Elizabeth Press

Local Spokes is a coalition of nine organizations that joined up to engage low-income residents, people of color, immigrants, and young people in the Lower East Side and Chinatown to envision the future of bicycling in their communities. To understand the transportation needs of the neighborhoods, Local Spokes conducted an extensive survey in 2010 and 2011 and held a series of workshops in Chinese, English, and Spanish.

Last month Streetfilms took a look at how Vancouver is making big strides toward becoming a safe bicycling city. As we learned while in town for the Velo-City 2012 conference, the city government is not alone -- it has a great partner in the regional transportation agency, TransLink, which provides transit service for 22 regional municipalities, plus funding for a network of major roads and cycling infrastructure and programs. TransLink views cycling as a complement to the agency's trains, buses, and ferries.

In June, the city of Vancouver hosted the Velo-City Global 2012 Conference, where international cycling planners, professionals and advocates convened.

The first National Women’s Bicycling Summit took place last week in Long Beach, California. It was tacked on to the Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference and drew some of the same participants, a bunch of new faces and whole lot of positive energy.

Our "My NYC Biking Story" series is back in action this week with a profile of Kevin Bolger, a.k.a. Squid. For 20 years Squid has worked as a commercial cyclist. He has done cargo delivery and food delivery, and at one point he co-owned a messenger company. From his position as a fixture of the NYC messenger community, he has also helped evolve New York's bike messenger culture.

For many who have heard of Medellín, Colombia, the name brings to mind the drug-related violence of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was often described as the most dangerous city in the world.

For more than 20 years, federal funding for bike and pedestrian safety has enabled American cities and towns to invest in transportation projects that state DOTs would otherwise have overlooked. Thanks to these programs, communities have helped main streets thrive, provided kids with safer routes to school, and made biking an attractive transportation option.

The Netherlands is widely recognized for having the highest cycling rates in the world. What's not so well known is that the Dutch don't bike so much because cycling is in their DNA. They do it because after the country started down the path toward car dependence, they made a conscious decision to change course. After many decades of deliberate policy to invest in cycling as a mode of transportation, the Netherlands has the most advanced bike infrastructure you'll ever see.

"Cities for Cycling" is a project of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to document, promote and implement the world’s best bicycle transportation practices in American cities. As part of the Cities for Cycling program, bikeway design experts take their show on the road, using the streets of different U.S. cities as their classroom and the new NACTO bikeway design book as their guide.