Greenways

Billionaire philanthropists and bike-friendly local governments have been teaming up to turn an unexpected region of the country into a biking haven. But what will the future look like — and is their example instructive to the rest of the country?

The post Is NW Arkansas About to Become the Next Biking Capital of America? appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

A chunk of roadway at Valencia and Mission Streets would be reclaimed to create a plaza designed to make the corner more pedestrian-friendly and absorb stormwater under a project led by the SF Public Utilities Commission.

The Wiggle could be transformed into a greener, more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly route in the coming years thanks to a new planning effort launched by the SFMTA and the SF Public Utilities Commission.

Bringing safe bike infrastructure and shared, pedestrian-priority streets to San Francisco are just a couple of popular ideas among users on ImproveSF.com, a city-sponsored website which features a platform for residents to provide input on the Planning Department's "Green Connections" project.

The SF Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) has posted new visuals on its website depicting how streets on the Wiggle could be transformed into greener, traffic-calmed streets oriented toward safe walking and bicycling.

Tomorrow the SF Planning Department is putting on the first in a series of walks as part of its new Green Connections project, an effort to improve access to parks making better use of city streets.

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 of the less recognized aspects of this bicycling boom has been the incredible expansion of bike rentals and bicycling tourism.

(Editor's note: This is Part 1 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed)

We walk on layers of history. In our neighborhoods, in our cities, there were once natural phenomena, like creeks, sand dunes, hills, and forests. Over time they were covered in farms, factories, houses, and most of all, streets. At first those streets were dirt, often thick and muddy. Around the middle of the 19th century they started to be used for railroads, both intercity, and local streetcar and cable car lines. Sometimes the shape of our 21st century streetscape is a ghost of those old train lines.