Chris Carlsson
Recent Posts
Ruminations of an Accidental Diplomat: Critical Mass at 20
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Editor’s note: Next Friday is the 20th Anniversary of Critical Mass. The following is an excerpted version of an introductory essay from Chris Carlsson, one of the founders of Critical Mass, who co-edited the new book Shift Happens! Critical Mass at 20, a compilation of essays on the movement from authors around the world. Critical […]
Whose Streets?
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“Whose Streets? OUR Streets!” yell rowdy demonstrators when they surge off the sidewalk and into thoroughfares. True enough, the streets are our public commons, what’s left of it (along with libraries and our diminishing public schools), but most of the time these public avenues are dedicated to the movement of vehicles, mostly privately owned autos. […]
The Political and Economic Implications of Bicycling Tourists
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I’ve been bicycling in San Francisco since the late 1970s so I vividly remember when almost all bicyclists could recognize each other on the streets of the city. There really weren’t that many of us even as recently as the beginning of the 1990s, just two decades ago. We’ve come a long way, and one […]
Peru’s Traffic Menagerie
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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 […]
Ecology of Biking in Quito, Ecuador
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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 […]
Ferries on the Bay
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Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series of reports from Chris Carlsson on the history of transit in the Bay Area. There are thousands of people using ferries on the San Francisco Bay these days, so it’s hard to remember that ferry service died out for several decades. Of course the long history […]
New Freeway Revolt Grips Guadalajara
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While the world has gathered in Cancun, Mexico, to discuss again a shared approach to Climate Chaos, action is already being taken in countless communities. On a visit last week to Guadalajara, Mexico, more than a thousand miles west of the Climate Meeting, I had the pleasure of discovering a vibrant grassroots movement to block […]
19th Century Bicycling: Rubber was the Dark Secret
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“If the increase continues, the time is not very distant when not to own and ride a bicycle will be a confession that one is not able-bodied, is exceptionally awkward, or is hopelessly belated.” —“The Bicycle Festival,” July 13, 1895 New York Times The bicycle came to San Francisco during the last quarter of the […]
Of Cable Cars and Whales
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A Clay Street Hill Railroad dummy and traile cable car atop Nob Hill, c. 1875. The invention of cable cars in 1873 by Andrew Hallidie is an oft-told saga, with a perhaps apocryphal point of origin on a rainy winter day in 1869 when he saw a team of horses pulling a horsecar up a […]
Detroit: The Return of the Repressed (Bicycling Culture)
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Detroit’s once bustling streets are a bicyclist’s paradise now, wide open and empty. Visiting the ghostly motor city these days is an eye-opening and surprisingly inspiring experience. The city has fallen from more than 2 million residents a generation ago to around 800,000 today. A great deal of the land area where homes and factories […]
An Unfinished Freeway Revolt: Car-Free Vancouver Day
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Banner at Car-Free Vancouver Day The organization fighting the massive freeway plan in Vancouver I’m just back from a fantastic five-day visit to Vancouver to help celebrate and publicly ponder Car-Free Vancouver Day. The event started six years ago along East Vancouver’s Commercial Drive (“the Drive” as it is often called there). It has grown […]
The Heyday of Horsecars
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In 1907 the horse was still a major part of the transportation picture, but the horsecars that dominated the 19th century were being replaced. Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series of stories on the history of transit in San Francisco. After walking through the mud and sand of early San Francisco, locals […]