San Francisco

Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick will be on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" this afternoon at 3 p.m. EST. He'll be debating Rob Anderson, the one-man wrecking crew who filed the 2006 environmental impact law suit that stopped San Francisco from building out its citywide bicycle network.

I was pretty sure that New York City had San Francisco beat for this year's Park(ing) Day, what, with the children's reading hour and the on-street gymnasium in Brooklyn; Staten Island and Queens getting in on the act; and German tourists frolicking on the sod in front of the MoMA (all captured by StreetFilms, of course). Then I saw photos of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome admiring Rebar Group's Parkcycle -- literally, a pedal-powered park on wheels -- and I realized that we had been foiled again. Back to the drawing board New York City Park(ing) fans. We've got 12 months to come up with something better than this...

Park(ing) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, May 6, 2006. The sign says, "Public space reclamation in progress."

Here is another clever video from San Francisco; this one chronicles the case of the missing bike lane. I think it is safe to say that gas stations and bike lanes don't mix.

Thanks all for reading and commenting on our non-motorized honeymoon travel series (see parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). Below is a table Susan put together to briefly summarize some of our observations on the cities we visited.

Part 3 in a series on rail and transit-only travel across the United States focuses on the final three cities of our journey. Part 2 looked at the first three and Part 1 presented an overview of our travel. 

My wife and I were married last month in Brooklyn. For our honeymoon, we wanted to see as many great American cities as we could. In 19 days of travel, we visited Chicago, Seattle, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans (and also stopped briefly in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia).

"Cyclists are so used to doing with scraps and they've been that way for so long that they are shocked when they get anything that satisfies their needs."

Depressed about the direction Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan is heading? Cheer yourself up by starting to plan for Park(ing) Day 2007. Friday, September 21 is the day when urban dwellers the world over pop quarters into parking meters and take over on-street spaces, temporarily transforming them into miniature parks, playgrounds, cafés and community spaces.