Clarence Eckerson Jr.

In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks program has launched an initiative that may someday alter the way U.S. cities treat their commercial strips.

A few years ago, Randy Cohen, who writes the "Ethicist" column in the New York Times Magazine, visited the Streetfilms set for an interview about "transportation ethics." For this sequel, we got out of the studio for a two-wheeled jaunt around Manhattan and popped him a few more questions.

Whether you’re a transportation geek or just curious about why people do the things they do behind the wheel, Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic is one of the most fascinating books you can open up. Tom, who also writes the excellent blog How We Drive, was kind enough to drop by the Streetfilms office for a conversation about … Continued

Long Beach, Los Angeles’s neighbor to the south, has started to put some serious effort into making cycling an attractive and safe mode of transportation, and it’s already paying dividends. Bicycling Magazine’s 2010 rankings for bike-friendly cities ranked Long Beach a respectable 23rd. But the city has more ambitious goals, aiming to ultimately become the … Continued

"The Wiggle" is one of San Francisco's most beloved bike routes, guiding riders between two nasty hills. It even has its own Wikipedia entry.

Village Voice entertainment columnist Michael Musto has been riding a bike in New York City for more than 25 years, long before it was fashionable or we had bike lanes and cycletracks.

Right now, Seattle is making as serious a commitment to transit as any city in the nation. Recently, Streetfilms got to take a tour of the newest addition to the city's network -- the 13-station Link Light Rail, which opened in mid-2009.

When Seattleites elected a new mayor at the end of 2009, they really went for a breath of fresh air. In the general election, Mayor Mike McGinn, who rides a bike to work daily, was outspent nearly four to one. The race was very close, but with an energetic volunteer base -- and a campaign that emphasized many livable streets issues -- he pulled out the victory.

It's something even the most experienced cyclists do: wipe out while crossing a set of train tracks. When you ride across rails, you need to maneuver your bike's angle of approach so that you hit the tracks as perpendicularly as possible. But even knowing that, some riders don't slow down enough to sashay properly, and newbies have no idea how the angles work until it's too late!

Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce his verdict on Times Square's new pedestrian spaces very soon. Will the changes be permanent? This morning Bloomberg told radio host John Gambling that we'll find out sometime next week. In the meantime, it seems like the media has decided to fixate on rumors that Midtown traffic speeds may not have increased across the board, without paying much attention to the tremendous difference this project has made for hundreds of thousands of pedestrians every day.