Cities and Countries

"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.

Editor's note: We linked to this story out of San Francisco in the headline stack this morning, and it's worth a very close look. Experts counsel that the first step in reforming parking policies that promote driving is to measure the parking supply. The number one recommendation in "Suburbanizing the City" [PDF], the 2008 report on New York City's traffic-inducing parking policies, is to "create a complete, public inventory of existing, permitted and planned off-street parking." In San Francisco, they're methodically assessing the parking supply so that planners can make more informed decisions. In New York, the Department of City Planning is still groping around in the dark.

When it comes to making a public commitment to taming lawless driving and making streets safe for biking, police departments in major west coast cities are starting to leave Ray Kelly's NYPD in their wake.

The evidence keeps mounting that smart parking policy is an essential tool in the fight to curb traffic. A new study of two German neighborhoods indicates that managing the supply of parking can make streets more livable, even in places that already have great infrastructure for transit, walking, and biking. Eliminating mandatory parking minimums, the data shows, plays an essential role in reducing driving. 

While we were down in Washington, DC for the National Bike Summit, Streetfilms got the chance to check out some of the capital's innovative new bike infrastructure.

When Mayor Bloomberg announced that the new pedestrian spaces in Midtown are here to stay, he made special note of the safety improvements on Broadway, which he called "reason enough to make this permanent." And after the mayor told reporters that the city was getting lots of requests for similar livable streets treatments, the speculation started: What's next?

NYCDOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is in Los Angeles this weekend for the StreetSummit, a gathering of Southern California bike and pedestrian advocates. In a lead-in to the conference, Sadik-Khan spoke at her alma mater, Occidental College, and Clarence Eckerson and Streetsblog LA's Damien Newton were there.

It’s not often that you get to see your work set off a Eureka moment for someone else -- particularly when that someone is from a different culture. But I had that experience recently, and it seems worth sharing on Streetsblog in light of the interest shown today in my analysis of the travel delay costs from FreshDirect deliveries.

American advocates for livable streets know that our addiction to the automobile is almost without peer. We know that we've given our land to driving lanes and parking lots and our air to exhaust fumes. Nevertheless, it can be hard to step outside of the car culture we've spent our lives marinating in and see the country with a new perspective.