious moments inside her SUV to talk about roads, traffic, cyclists, and big cities. While instructing us on proper honking techniques for "old people" and children, she also offered up some choice bons mots. Here's a sample:

• "People need to be able to drive their cars -- that's an American right!"
• "Bikers are a pimple on the butt of any city."

If you love Veronica, make sure to check out our mockumentary on The Search for the Zozo, where she also makes an appearance.

It's Bike Month - which means there are scads of neophytes out there nationwide giving cycling a try.  Oh goody!  But, oh baddy - it also means more improper locking - and we all know there are predators just licking their chops at the thought of stealing all or part of your bike. So we want to do all we can to preach good locking technique and thwart thieves.

We need a sage in these times to remind us how easy it is to roll your bike.  Once again enter the immortal, Bicycle Habitat mechanic Hal Ruzal to give us the straight dope in what he's calling "your final warning" in this last chapter of our exclusive trilogy.  Let's hope the third time is a charm!

This time around Hal's not only grading bike locking ability of anonymous locker-uppers, but he also shows you how he secures his bike so you too can score an "A" (or at least have a decent shot at an A- or B+.)  And if you love the humorous anecdotes and musings here, don't miss our first two chapters:  "Hal Grades Your Bike Locking" and "Hal (and Kerri) Grade Your Bike Locking".