Ben Fried

[Editor's note: This post comes to us from Streetsblog NYC, but San Franciscans may also find the video useful (and exciting) in anticipation of the launch of the Bay Area's bike-share system in August.]

Hey SF, Aaron is out with a nasty bug today, so to keep your content craving sated I thought I'd share this proto-Streetfilm from 2004, which Clarence Eckerson recently unearthed for a museum exhibit about the history of NYC activism. It's about the campaign to get cars out of Manhattan's Central Park. Anyone who lives in a city where cars regularly invade the flagship park can probably relate.

Thanks to everyone who's stepped up and chipped in for our spring pledge drive. Your donations are helping us keep the lights on at Streetsblog and Streetfilms so we can deliver high-quality reporting, commentary, and videos covering the movement for safe streets, effective transit, and livable cities.

Remember the Times of London's "Cities Fit for Cycling" campaign? Earlier this year one of the most prominent dailies in the UK launched an all-out blitz to make bicycling safer in British cities, complete with a comprehensive policy platform. The campaign is for real: The Times is now getting London mayoral candidates on the record with their bike policy positions.

This 45-second simulation of cute miniature jelly beans multi-ton driverless vehicles navigating the intersection of twin 12-lane monstrosities was featured on Atlantic Cities yesterday, and it’s been making the rounds via Twitter. With Google engineers tooling around in vehicles that drive themselves, it looks like the 1950′s-era dream of cars on autopilot zooming about on massive elevated highways has morphed into a thoroughly modern vision of cars on autopilot zooming about on street-level highways.

If you read Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax growing up or you read it to your kids today, then the sight of Mazda trotting out the protector of Truffula trees to hawk cars may have stirred deep feelings of revulsion. Our friend the Zozo has a petition on Change.org for you:

Gas prices, you may have heard, are on the rise again. And so is pandering about pain at the pump. Four years after $4 a gallon gas spawned “Drill, Baby, Drill” and insane political gimmickry on the presidential campaign trail (remember the “gas tax holiday” favored by John McCain and Hillary Clinton?), gas price populism is back with a vengeance.

The transportation-plus-drilling bill that John Boehner and company are trying to ram through the House is an attack on transit riders, pedestrians, cyclists, city dwellers, and every American who can’t afford to drive everywhere. Under this bill, all the dedicated federal funding streams for transit, biking, and walking would disappear, leading to widespread service cuts and more injuries and deaths on American streets. But to hear the Republican-controlled Transportation and Infrastructure Committee tell it, they’re not harming anyone. In a statement, committee spokesperson Josh Harclerode told Transportation Nation earlier this week:

This Twitter photo of LeBron James biking to American Airlines Arena before facing off against Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls last night has gone viral on sports news sites all over America.

After receiving applications from many fine journalists, I’m pleased to announce that OpenPlans is hiring a new editor to manage Streetsblog San Francisco. Aaron Bialick will be taking the reins full-time starting on January 3, 2012.