Guadalajara, Mexico is showing how amazingly transformative a ciclovia-style road closure can be for its citizens. In seven years, their inaugural Sunday event Via RecreActiva has grown from just seven miles with 35,000 participants to 41 miles with 400,000 users every Sunday. It goes from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and covers six municipalities.

The diversity of activities features traditional ciclovia staples like aerobic classes and music, but also some new wrinkles including free haircuts for children and a city that clearly knows how to hula hoop!

Another unique aspect of this story is that one of the forces behind the success of the Via RecreActiva is a civil association called Guadalajara 2020, a group of primarily made of  business owners, real estate people and entrepreneurs who envision Guadalajara to be a healthier, greener and more humane city.

That mission includes bringing better transit to the city, making it safer to walk & bike and create equality and empowerment among its people. Perhaps it is best put by Guadalajara 2020′s President, José Palacios Jiménez, who told us:

“…we would like to be able to remove the cars from the entire city. Because with all the information we manage to get, we are able to understand that the biggest problem of humanity are the cars.”

Guadalajara does feature  public spaces on par with the greatest in the world, but also faces many extraordinary challenges with horrible traffic and unsafe pedestrian environments on nearly every street.  It’s refreshing to see business folks not only speaking out and understanding the real solutions, but investing their funds to create an organization like Guadalajara 2020.

Walking and bicycling in Guadalajara can be dangerous in many parts of the city, but there’s a big movement among many citizens to alter that. GDL en Bici is a group of wonderful citizens and bicycle advocates who have been organizing multiple weekly bike rides for years, and nothing is more impressive then their first Thursday of the month ride – the Paseo de Todos - which regularly churns out up to 5,000 riders to celebrate and demand safer cycling conditions.

People just have a lot of fun. You’ll see families, students, and older citizens heavily sprinkled throughout the critical mass. Drivers who usually rule the congested roads seem to mostly tolerate the inconvenience. The police largely ignore the whole thing. Helping matters is that each of the rides is theme-oreinted: one month it might be to celebrate Mexico’s Independence.  Another week it could be comic books. This month was particularly fun since it was all about celebrating the Day of the Dead!

Streetfilms would like to thank Guadalajara 2020 for making it possible to make the journey to document this wonderful event & sponsoring the film.  And to Gil Penalosa, Executive Director of 8-80 Cites, for organizing the details

In the increasingly heated competition to see who deserves the title of America’s most bike-friendly city, Minneapolis has plenty going for it. Last year Bicycling magazine anointed the city tops in the nation, knocking Portland off its long-held perch.

The Twin Cities are undergoing a steady transformation into a more bike-oriented region thanks to nearly 100 miles of greenways and off-street paths, giving residents safe and quick travel options. By far the best-known of those paths is the 5.7 mile long Midtown Greenway, which connects cyclists to destinations through the heart of Minneapolis, from east to west. As you’ll see, the path isn’t just giving people a great place to bike, walk, and run — it’s attracting development and new businesses as well.

Thanks to the Bikes Belong Foundation for funding this Streetfilm, our third in a series on innovations in Minneapolis. Check out the Nice Ride MN and Sabo Bridge Streetfilms if you haven’t already!

The first cable-stayed bridge of any kind in the state, it’s breathtaking, even to the people who have been riding it for years. It provides a safe, continuous crossing and offers up a glorious view of the downtown skyline (especially at sunset!). The sleek Hiawatha light rail line runs beneath it, and there are benches to sit on and take everything in.

Used by an average of 2,500 riders a day, peak use can hit 5,000 to 6,000 per day on some gorgeous summer weekends, according to Shaun Murphy of the Minneapolis Department of Public Works.

The bridge was named in honor of Minneapolis’ Martin Olav Sabo, a former U.S. Representative from the 5th District who helped secure much of the $5 million needed to build it. Thanks to the Bikes Belong Foundation for enabling us to feature this majestic piece of bike architecture and to show that investing is cycling and walking is well worth every penny for our communities.

Nice Ride MN is a hit. The Twin Cities bike share recently celebrated its one year anniversary in June. And in July they started an expansion by adding more stations and bicycles to the network.

We talked with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak about the decisions that went into getting Nice Ride MN off the ground:

You gotta go big or go home. You can’t put a few around. You’re hopping on that bike, it’s like a trapeze, you’re not gonna swing on that trapeze unless you know there’s another one to grab. You’re not gonna hop on that bike and cross town, unless you know there’s a place to go.

Thanks to the Bikes Belong Foundation we’re able to provide this short snapshot of the Nice Ride MN system, how it works, and where it’s headed.

Over the last four years, New York City has seen a transportation renaissance on its streets, striking a better balance by providing more space for walking, biking, and transit.

As with any departure from the status quo, it can take a while for everyone to grow accustomed to the changes. So Streetfilms decided to look at three of NYC’s most recent re-designs — Columbus Avenue, First and Second Avenues, and Prospect Park West — and show how pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers benefit from safer, calmer streets. We talked to transportation engineers with decades of experience, elected leaders, community board members, people on the street, and business owners to get their take on the new configurations.

The truth is, no matter how hard some media outlets try to spin it otherwise, these new street safety projects have broad community support. And while the story of these changes often gets simplified in the press, the fact is that the benefits of the redesigns go far beyond cycling. A street with a protected bike lane also has less speeding, shorter pedestrian crossings, less lane-shifting and more predictable movements for drivers, and the opportunity to add more trees and plantings. Injuries to pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and car passengers drop wherever the new designs go in. And on the East Side, these improvements have been paired with dedicated bus-only lanes with camera enforcement, making service more convenient and attractive for thousands of bus riders.

At 11 minutes, this is one of our longest Streetfilms. We cover a lot of ground here, and we hope it’s illuminating no matter what side of the issue you fall on.

What’s a road diet? Quite simply, traffic-calming expert Dan Burden told Streetfilms, “A road diet is anytime you take any lane out of a road.”

The first time people hear about a road diet, their initial reaction likely goes something like this: “How can removing lanes improve my neighborhood and not cause traffic backups?” It seems counterintuitive, but taking away lanes can actually help traffic flow smoother while improving safety for everyone.

Road diets are good for pedestrians: They reduce speeding and make vehicle movements more predictable while shortening crossing distances, usually through curb extensions or center median islands. They’re good for cyclists: Many road diets shift space from car lanes to create bike lanes. They’re good for drivers: Less speeding improves safety for motorists and passengers, and providing left-turn pockets allows through traffic to proceed without shifting lanes or waiting behind turning vehicles.

And here’s something to keep in mind during this era of lean budgets: Road diets are a highly-effective infrastructure improvement that can be implemented quickly and at low cost.

Streetfilms would like to thank The Fund for the Environment & Urban Life for making this series possible.

In the fifth chapter of “Moving Beyond the Automobile,” we demystify the concept of congestion pricing in just five short minutes. Here you’ll learn why putting a price on scarce road space makes economic sense and how it benefits many different modes of surface transportation.

In London, which successfully implemented congestion pricing in 2003, drivers now get to their jobs faster, transit users have improved service, cyclists have better infrastructure, and pedestrians have more public space. More people have access to the central city, and when they get there, the streets are safer and more enjoyable. While the politics of implementing congestion pricing are difficult, cities looking to tame traffic and compete in the 21st century can’t afford to ignore a transportation solution that addresses so many problems at once.

Streetfilms would like to thank The Fund for the Environment & Urban Life for making this series possible.

The 10-mile course featured the latest in what the D.C. area can boast in primo cycling facilities including the fabulous, physically separated bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue NW and 15th Street NW. The ride also breezed past many DC Capitol Bikeshare stations. We chatted with participants about “Gabby”, the Bike Summit, and their experience over the week.

For the first chapter in our Moving Beyond the Automobile series we’ll take a look at Transit-Oriented Development, more commonly known by its “TOD” acronym in transportation industry circles. TOD is a high-density, mixed-use residential area with access to ample amounts of transportation. There are usually many transportation nodes within its core and contains a walkable and bike-able environment.

We decided to take a look across the Hudson River at New Jersey’s east coast where over the last two decades the amount of development has been booming. Transportation options are as diverse as you can get: the Hudson-Bergen light-rail, multiple ferry lines, PATH station, NJ Transit commuter trains, and buses are all plentiful, while in some areas car ownership is as low as 40 to 45 percent.

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

After you finish rubbing your eyes and wondering if you really just saw that, think for a minute: It’s fair to say that, wherever you live in the United States, you’ve never seen reporting like what you see in this clip — not even if the victims had died. Not even if they were high profile actors or members of society. Not even if dramatic video existed of the crash itself.

We’ve got a tough hill to climb if we want to see quality reporting on street safety using this kind of terminology. For instance, here in New York City we are dealing with a press that salivates any time they hear any mention of the word “bike.” Pavlov would be proud. The television and print media portray cyclists as if they were a menace to society, like bedbugs in need of extermination. The constant barrage of late has been unrelenting, depressing and biased.

In particular, CBS2 in NYC has devoted so much time to negative bicycling stories — constantly getting the facts wrong — you have to wonder how much of it is sloppy reporting and how much is a vendetta. After all, this is the same network that has chosen to use “Bike Bedlam” as their choice buzz phrase to file many of these stories under. Yet when pedestrians or cyclists are hurt or killed by reckless drivers, we don’t see them grouping these tragedies under banners like “Drivers Amok” or “Cars Out of Control.”

The big problem is that all television news crews have a bias that they cannot ignore: They drive nearly everywhere to file their stories. They see the expanding bike infrastructure and pedestrian plazas as eating up road space. To them this is a growing threat which makes it harder to drive their news vans and do their jobs. Thus, they have a vested interest in being critical of bike lanes, which affects who they decide to interview, what footage they use, the edits they make, the “facts” they accept.

I remember in August 2008, after being interviewed about the city’s upcoming Summer Streets, CBS anchor Don Dahler (shown here driving distracted in a report on distracted driving) turned to me and remarked that closing streets for these kinds of events makes it hard to get around the city.

Our press should be doing a much better job educating viewers and being aware of how their own bias is affecting their reporting. The Netherlands video is aptly titled “When Cyclists Matter.” So far here in the Big Apple, most of the media hasn’t gotten that message.

Today is an exciting day here at Streetfilms as we are officially announcing the debut of our 10-part series “Moving Beyond the Automobile” (MBA).  Each Tuesday over the next ten weeks, tune in to Streetfilms as we’ll be posting a new chapter about smart and proven strategies to reduce traffic and improve street safety for all users.

We’ll be tackling many fascinating topics in the next few months from “Bus Rapid Transit” to “Congestion Pricing” to “Car Share” to show how each can help people to use cars less – or not at all.

We’ve been out talking to the experts.  Well-respected voices like former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa, Tri-state Transportation’s Kate Slevin, Commissioner of NYC Department of Transportation Janette Sadik-Khan, Portland’s Mayor Sam Adams, former 4-term Mayor of Milwaukee, and President of the Congress for New Urbanism John Norquist and dozens of other transportation authorities across the country to get their input and advice.

At about the halfway point of the series, we’ll also be posting a MBA curriculum that includes lessons and discussion points for each of these fun and important films.

Streetfilms would like to thank The Fund for the Environment & Urban Life for making this series possible.

Hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians — and more than a few elected officials — turned out on Friday afternoon last week to cut the ribbon on an impressive piece of infrastructure for human-powered travel — the long-awaited Cal Park Tunnel in Marin County, California.

The project has been talked about since the late 1970s and in active development for the last 12 years. For Marin cyclists, the 1.2 mile path/tunnel combo adds a critical, safe link to the north-south bikeway that will eventually run from the Golden Gate Bridge to Cloverdale in Sonoma County. It is expected to shave nearly 15 minutes off of trips and serve up to 800,000 riders a year. And just as important: The rail right-of-way has been maintained so that in the future, SMART light rail vehicles can use the tunnel too.

The Cal Park Tunnel has some top-notch features: ample lighting, cell phone reception, emergency phone call boxes, a ventilation system and smooth pavement. To read up on loads more history of the tunnel and information, check out Streetsblog SF’s great recap from last week.

Transportation planners in Portland, Oregon are taking their famous bicycle boulevards to the next level. By adding more routes and stepping up the traffic calming treatments, the city is not only making these streets more attractive and usable for cyclists, but also for pedestrians, runners, children, and anyone else who gets around under their own power.

These next-generation facilities have been christened “Neighborhood Greenways,” and by 2015, over 80 percent of all Portlanders will live within half a mile of one. The city is counting on these re-engineered streets to reach its goal of increasing bicycle mode share from eight percent to 25 percent by 2030.

Just about anybody who’s biked one of these routes can testify to the safety and peace you experience. You’ll see scores of families and children riding to school with regularity. At any time of day, there’s a constant buzz of activity, and during rush hours you’ll see many more bikes than cars. As Portland Mayor Sam Adams points out, “They’re on a quiet street, where that bike boulevard is prioritized for the bike, not the car.”

On a final fun note, one day Portland may also be able to lay claim to being the birthplace of the “sharrow flower.” What’s that? You’ll just have to take watch this Streetfilm and find out.

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.

Back in 2008, residents in Jackson Heights, Queens, banded together to win car-free Sundays on 78th Street, creating a new, temporary public space for children and families in one of NYC’s most park-starved neighborhoods. This year neighborhood activists aimed much higher: They wanted to make the street car-free 24-7 for the entire months of July and August.

As you’ll see, thanks to lots of motivation and strong leadership from their City Council Member Daniel Dromm, they overcame initial hesitation from the local community board’s transportation committee — which voted the idea down — to make it happen.

The fight was worth it, Dromm told us. “It was recognized just about two weeks ago in The Queens Tribune as being one of the best things about Queens – this play street,” he said. “So imagine if we hadn’t done it?” Indeed.

All summer long, 78th Street was filled with a warm, family atmosphere, sometimes well after sundown. As for next year, there’s talk of possibly giving this car-free street even greater permanence. Stay tuned.

For those of you who don’t know him yet – meet Zozo. He’s our big purple friend who loves anything that gets people out of cars and moving about the streets. You might find him riding his ZoGo along the new Prospect Park West bike lane, sitting out in the pedestrian plazas on Broadway, or catching the 4 train to amble about the city. (In this video, you’ll also see him joined by a special guest about 20 seconds in.)

So, we can’t think of a better way to get ready for this year’s International Walk to School Day on October 6, than to get the info directly from Zozo. According to the folks at the National Center for Safe Routes to School, this awareness-builder began in 1997 when the Partnership for a Walkable America sponsored the first Walk Our Children to School Day in Chicago. Since 2002, it’s become a worldwide event, with schools in all 50 states leading the way for healthier kids. Make sure you get out and walk or ride your bike that day!

In 2009, there were great events in New York City and San Francisco that Streetfilms captured. For more info on this year’s event, go to www.walktoschool.org.

If you visit Copenhagen, the first thing you’ll notice (after being mesmerized by the sheer number of cyclists on the streets) is the eclectic variety of bikes, especially ones that carry groceries, baggage, furniture and/or children. As Copenhagenize impresario Mikael Colville-Andersen happily points out: for many in his city, the cargo bike is equivalent to the SUV.