planted city

From The Economist:

MORE and more Americans are taking to the road on two wheels. Between 1977 and 2009 the total number of annual bike trips more than tripled, while the bike’s share of all trips rose from 0.6% to 1%. Commuting cyclists have also increased in number, with twice as many biking to work in 2009 as in 2000.

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The growth comes thanks to cycle-friendly policymaking and increases in government spending. In Portland, which brought in a comprehensive programme, cycling levels have increased sixfold since the early 1990s. In Chicago the motivation is to improve the quality of life, and thus encourage both businesses and families to move there.

In a forthcoming book, “City Cycling”, John Pucher and Ralph Buehler argue that the bike boom needs to be expanded to a broader cross-section of people. Almost all the growth in cycling in America has come from men aged 25-64. Rates of cycling have actually fallen slightly among women and sharply among children, most probably because of nervousness about safety. But in fact cycling is getting safer all the time. According to a paper by Messrs Pucher and Buehler with Mark Seinen, fatalities per 10m bike trips fell by 65% between 1977 and 2009, from 5.1 to 1.8. In their book, the authors claim that the health benefits of cycling far exceed the safety risks.

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As 48% of trips in American cities are shorter than three miles, there is big potential for further growth.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: City Cycling)

From The Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles held its first CicLAvia in October 2010, when 7.5 miles of streets were blocked off to motor vehicles from East Hollywood to Boyle Heights. Sunday, which marked the fourth version of the event, tested the city’s flexibility as cyclists invaded downtown, Dodgers fans attended a home game up the hill and the Lakers faithful poured into L.A. Live — all at roughly the same time. And somehow the city still seemed to function.

The idea of booting cars off the roads and turning the asphalt over to cyclists and pedestriansfirst took hold as a weekly ciclovía in Colombia more than 30 years ago and was later adopted by cities elsewhere in Latin America and in the United States.

The festival was an immediate hit in L.A. and quickly became the city’s marquee event for pedestrians and cyclists.

“Angelenos are aching for a day without a car. CicLAvia provides us one of those days,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Sunday before joining in the ride.

“But the change doesn’t have to be temporary, so we are taking steps to make it easier for Angelenos to get from point A to point B — with or without a car,” he said.

Villaraigosa used the platform Sunday to unveil a privately funded $16-million bike-share program that aims to put 4,000 rental bicycles at 400 kiosks across the city.

Check out the rest of the article and news video of the event here.

(Photo credit: Los Angeles Times)

From the Economist:

Chicago and New York are just two of the ten American cities—the others are Austin, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle—who are members of the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group (mercifully renamed the C40), which now comprises 58 cities around the world. Roughly 297m people, less than 5% of the Earth’s total, live in the 40 charter-member C40 cities. But they account for 18% of the world’s GDP and 10% of its carbon emissions. In total, cities house more than half the world’s population, and account for two-thirds of its energy consumption and over 60% of its greenhouse-gas emissions.

These cities’ plans vary. One particular strength of urban, as opposed to national or even state climate-change policy, particularly in a country as vast as America, is that cities are different; what works in one may not in another. Missy Stults, who until recently was climate director for ICLEI-USA, an NGO that works with local governments on the subject, says that for climate-change plans to work, “the actions you take have to be local”, tailored to the particular needs of each city. Portland’s plan, for instance, calls for 90% of its citizens to be able to walk or bicycle “to meet all basic, daily non-work needs” by 2030: a laudable and achievable goal there, but far more difficult in sprawling cities such as Los Angeles or Houston. New York’s PlaNYC pays more attention to wetlands and coastal issues than CCAP does, because New York has more coastline and waterways than Chicago.

But there are shared goals as well. All ten American C40-city plans have some sort of transport-policy aspect, whether public, such as switching to hybrid or electric taxis and buses, personal, such as encouraging cycling, or both. They try to reduce the amount of rubbish going to municipal landfills by encouraging composting and recycling; some push for converting waste into usable energy. Many propose more efficient outdoor lighting, which accounts for almost one-fifth of energy consumption across C40 cities and is mostly old and inefficient. And most plans push for retrofitting homes and offices to make them more energy-efficient—especially crucial in densely built cities such as New York, where buildings account for 75% of greenhouse-gas emissions.

These measures are not only environmentally sound. By and large they also save taxpayers money. This makes their benefits far more tangible than simply contributing to a good outcome in the distant future; and a much easier sell.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Christian Science Monitor)

From The Washington Post:

For the past century, city streets have been designed to ease automobile traffic flow. But in recent years, sustainability and livability have become buzz words as policymakers seek ways to reduce congestion and pollution and improve the health of residents. They have become increasingly aware that getting more people on the street boosts public safety, raises property value and brings in more businesses.

In and around Los Angeles, where cars outnumber people on the streets and freeways and multi-lane roads divide neighborhoods, efforts are under way to reverse the refrain “Nobody Walks In LA” that was sung by the 1980s band Missing Persons. They include a plan to make over Figueroa Street, a major downtown artery for vehicle traffic, for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders.

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The shift toward building “complete streets” reflects a broader change in federal government policy. Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued new guidelines that moved to end “favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized” by including cyclist and pedestrian needs in new road projects.

Check out the rest of the article here. 

(Image credit: GOOD)