The 10/9/11 CicLAvia route. For a poster size version of the route, click on the picture.

By the early afternoon of April 10, it was clear that CicLAvia had outgrown its original seven-and-a-half mile route. In the urban core of Downtown Los Angeles, bikes were packed so thick on the road that entire groups wouldn’t make it through traffic signals and other road users were intimidated from using the street. Something had to change for the amazing car-free party to continue to attract new riders.

CicLAvia staff got to work and announced earlier today that the October 9th 2011 CicLAvia will have an expanded ten and a half mile route with more open streets in the Downtown snaking North and South for a much larger car-free party.

“We’re excited about the three new miles, and we’re looking forward to expanding more,” writes Joe Linton, one of the organizers of CicLAvia. “Bogota started in the 1970s with only 7 miles and now they do 80 miles – every Sunday!”

The CicLAvia Blog shares the details of the expanded routes:

NEW! South Spur: The south spur branches off the route downtown, south on Spring Street, east on 9th Street (which becomes Olympic) and south on Central Avenue to the African American Firefighter Museum on Central at 14th Street. This new mileage includes Downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District with hundreds of establishments selling colorful rolls of cloth, and a small area informally known as the “piñata district” where huge numbers of colorful piñatas are sold. The hope is to extend this route further south via Central Avenue in the future.

NEW! North Spur: The north spur branches off the route at L.A. City Hall, heading north on Main Street, crossing the 101 Freeway into the historic El Pueblo plaza area, including Olvera Street. It continues on Paseo Olivares, Spring Street, New High Street, Ord Street and into the heart of L.A.’s Chinatown on North Broadway, ending at Chinatown’s Central Plaza. Both El Pueblo and Chinatown offer CicLAvia participants lots of great places to eat! The new spur also makes a much easier connection with Union Station and with the Metro Gold Line Chinatown Station.

While the lion’s share of the credit for the expanded route, and for CicLAvia in general, goes to the volunteers who work so tirelessly to make the event happen, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the support of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his staff. The Mayor has backed CicLAvia both behind the microphone and in public meetings. One month after the April CicLAvia, he promised an extended route at the May Blessing of the Bicycles, and that doubtless helped keep city staff focused on CicLAvia expansion.

CicLAvia is also hoping to raise another $10,500 through a Kickstarter Campaign over the next month. While L.A. Streetsblog and CicLAvia aren’t officially partners, we’re proud to see the Streetfilm on the April event featured as part of their campaign.

Enjoying car-free streets at Redding's first-ever ciclovía-style event, Shasta Living Streets. Photo: Jeff Worthington

Redding, California, with a population of 90,000, is probably best known for its sunshine, breathtaking landscapes and conservative politics. Located 200 miles north of Sacramento in Shasta County, the lush region surrounded by the Trinity and Cascade mountains offers an abundance of recreation, including a growing number of paved multi-use trails that draw large crowds of bicyclists and pedestrians.

The seven-year-old Sundial Bridge, a 700-foot long steel marvel on the Sacramento River designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, has become Redding’s living room.

“It is where everyone hangs out in town, especially when the weather is nice. In a normal community, whatever normal is, you would see that sort of energy in a downtown square, or park, or even a downtown third place, but it happens to be out at the Sundial Bridge,” said Paul Shigley, the senior editor of the California Planning and Development Report (CP&DR), who lives six miles west of Redding near Whiskeytown Lake.

Downtown Redding does not draw a similar convergence of people enjoying public space because like many California cities it was designed for the automobile, and is not a particularly welcoming place for pedestrians and bicyclists.  The city ranks 40th among 103 cities in California “for the number of pedestrian collisions by population,” according to a recent report [pdf]. Just last week, a 16-year-old boy was struck and killed by a driver while walking across a bridge that lacked a sidewalk.

“The town is set up to conduct motorists fast and to allow them to drive up to 50, 60 miles an hour right through the middle of town,” said Scott Mobley, a reporter for the Record Searchlight, the city’s daily newspaper.

“It’s dangerous,” said Anne Wallach Thomas, a former San Francisco resident and bicyclist who helped found the Shasta Cascade Bicycle Coalition. “Some people are lucky and they can go around some little side streets, and if you’re not lucky like me, I can’t ride my bicycle to my sister’s house, I can’t ride to the grocery store.”

In the late 1970s, the city made a poor planning decision to build a mall in the center of town and designed a network of one-way arterial streets. The mall failed not long after it opened, becoming what CP&DR described as “a glum collection of offices, struggling shops and vacant space.”

“Downtown has been pretty much a dead zone for decades. There are areas that have signs of life but the big problem is very few people live downtown,” said Shigley, who a few years ago in CP&DR named Redding one of California’s most disappointing mid-sized cities. But “check back in 10 years,” the report added.

The Sundial Bridge was designed for pedestrians and bicyclists. Photo: Jeff Worthington

The Demand

Judging from the crowds of bicyclists and walkers who show up to enjoy the region’s vast network of scenic trails, there is an increasing demand for bicycle facilities and better conditions for pedestrians. Like the Sundial Bridge, Shigley said weekend crowds pack the one-mile Dana to Downtown bikeway and walking path recently constructed by Caltrans as part of a Highway 44 bridge improvement and widening project.

“It goes from the Dana Drive big box area over to the convention center area, and it’s proven wildly popular that you can get to those two parts of town on foot and on bike,” said Shigley.

“The reason people live up here primarily is because it’s really beautiful. We have access to amazing recreation opportunities. So lots of people have multiple $1500 bikes in their garages. They put them on the car and drive some miles to get on a trail,” said Wallach Thomas.

Driving to one of the region’s popular riverfront trails might be an easy venture, but try walking and bicycling there and the conditions can be treacherous. The region’s bike network lacks good connectivity to major destinations. That doesn’t mean, however, that bicyclists are staying off the streets. Bicycle traffic counts taken last September by Redding’s Bicycle Advisory Committee and Healthy Shasta showed a dramatic 80 percent increase in riders at major intersections.

“I have no trouble being a cyclist here. I’ve been doing it for 10 years,” said Mobley, the newspaper reporter, who is an everyday bicyclist. He thinks many drivers are beginning to adjust to having more bicyclists on the streets.

“It’s been years since someone’s called me an idiot or flipped me off or gunned their engine as they go by just to intimate me. I mean, that’s happened to me but not in a long time,” said Mobley.

Although he finds it easier to bike, Mobley pointed out that a friend, who is also a regular cyclist, got run off the road last year by a driver who “literally came right up behind him and made damn sure he was in a ditch. He hurt himself. Ripped open his knee and was quite debilitated after that.”

Many cyclists are forced onto the shoulders of roads, if there are any, or the sidewalk, where it is legal to ride in Redding.

“On many days while attending Shasta High School I rode my bike several miles a day to and from school. Redding has always offered so many ways to enjoy the outdoors and now has great bike facilities along the river and so much potential for more,” said Jim Brown of the California Bicycle Coalition.

Bicyclists and other vulnerable users are lucky to get a shoulder. Photo: Jefferson Thomas

Changing Hearts and Minds

Advocates say the popularity of Redding’s biking and walking trails, along with a desire to get healthy are indeed causing more people to second guess their traditional mode of transportation. According to the Shasta Coalition for Activity and Nutrition, 66 percent of adults in Shasta County are overweight, along with 27 percent of teens.

“You start off maybe riding your bike for entertainment on the river trail and then you think, ‘wow, maybe I could ride my bike to work,’ ‘maybe I could ride to the store, ‘maybe I could ride my kids to school everyday,’” said Francie Sullivan, a member of the Redding City Council who is a recreational cyclist.

The five-member council recently began working on a Complete Streets policy and decided to make completing it “our number one priority,” said Sullivan, adding that Redding, like other California cities, is grappling with budget woes and 17 percent unemployment. “But the good news about the economy is that more people are walking and riding bikes out of necessity.”

Sullivan, a Democrat who has served in public office for more than 20 years, said Shasta County is a “conservative community” but the issue transcends party lines.

“If you go to the river trail I would venture a guess that a majority of the people who cross you on roller blades and their bikes and who are walking and running are conservative Republicans. Everybody wants to be fit and everybody gets the same mood elevation from being outside,” said Sullivan.

Father and son enjoy Shasta Living Streets. Photo: Jeff Worthington

Challenges

For the first time, Redding has hired a full-time bicycle and pedestrian coordinator who is working on improving the city’s bikeway plan, which until recently had not been updated since 1998. Realizing the increasing demand for bicycle facilities, the Bikeway Action Plan [pdf] envisions increasing the current bikeway network from 124 miles to 162 miles to “improve the connections for cyclists to prime destinations.”

Changing the culture of old-school traffic engineers who are primarily concerned with moving automobile traffic and adhering to Level of Service (LOS) standards remains a difficult challenge in Redding, like a lot of California cities. Road and highway widenings are popular, while road diets are practically unheard of.

“You feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle every time,” said Zachary Bonnin, the city’s new bike/ped coordinator. “It’s a challenge to implement bike stuff.”

Bonnin, who grew up in Phoenix and got an environmental science degree at Northwestern Arizona University, also manages the city’s transportation system, the Redding Area Bus Authority (RABA), which sees anywhere from 2,000 to 2,400 daily passengers.

“They put me on board to challenge the engineers and to look at every project and to say ‘why are we doing it this way’ or ‘why can’t we do it this way’ or ‘what about bike and ped’ access and ‘where’s our bike lane’ and ‘why can’t we add a sidewalk here?’” he said.

The one-way arterials in downtown Redding are like freeways. Photo: City of Redding

The drafting of the city’s Complete Streets policy is also making some of Bonnin’s old-school transportation colleagues rethink the way they’ve designed the streets. The National Association of City Transportation Officials’ recent update of its bikeway design standards is also helping.

“They see these things and say ‘well, it would cost us more money not to do that now, then to have to deal with it later,’” said Bonnin.

The city is also hoping to incorporate improvements to the pedestrian realm in its Complete Streets policy, including strengthening its Safe Routes to Schools program, developing a pedestrian safety program and Pedestrian Master Plan to implement capital and maintenance projects. A pedestrian safety assessment prepared by transportation consultants Fehr & Peers and Oakland-based Dowling Associates recommends road diets on some downtown streets, along with bulbouts and median refuge islands.

The city’s efforts are also being bolstered by a burgeoning group of living streets advocates with ties to San Francisco’s bicycle and transit advocacy community who are working to help transform Redding into a more bikeable, walkable community.

Wallach Thomas and some longtime members of the Norcal Bicycle Partnership, Shasta Wheelmen, the Redding Mountain Biking club and some other bicyclists recently formed the Shasta Cascade Bicycle Coalition to lobby for better conditions and help educate city planners and the public. The group meets once a month.

“The safe and inviting part is important,” Wallach Thomas told the Record Searchlight. “We have world-class facilities for mountain bikes and incredible park trails. What we can’t do is leave the house and safely get anywhere.”

The reaction to Shasta Living Streets was overwhelmingly positive and even skeptics praised it. "One mother said to me, 'Anne, I want to thank you. My kids are in heaven. They're having so much fun,'" said Wallach Thomas. Photo: Jeff Worthington

Shasta Living Streets

Last weekend, after months of planning, discussion and wading through city bureaucracy, Redding held its first ciclovía-style event, Shasta Living Streets, converting a two-mile stretch of Park Marina Drive near the Sacramento River into car-free space for people. It was the first open streets event in Northern California outside of the Bay Area.

“It was a success,” said Wallach Thomas, who was the main organizer. While some city bureaucrats had doubts that anyone would show up, Wallach said well over 500 people turned out on a rainy day. It helped that the event was timed with the popular Whole Earth Festival.

“I think it’s really going to make a big difference up here changing hearts and minds,” said Wallach Thomas. “It has implications and leverage far beyond the five hours of the actual event.”

Wallach Thomas got advice from her friend Cheryl Brinkman, a member of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors who has been involved with San Francisco’s Sunday Streets since its inception. Brinkman and her husband Rich Coffin took a trip to Redding to speak to a group of advocates interested in launching Shasta Living Streets.

“Gil Peñalosa, the father of ciclovías, always said that it’s not a competition among cities or towns.  Every city or town which starts a car-free streets program helps the next city or town start their program.  I’m thrilled that Redding had its first car-free event,” said Brinkman.

The organizers of the event actually received an email from Peñalosa offering his congratulations, and encouraging them to carry on their work.

“I hope this event will be a means to many great initiatives,” Peñalosa wrote. “Living Streets will show residents that streets can be used for more than just moving cars; streets are our largest and most valuable assets, the space the belongs to all, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, social or economic background.”

“As other programs inspired you, now you are inspiring others.”

Group exercise was part of the program for Shasta Living Streets. Photo: Jeff Worthington

"This is so cool," was the reaction of many kids to Shasta Living Streets, said Wallach Thomas. Photo: Jeff Worthington

Image: Streets Alive

San Mateo County’s first Streets Alive event may have had bad luck with the weather last April, but many Peninsula cities are eager to get another shot at celebrating car-free streets with an even bigger event in 2011.

“Even though it was rained out, it was pretty popular with residents,” said Eric Pawlowsky, an aide to San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom, who declared May 1 Streets Alive Day last week. “There was really some momentum there from the public.”

Thirteen cities are set to participate by allowing people to enjoy healthy activities on open streets, up from eight last year, including Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, Daly City, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Millbrae, North Fair Oaks, Pacifica, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo, and South San Francisco.

The Peninsula region will join a global movement of cities from San Francisco to Bogotá, Colombia, where it all started, to close streets to cars and open them up to people for a Sunday afternoon. From Grand Avenue in South San Francisco to Visitacion Avenue in Brisbane to Redwood City’s Courthouse Square, residents will be able to walk, bike, sit, talk, and play in temporary sanctuaries of open public space.

Cities will have community bike rides, fitness activities, and farmers markets as part of their events, said Pawlowsky. Redwood City is said to have the largest event planned, including activities like Bollywood fitness and educational exhibits, while East Palo Alto will tie in their street opening with a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Even with limited funds available for the budding program, some cities that can’t afford motor vehicle closures are finding creative ways to get people active, said Pawlowsky. Residents can enjoy trail walks in Pacifica, the Serramonte Fair in Daly City, and other outdoor community events in Millbrae and North Fair Oaks.

Different vehicles shape a different streetscape in Peru.

Our daily urban lives shape our imaginations in so many ways. Few things box us in like our everyday transit options, and the patterns of traffic that shape our sense of public space. These patterns themselves are historical of course. A quick look back at the famous Market Street film shot a few days before the 1906 earthquake shows how chaotic and unpredictable the flow of traffic was when San Francisco’s main artery hadn’t yet been paved and standardized. Similarly, leaving the U.S. and visiting other countries provides a fantastic opportunity to experience other assumptions and possibilities for urban space, and surprisingly perhaps, a different range of vehicles.

In Peru for a couple of weeks I first had to adjust to a major cultural difference–unlike California, pedestrians don’t have any legal rights, let alone cultural preference. When you start to cross the street at a corner in a Peruvian city, you better be ready to run. Because the cars are not going to wait for you, in fact they tend to speed up when they see someone trying to use the road space ahead of them. I noticed the same thing on highways too, a consistent refusal to yield to entering traffic, a universal assumption of individual ownership of the right of way. Here’s a video below the break we shot standing on a traffic island in Peru’s second largest city while waiting for the traffic to clear so we could cross the street.

We entered Peru on a bus from Ecuador, crossing the Macará river.

Crossing the river, that's our bus.

We rode from Cuenca, Ecuador to Chiclayo, Peru, which took about 22 hours.

Bus travel was a big part of our journey in Peru, though we took a plane from Chiclayo on the north coast all the way to Cusco in the southern Andes. The beginning of our time in the country finished our descent from the Ecuadorian Andes to the stark desert of northern Peru. Our international bus arrived in the Peruvian city of Piura, which I hadn’t heard of before, but it’s a good-sized city of a half million or so, sitting amidst a heavily irrigated desert of citrus farms and more. The most surprising discovery as we rode in on the dusty streets was to see countless moto-taxis and freight tricycles. They outnumbered autos, filling the streets with the canopied three-wheelers.

This was our first view of vehicular traffic in Piura, Peru.

Motorcycles dominated, both individually and as motors for rickshaws.

We changed to another four-hour bus ride from Piura to Chiclayo where we grabbed a plane after a few hours of sleep in a hotel, having been on buses for about 22 hours. Once we made it to Cuzco we delighted in the ancient capital of the Incas. The incredible stone-masonry of the Inca culture is incomparable, and what a fun surprise to find one of the original streets of their capital still functioning. It’s called Antisuyo and the massive granite blocks, so perfectly fit to each other, have survived centuries of earthquakes that crumbled lesser structures. The narrow, pedestrian friendly streets on the slopes of Cuzco are a walker’s paradise.

Here I am standing on Cuzco's Antisuyo, an original street from the time of the Inca Empire. The anti-seismic granite construction is visible in the amazing stonework here and in many places throughout former Inca territories.

From Cuzco we went on one of the world’s famous “walks” on the Inca Trail. Four days, three mountain passes (the highest being 14,000 feet!), and a great deal of it on the thousands of original steps that make up the well-trodden Inca Trail. We learned a bit about the Inca Empire along our journey, and knew that their road system equalled the Romans in terms of engineering, management of water and drainage, and perhaps even sheer extent. Inca Trails extended from the capital in Cuzco all the way to Colombia in the north, Chile in the south, and encompassed a population of millions.

Here I am slowly making my way to a 14,000 foot pass.

It's hard to describe the historic resonance of hiking a road built centuries earlier and used heavily during an entirely different culture and time in history.

After an amazing four days that got us to Machu Picchu we caught a bus from Cuzco to Arequipa, but our “bed bus” was a broken down second-tier bus rather than the luxury ride we thought we were buying. The views of snow-capped mountains and endless green valleys in the Altiplano were stunning, and after about 8 hours we arrived in the high plains town of Juliaca. This town depended even more on pedicabs and freight bikes than we’d seen in the north.

The altiplano as seen from our bus out of Cuzco on the way southwest to Juliaca.

The relatively comfortable bus terminal in Juliaca, Peru.

Street scene in Juliaca, Peru.

There's something so charming about pedicabs!

Great to look out the bus window and see more pedicabs and freight trikes than cars and trucks.

We had a dramatic late dusk ride along the sides of a huge lake called Lagunillas, as rain and thunder engulfed us on the way to Arequipa. The city’s night lights sprawled before us as we descended to it from the mountains. When we woke the next morning we realized we were still quite high (over a mile high) and in a surprisingly arid environment. Walking into downtown we found ourselves on Calle Bolivar, a pleasant pedestrian-centered avenue, which was a hint of something a little different in Peru’s second largest city.

Calle Bolivar-Sucre in Arequipa, Peru, a street recently reclaimed for pedestrians.

Here in the historic center of Arequipa (two huge volcanoes are obscured behind the cathedral by dense clouds) the traffic chokes the surrounding streets.

The historic city center’s streets were jammed with taxis and combis, which we soon realized was normal in Peru’s cities. Crossing the street was a continuous challenge but we started to get a handle on moving through the city (that video above captures the drama). We also found another street, Calle Mercaderos, which was closed to traffic and functioned like a long linear mall. In streets like this we see a different use of public space than we get normally in the U.S. Like the best European city centers, Peru too has taken important streets and dedicated them to pedestrians and public sauntering (and shopping of course).

Calle Mercaderes in Arequipa, a classic pedestrian zone mostly dedicated to shopping and people watching.

Finally we made our way to Lima, the country’s capital. Traffic is insane in Lima, but the city won us over for lots of reasons. For one thing we stayed just off Avenida Arequipa, which happens to have a lovely center median that has a bike way or “ciclovia” running down the middle. We were staying with a friend and had fun learning to navigate Lima by way of the ubiquitous “combis,” which come in all shapes and sizes and colors. The sing-song announcements of destination that the combi fare-takers used to help passengers decide which one to take was one of the pleasures of the ride. But the congested traffic, the bizarre competition between different combis to race ahead to get passengers at the next stop, and the generally aggressive driving by all vehicles presented an streetscape that was unmistakeably hostile to pedestrians.

This is the ciclovia on Avenida Arequipa in Lima, Peru, just outside the apartment we stayed in.

This is a pretty average scene of multiple competing combi lines jammed into traffic, each trying to get to the curb to get more passengers into its seats.

We found the combis pretty comfortable, always clean, and easy to navigate once you figured out where you were going. They only cost about 30 cents a ride too!

Lima is modernizing of course. They’ve put in a freeway that is locally known as “the Ditch,” but down the middle of it is one of several Bus Rapid Transit lines called the Metropolitana. Here’s a couple of shots of another Metropolitana line along one of the regular broad avenues in Lima.

The Metropolitana in Lima looks a lot like the Macrobus in Guadalajara, or BRTs in almost any city.

This is a shot back towards the arriving Metropolitana (at far right), while we sit in gridlock.

We were hapy to connect with local cycling activists, who hosted me giving a Talk on cycling and Critical Mass history. Cicloaxion got a boost from the World Naked Bike Ride a few years back, and now there are several different cycling advocacy groups in town.

Octavio, Edu, and Manu took us on a great ride around the historic center, teaching us how to navigate the insanity of Lima's traffic, and treating us to a great meal in Lima's Chinatown.

And ciclovias exist on a number of streets, along with barely used bicycle parking facilities.

Here's an underutilized Ciclovia in downtown Lima, used here as a parking spot for a couple of freight bikers.

Never did see any bikes parked here... Why do bike racks so often get put in places where they aren't used?

There are a lot of freight bikes rolling around Lima too.

There were lots of these guys rolling around downtown Lima.

Less than a month ago, Lima joined the growing world movement towards Sunday Streets with what they have dubbed “Ciclodia.” Thousands of Lima cyclists and joggers get out on Sunday morning to enjoy a six-kilometer stretch closed to all traffic on Avenida Arequipa. It was great to wake up on Sunday morning to the silence, after having been wakened each of our previous days by the roar of combis and their horns jockeying for position on the same street. So Lima, and Peru more generally, present a panoply of street uses, and a veritable menagerie of vehicles! Nothing jogs or imaginations or our fantasies like immersion in other cultures and other possibilities.

The crowds are emerging for Ciclodia in Lima, Peru, Sunday, March 20, 2011.

Street closed for Cycling Day, Lima Peru.

Lima is evolving and it was exciting to see the burgeoning cycling culture there too.

Chris Carlsson will be giving one of his four-hour bicycle history tours on local transit history, this Sunday, April 3, from 12-4 pm. Meet at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission at 9th at noon, bring water and snacks. (A $15-50 sliding scale donation is requested to benefit Shaping San Francisco.)

Sunday, February 27, 2011, the 28-kilometer Cicleopaseo in Quito, Ecuador, heading southward.

The Quito Ciclopaseo happens EVERY Sunday, takes up over 20 miles of roadway each time, and is usually attended by over 50,000 cyclists during its 9-2 hours.

I just spent a few days in Quito, Ecuador, a remarkably beautiful city of a couple million sprawling 40 kilometers north-to-south through a series of valleys and plateaus in the Andes, surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and rugged green mountains. I interviewed Heleana Zambonino from Quito for Streetsblog a while back, and wanted to see for myself the dynamic bicycling scene she described.

One of several well designed ciclovias in Quito.

This "Ciclo-Q" sign indicates a long north-south bike route through Quito, mostly in dedicated ciclovias, though some of them are on sidewalks which cause predictable conflicts.

Here the Ciclovia bends through a major intersection by taking part of the nicely redesigned sidewalks.

Mashol, Pablo, me, and Frank, pausing in one of Quito's many beautiful parks.

In fact, the ecology of bicycling in Quito is quite well developed. In two days we visited five distinct entities, all busily promoting bicycling and urban transformation in various ways. The first day started with Frank, Mashol, and Pablo giving us a tour of the historic center. Frank runs a small bike rental and tour business called Cicleadas del Rey and he’s been involved in many aspects of Quito’s burgeoning bike culture. He graciously loaned us bikes for our days in Quito.

Frank coming out of Cicleadas del Rey on Avenida Amazonas in Quito.

After the historic tour, we rode back to the neighborhood where we started—Mariscal—and met Carlos Tacuri, a guy who started bicycle agitating in Quito when he was 14 (he’s now 32). He has a shop called Construbicis, the closest thing to a Bike Kitchen in Quito. He has designed his own frame (another paradoxical example of globalization: his bike frames are manufactured in Taiwan) and is now putting together local bikes there and he’s very open with his shop and tools.

Carlos Tacuri and me next to his float-bike, outside of Construbicis in Quito.

From Construbicis we rode on one of the well-designed ciclovias that connect three university campuses in this part of Quito. Another common right of way many bicyclists use when they need to are the separated lanes dedicated to high-speed crosstown bus lines. Quito has three different routes, (Trole Bus, Ecovia, Metrobus), all running mostly north and south, which is one of the odd things to get used to for a North American in Quito. When you look at local maps you see the city arrayed from left to right—the City sits in an Andean plateau with lots of hills and doesn’t extend that far from east to west, but quite far from north to south. The maps are very wide and confusingly put north to the right and south to the left—proving again how much our image of space is shaped by the visual representations we grow up with.

This is the dedicated lane space for the Trole and Ecovia buses, often poached by speeding bicyclists.

The Ecovia Bus.

We made our way through a nice neighborhood to a sleek bar-café called La Cleta (the Freewheel), where we met a group called ABC, who later sent me a short manifesto called “El Pueblo Bicicletero Ec.” We had a nice discussion, sitting around in their bar on seats made of old wheel frames framed by their sharp silhouette paintings on the walls.

Inside the "La Cleta" bar and cafe.

Having our political discussion at La Cleta... great folks!

It was clear that they felt the bike scene in Quito had been co-opted by the local government, and a new initiative was needed to reclaim the momentum for urban transformation. These guys were the more lefty radicals of the bunch we met. In a side room they have a radio station “Radio Pedal, 102.9 FM” and they had me record a station ID for them, which was fun.

Here’s a quote from their new manifesto called “El Pueblo Bicicletero Ecuatoriano” (Ecuatorian Bicycling People):

El Pueblo Bicicletro Ecuatoriano is a space of reflection and bicycle political action. We recognize ourselves as a people that bicycles—as women, as workers, as recreational riders, urban cyclists, boys and girls, elderly, everyday working people, and others that use bicycles to move themselves from one point to another in the city or the country. The bike is not used only as means of transport but is also used in diverse working activities. The bike is not merely a means of movement but also a tool of work, as well as an instrument of transformation and political contestation. The actual structure of the city dehumanizes completely the relationship between the people and Mother Nature (Pachamama), so now we are here to take seriously pedestrians, cyclists, and to take it as seriously as we have until now the indiscriminate use of cars.

That night I gave a public Talk at a local university loosely based on a short history of California bicycling I wrote recently, and that went over well, thanks to my partner Adriana’s capable translation. I showed slides of Critical Mass from around the world and talked about 19th century Good Roads agitation, rubber and slavery, and the resurgence of bikes and politics with CM in the 1990s.

Lunch at Ciclopolis, the biggest formal bike organization in Quito, responsible for managing the Cicleopaseo every Sunday.

The following day we went to Ciclopolis for lunch. Ciclopolis is in a nice two-story building in central Quito where they have a half dozen staffers, a fleet of bicycles, and a major organizational focus on sustaining and running Cicleopaseo, the weekly closure of a 28-kilometer route through Quito every Sunday 9-1, for cyclists and others to use recreationally. They also run a program called Todas en Bici, which offers training to women and children on how to ride bicycles in city streets. As it happened, after meeting Belen at lunch we passed her in a taxi on Saturday morning while she was conducting her training ride on a ciclovia in the city center.

Belen was running the Todas en Bici class for new women cyclists when we saw her next to our taxi on Saturday morning!

Clad in safety vests and helmets, these women were learning to navigate city traffic on a quiet Saturday morning in Quito.

We had a spirited discussion Friday around the lunch table about leadership, facilitation, co-optation, government, electoralism, NGO/nonprofits, and much more. They’re a great bunch, but perhaps a bit stuck in their role as managers of Cicleopaseo. The Ciclopaseo is a lot like San Francisco’s Sunday Streets, but it happens EVERY Sunday all year long, and requires several dozen “stations,” hundreds of street closures, and a great deal of logistical support. We had a peek at their phalanx of radios, red cross bikes, trailers, barricades, etc.

Ciclopaseo, Feb. 27, 2011, Quito, Ecuador.

Ciclopaseo, Feb. 27, 2011, Quito, Ecuador.

After that we rode south a long way to get to the HQ of Biciaccion, the organization from which Ciclopolis split in 2007. It is Biciaccion, along with the folks at ABC and others who originally organized Critical Mass in Quito, long before they all ended up in different and somewhat alienated groups. (Diego from Ciclopolis had been a part of that long history too, and showed me some images in a scrapbook of early bike agitation in Quito. A group called Accion Ecologica was the precursor to all the bike activism in Quito back in the 1990s.)

This flyer promoted an early Critical Mass ride in Quito, late 1990s.

Another 1990s action, these cyclists just parked along a highway to make their point directly to drivers!

Biciaccion is still going strong, with a fantastic website, and a series of campaigns around Ecuador to promote Cicleopaseos, bike training programs, ciclovias, and more. They also have a great website here.

There’s a complicated personal back story to some of the divisions among the Quito bicycling activists, including a broken marriage, competing electoral campaigns, and mutating organizational loyalties. But those dramas only underscore the healthy vitality and diversity of the bicycling community in Quito. In many respects they are far ahead of any city in the United States, even if they, like us, have a long way to go on our car-choked planet.

White bikes have made it here too... and for sure, death on the roads is easy and all too common, as Quito's streets are still choked with automobiles most of the time.

POSTSCRIPT: More South American news–

Heavy news from Porto Alegre, Brazil, where a bank executive drove at high speed through the February Critical Mass, sending almost a dozen to the hospital and mangling dozens of bikes. Video coverage and updates here.

On a lighter note, a massive Critical Mass took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, even rolling on a local freeway. Video is up on Facebook.

The MidDay Ridazz take over 7th Street. 97 Pictures of the day at the Streetsblog Flickr pool.

The numbers for yesterday’s CicLAvia are impressive. KABC News says that there were 50,000 people riding the streets of Los Angeles along a 7.5 mile stretch of streets that were open to public use, but closed to automobiles. The Los Angeles Times puts that number closer to 100,00 people.

Anecdotally, the Coke truck ran out of free servings after 50,000 drinks. CicLAvia organizers estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 people took part with the number “closer to 100,000.”

That’s a lot of people for a 7.5 mile stretch of the city. But here’s the thing. Their numbers are wrong. All of them.

Yesterday was about a lot more than just counting the bikes that rolled past. CicLAvia touched hundreds of thousands of people, even if measured by the laughter heard on their streets instead of cars honking their horns. How do you count the kids playing ball in the street that scurried out of the way when the bikes rolled past?

Zero. That’s the number of “major incidents” reported along the route. That number includes interactions between the different mode users: bicyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders, rollerbladers, that guy on the surfboard thing with wheels. That number includes the interactions between the attendees of the events and the LAPD. As for Los Angeles’ finest, it was hard to find a sour face amongst the hundreds of police on the streets. Even though they were working, they were as caught up in the wonder of the day as everyone else.

But more impressive than the numbers were the stories and the chance to just be out, in the city, surrounded by hordes of happy people. And why were they happy? Because we were outside, sharing in space and sharing an experience. And we didn’t have to pay a lot of money to get shoved into an arena or stadium to do it.

I think I saw more of my Streetsblog friends yesterday than I do when we host Streetsblog events. It seemed everytime we stopped, there were new friends to greet us. At the feeder ride I got a chance to catch up with Carter Rubin, Kent Strumpell, Rachel Stevenson and the crew from SM Spokes. Here we are in East Hollywood and there’s Deborah Murphy from L.A. Walks, “Park Czar” Alfredo Hernandez…oh, and over there is Ryan Snyder and Eric Garcetti…and….. And it was like this at every stop.

Now on to three favorite stories of mine from yesterday. Please feel free to add your own in the comments:

A family enjoying the warm day and car-free streets. Photos: Matthew Roth.

San Jose kicked off its first ViaVelo Saturday with the opening of seven blocks of San Fernando Street downtown to bicycle riders, skaters, and pedestrians who enjoyed five hours of car-free space. Several hundred people showed up, many of them families and the burgeoning young fixed-gear crowd, riding bikes and socializing on a brilliant spring day.

San Jose joins San Francisco and San Mateo county (whose Streets Alive was mostly rained out last month) in hosting the increasingly popular events, which are modeled on the enormous ciclovia in Bogota, Colombia. San Francisco has held three of the nine Sunday Streets of 2010 and Oakland will premiere its first Oaklavia on June 27th.

Organizers of ViaVelo were upbeat about the turnout and the day's events, suggesting that if there is enough positive public feedback, the city would like to make the events a tradition next year.

"It's nice not having to worry about cars, to see families with their kids out, to see families happy and having fun, rather than worrying about how to cross the street or if it's safe to ride a bike," said John Brazil, Bike Coordinator for the San Jose Department of Transportation. "I know that all the organizers and many of the sponsors would like to see this continue, so hopefully the community will tell their elected officials they like it and it's a priority."

As one of the primary community partners involved in organizing ViaVelo, the San Jose Bike Party led various feeder rides to and from the event. Several rides from downtown went to points of interest along San Jose's extensive trail system.

"I love the fact that San Jose is becoming a bike city and putting so much focus on it," said Ian Emmons, a Bike Party organizer attending ViaVelo with his son. "I think we've got a ways to go before we catch up with Portland and 7 miles of closed streets, but we're working on it."

Bike builder Domenick Guida and his custom chopper.

"A lot of guys can relate to how much work goes into this. They know what goes into it and they notice the little details," he said.

Guida said he wished he had received more notice about the event from the sponsors, but assumed next years ViaVelos would be more inclusive. When asked how his work fit within the traditional bicycle advocacy efforts, he said, "It's all the same thing, they've all got two wheels."

One of the more surprising sights was the specter of four Mormon missionaries riding custom fixed-gear bicycles in their standard church attire. One of the missionaries, Dan Bishop, said he had been inspired to ride fixies after seeing bike messengers in San Francisco.

"Most times we get around faster than in cars. We have bus passes, but we usually ride," he said.

ViaVelo's founding sponsor was Mattson Technology, whose CEO Dave Dutton, extolled the value of cycling at a press conference during the event.

"Why is bicycling important? It unites families, it brings us all together, it helps us and the environment at the same time," said Dutton. "San Jose has done a lot of work in helping make it bike friendly. We now want to take advantage of that and make use of that so they can justify and do more."

Also at the press conference were San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, Councilmembers Rose Herrera and Sam Liccardo, and Supervisors Dave Cortese and Ken Yeager. Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino said, "It's nice to see so many people pedaling what we preach, about getting out of four wheels and onto two wheels."

Standing behind the podium in his bicycle racing socks, Guardino tied the ViaVelo event in with last week's Bike to work Day and the upcoming publicity for cycling that will be generated by the Amgen Tour of California race.

"If we change it from just 'Bike to Work Day' to 'Bike to Work Every Day,' then we can change Silicon Valley around," he said.

Mattson's Dave Dutton with the microphone, flanked by San Jose DOT's Acting Director Hans Larson, San Jose's Chief Development Officer Paul Kruttko, Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Carl Guardino, Supervisor Dave Cortese, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition's Corinne Winter, and Mayor Chuck Reed.

Some of the many fixie kids using the grassy mounds for tricks.

Missionaries working the crowd on their fixies.

Dan Bishop doing track stands.

A public plaza in Bogotá, Columbia.

These initiatives include the Ciclovia, a model for San Francisco's own Sunday Streets program, and an expansive Bus Rapid Transit system, which is viewed as a gold standard and a template for other cities considering BRT. His vision for the world's largest cities includes more public spaces, extensive networks of bike paths, greater pedestrian facilities and improved transit.

The forum, entitled "Sunday Streets to Great Streets", is part of the public launch of the San Francisco Great Streets Project (GSP), a campaign led by the SFBC and SPUR. The GSP is intended to catalyze the return of San Francisco's streets to the center of civic life by working with government, business and neighborhood leaders to test, analyze and institutionalize placemaking.

Peñalosa's visit represents the GSP making good on one of its three principles: to bring experts from around the country and around the world to demonstrate best practice examples and offer instructive advice to San Franciscans. The visit follows closely on the opening of the 17th Street pedestrian plaza, which fulfilled the GSP's second principal: to help organize communities around trial projects on the ground that test livable streets ideas.

Despite recent positive developments such as the 17th Street plaza and the successful launch of Sunday Streets, many of San Francisco's streets still have much room for improvement, and tomorrow's forum will be a chance to discuss this with someone who made major strides in a city that started with public spaces in far worse condition than San Francisco's. Check out some of Streetsfilms' classic films on Peñalosa, and be sure to come tomorrow if you can!

Sunday Streets to Great Streets: Enrique Peñalosa. Tuesday, July 7, 2009 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Public Library (100 Larkin Street).

]]> http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/07/06/livable-streets-expert-enrique-penalosa-comes-to-san-francisco/feed/ 1 http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/05/11/celebrating-san-francisco-with-a-sunday-streets-bicycle-ride/ http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/05/11/celebrating-san-francisco-with-a-sunday-streets-bicycle-ride/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 19:17:40 +0000 Matthew Roth http://sf.streetsblog.org/?p=2120 [...]]]>

Biker baby looking cool. Photo: Matthew Roth

We started the morning by riding down from Bernal Heights along 26th Street and Cesar Chavez, the latter of which compelled us to jostle with speeding traffic east of the 101.  No bike lanes there until the last two blocks between 280 and 3rd Street, so we did our best to make ourselves visible by taking a lane.  Once we arrived at 3rd Street, we rode south in the traffic lanes, which were open to cars.  It was a minute or two past 10 am, so I assumed the SFPD just hadn't closed the road, though I would soon find out only the east side of 3rd Street was closed. 

The view north on 3rd Street from the Bayview Opera House

My father on his first city bicycle ride and my girlfriend

After the good folks at Mike's Bikes did some minor tune-ups on our bikes, we got on and rode up our car-free side of the street, still a little leery of how traffic was supposed to function.  At some of the intersections, the police were waiving us through red lights, at others they were directing traffic both ways.  At one intersection, a truck tried to make the green light while cyclists were crossing the red, apparently with the officer's consent.  When the truck came through the intersection, the officer screamed at the driver to stop and several cyclists darted around. 

One of those cyclists, a very familiar silver fox of a man with a beard and a huge smile, said in a booming baritone laugh, "Look at me, I was almost an accident."  I did one of those double takes one does when vaguely recognizing an old friend or family member, though I couldn't place him.  When the same man passed us as we were leaving Heron's Head Park, my father rode up to me and said, "Did you see James Coburn just ride by?"  Unfortunately I couldn't find him in the crowd, or I would've posted his picture right here.

Instead, I offer you this photo of SF's finest, getting down. If only I were shooting video, I could have shown you the action as the guy in the middle with the smile proceeded to funk another officer in a very PG-13 way to the hip hop beats blasting from just off screen.

Time and a half never looked so good.

Further up the road we found the SFBC tent bustling with happy staff signing up new members.  By now the crowd was beginning to thicken, with a number people riding rental bicycles and those ungainly-looking three-wheeled swaying scooters, which I assume were also being rented somewhere along the route.  The best three-wheeled conveyance, however, had to go to this guy, who played saloon standards right out of a Western.  You know, those Westerns with three-wheeled piano bikes:

Photo: Bryan Goebel

One of the cooler parts of the day for me was the opportunity to run the bases at AT&T Park.  Clearly I wasn't the only kid enjoying it:

Father and son rounding the bases at AT&T Park

Be sure to come out to the first of two Mission Sunday Streets on June 7th. Route to be announced, though we think you'll be impressed.

Some more fun pictures below, including Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Assessor Phil Ting in their bike gear:

Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Photo: Bryan Goebel

Flickr photo: JaimeAndreu

Only weeks after hiring Kit Hodge to direct the GSP, this event marked the first step toward building a constituency that clamors for turning over more street space to people and improving the quality of the public realm.  According to Hodge, agency heads sat down with community organizers and all discussed ways to improve streets, to effectively manage new public spaces, and to locate areas throughout San Francisco that are ripe for transformation.

Hodge explained the GSP as "a catalytic and short-term effort to enhance the livable streets projects in San Francisco and institutionalize them in city government."  She said she will create an online database of best practice examples and tools intended for professional planners, engineers and agency personnel so they can easily reference the work of their counterparts in other cities.

Currently, the GSP is a collaboration between the SFBC, Project for Public Spaces (PPS), and the Livable Streets Initiative (produced by Streetsblog SF's parent company, The Open Planning Project), and Hodge expects many more groups to sign on in short order. 

"I have tremendous respect for the many groups that have been working on this for many years, but we want to broaden the conversation by talking to other organizations that don't focus on transportation issues," said Hodge.

The GSP will focus on three principles that have proved successful in cities such as New York:

• Bring experts from around the country and around the world to demonstrate best practice examples and offer instructive advice to San Franciscans
  
• Help organize communities around trial projects on the ground that test livable streets ideas.  GSP will use independent analysis to determine the effectiveness of the projects and encourage wide public feedback
  
• Reach out to more stakeholders and broaden the tent of people involved, particularly those who are not already part of the conversation, including the business community, neighborhood leaders and under-served communities.

Great Streets Project's Kit Hodge

Hodge is no stranger to organizing in communities to fight for better public space and better streets.  She was the co-founder of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign five years ago while working for Transportation Alternatives, then moved to Chicago and worked with the Metropolitan Planning Council to create a Placemaking Guide intended to facilitate the improvement of neighborhoods. She also worked to develop a regional congestion pricing model, helped with implementation of the Chicago Central Area Plan, and the use of Parking Improvement Districts (think Don Shoup) in transit rich areas.

Hodge subsequently started and ran The Neighbors Project, a non-profit organization working in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City to improve neighborhoods and enhance communication between the multiple generations that create the fabric of a community.

Hodge lives in the Lower Haight and is the vice president of her neighborhood group, the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, where she is leading a traffic calming project that will expand and improve pedestrian and bicycle space.

We wish Kit and the GSP great success and look forward to covering their work on the blog.

A block of predominantly female-owned businesses that will participate in Sunday Streets

Antoinette Mobley, Program Manager for the Bayview Business Resource Center and one of the key liaisons between the city and local merchants (she jokingly called herself the First Lady of Bayview), said that the Mayor's office had done a much better job this year with outreach to the businesses and stakeholders in Bayview, which she said will result in more local involvement in the event. She also hoped the attention brought to the neighborhood by Sunday Streets would prompt the community to host other events in the streets throughout the year.

"Our overarching goal is to make it a real fun family day for the Bayview community," said Mobley. "The more activities on the corridor, the better. This could even turn into a kick-off for street festival here in the Bayview.  We're one of the few, or maybe the only, corridors that doesn't do an annual street festival."

LaTanya Spears, owner of Trend Setters II, a women's apparel and style shop, said the primary benefit to her business will be advertising and outreach.  "We've been open half a year and a lot of people are still coming in and saying, 'I didn't know this was here.'  If you're driving by or riding the T-train, we kinda look closed, it's real dark in here."

Shamauda Bishop, owner of Simply Fabulous

Scheduling the event on May 10th, Mother's Day, was the only point of contention for the neighborhood businesses.

Shamauda Bishop, owner of the Simply Fabulous hair salon, said she would have been happier with any day but Mother's Day.  "We wished it wasn't on Mother's Day.  In this black community, Mother's Day is the number one holiday, bigger than Christmas, New Year's,  Easter."  

She said despite the poor timing, she and other business owners were going to tailor their activities to the spirit of the day. 

"This year, I'm going to put my chair outside, and give free hair cuts to moms. I think I can do four or five, at least," she said, remarking that she isn't normally open on Sundays.  "I most definitely wouldn't be here on Mother's Day if it weren't for Sunday Streets."

Susan King, the Sunday Streets Project Manager for Livable City, said the improvement to the local economy is part of the focus of Sunday Streets.

Wade Crowfoot, the Mayor's Director of Climate Initiatives and primary organizer for Sunday Streets, said that picking Mother's Day was a necessity, given that three of the five Sundays in May had San Francisco Giants games and the fourth was Carnaval.

Bayview Opera House

The route will begin at AT&T Park and follow 3rd Street to its southern terminus at the Bayview Opera House, where organizers have planned performances and programming well after the street closures from 10 am to 2 pm.  A section of the route will connect with Heron's Head Park and India Basin Shoreline Park, which has a new environmental and community facility that organizers hope will get attention from Sunday Streets participants. The route was chosen in part to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Bay Trail.

Looking ahead, Crowfoot said the Mission Sunday Streets events are shaping up nicely.  The city is meeting with merchants from the Mission, where the June and July Sunday Streets will take place, and he thinks the route would likely happen on significant commercial corridors.

"We're hoping to use this as a calling card to get people excited about organizing more livable neighborhoods," he said.

This market will use its parking lot for events during Sunday Streets

Photos: Matthew Roth

These "boneshakers" in 1875 were superceded a decade and a half later by air-filled rubber tubes. With that new technology, bicyclists led the Good Roads Movement in the 1890s, demonstrating in the thousands for asphalt!

By the 1905, patterns of urban traffic were still being developed. Check out this incredible video of a ride down Market Street in 1905 to see how chaotic and multifarious were the uses of the street space. Lanes and signals? I don't think so! The story "progresses" through the 20th century until we have our auto-centric, "level of service"-dominated, highway engineer-shaped street systems. Many of us are urgently trying to reshape and repurpose these remaining urban commons to other ends than merely housing and moving private automobiles. Some of us are cycling, some are gardening, others are thinking artistically about the redesign of intersections, sidewalks and the roads themselves. My previous posts about the new sidewalk gardening efforts in the Mission garnered some sharp criticisms, emphasizing that these gardens should be coming at the expense of the cars and parking rather than the pedestrians, a point with which I totally agree. Still, I'm glad to see neighbors coming together to start the process of reshaping our shared environment.

In my journey to Belem, I was surprised to encounter a street system that is in some ways normal, modern and even superior to ours, and in other ways, demonstrative of a society that has put a lot less effort into maintenance and making everything accessible. You would simply not be able to get around Belem in a wheelchair. There are no curb-cuts at any crosswalk. Instead, you face a moat-like situation. At most intersections where curb meets street, a small canyon has opened up because the endless tropical rains have dug sinkholes. Different kinds of foliage are reclaiming these spots, and often the 2-10 foot depth combined with a 1-3 foot width is quite intimidating to pedestrians, who must find a way to step or leap over the abyss.

A typical street corner in Belem, Brazil, Jan. 2009.

The ubiquitous rains erode the streets along every curb in Belem, Brazil.

The citizens of Belem aren't shy about pushing the city for improvements. Here the neighbors were demanding a new traffic signal:

                      The neighbors want a signal to calm the local traffic in Belem, Brazil.

On the other hand, Belem (a city of 1.5 million) has spent significant resources on a system of dedicated ciclovias, or bikeways, that grace the center of 6-lane boulevards, separted by fences and horticultural medians. The citizens of the area are avid cyclists, and it was due to hundreds of casualties from car-bike accidents that the local government finally ponied up and built this system of bikeways, which are in steady use day and night.

A separated Ciclovia in a 6-lane boulevard in Belem, Brazil.

After a five-legged trip home (Belem-Rio-Sao Paolo-Miami-Denver-SF) I flew to Los Angeles, the land of freeways and endless street grids, rented a car (a Sebring Convertible! were they trying to say I was having a mid-life crisis?) and promptly got stuck in a 2 hour traffic crawl from Santa Monica to Downtown via city streets (the freeways were blocked too, but locals later told me I'd have done better crawling on the freeway than on city streets). After making my way to the Los Angeles EcoVillage, where I was a guest, I had a much better experience, cycling and walking around their mid-town neighborhood. Being a pedestrian in Los Angeles is not easy though. Unlike San Francisco where I feel I can cross any street any time, in Los Angeles the streets really are always full of traffic, and crossing is difficult without the help of signals and crosswalks. Still, I enjoyed walking around and grabbed this shot of a typical neighborhood scene near where I was staying. The famous Hollywood sign is on the hill in the distance.

Los Angeles, once a great place for trains, soon to be again!