Streetsblog New York City

Three years ago Streetfilms brought you a comprehensive look at Bogotá, Colombia’s TransMilenio, the world’s most advanced Bus Rapid Transit system. TransMilenio changed the way Bogotá residents think about public transportation, becoming indispensable to the 1.7 million people who use the system daily. If anything, the bus network became a victim of its own success, handling more passengers and crowding than its planners anticipated. Today, ten years after TransMilenio launched, we revisit this groundbreaking transit system and examine how it must improve as it matures.

Since 1998, Bogotá, Colombia has built more than 300 kilometers of protected bikeways. Streetfilms recently had the chance to explore the city’s bike network with the man responsible for building it, former mayor Enrique Peñalosa.

“When we build very high quality bicycle infrastructure, besides protecting cyclists, it shows that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally as important to one in a $30,000 car,” said Peñalosa. And as mayor, he walked the walk, extending the network of protected bikeways to every community.

Now the investment in cycling infrastructure is paying off. After starting off with hardly any bike commuters, Bogota is pushing a five percent bike commute mode-share.

The City's official Summer Streets web site and press release hit our inbox this morning. Jay-Z is joining Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan in inviting New Yorkers to hit seven miles worth of car-free streets in Manhattan this Saturday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Bringing it back full circle to Bogotá's Ciclovia, Juan Valdez 100% Colombian coffee is going in as a sponsor.

As in Bogotá and Paris, it looks like the City is making a serious effort to program the event. Organized activities will include bike classes for kids and adults, aikido, salsa dancing, tai-chi, running, rollerblading and hopscotch. Bloomberg is pitching the event as a test run. "We're going to embark on a grand experiment that could dramatically alter the way we use and look at the streets of New York," Bloomberg said in the City's press release. "If the program works, we'll strongly consider doing it again; maybe we'll try it in other parts of the city. If it doesn't work, we won't, but we can't be afraid to find out."

And on that note, let the bitching and moaning about imaginary traffic tie-ups, lack of community input, hidden real estate developer agendas and hippy/yuppie cyclists commence!

There are lots more details, including locations of rest stops, events and free bike helmet give-aways in the City's presser...

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With New York's big Summer Streets premier less than 72 hours away, this week we're highlighting the StreetsWiki entry on the mother of all car-free events, Bogotá's Ciclovía. Actually, the phrase "car-free event" doesn't quite do justice to a weekly gathering of a million people along 70 miles of streets. And as the authors note, much more goes on at Ciclovía than the name alone implies:

­Bikes dominate the name and the landscape of Ciclovia, but there is a lot more to it than that. Ciclovi­a days in Bogota are combined with Recreovi­a (pictured at right), a program of free public exercise activities in parks and other car-free areas.[7] Activities include dancing, yoga, and aerobics, led by professionals who are paid by the city and accompanied by festive music.

It also provides tremendous business to vendors who serve Ciclovi­a participants.[1]

Credit for this entry goes to Meg Saggese, Lily Bernheimer, Corey Burger, Nathan Schneider, and Paul Cone. Feel free to get in there and edit, if you'd like.

On a related note, I've noticed an uptick in user-submitted entries on StreetsWiki lately. Thanks for depositing your knowledge with the Livable Streets Network, Streetsbloggers. Keep it coming and watch for your contributions on Wiki Wednesdays.

Cyclists enjoy Bogotá's weekly Ciclovía. Which New York streets will host a similar event this summer?

Speaking at Tuesday's Fit-City Conference, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced that a Ciclovía-style car-free street event is in the works for this summer. New York is not alone. According to a story published earlier this week on RedOrbit, several other American cities are considering the same thing:

Others are planning ciclovia, or "bike path," programs in which networks of streets are temporarily closed to driving and open for non-motorized play. Last summer El Paso, Texas, staged the first ciclovia in the United States, and now Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Portland, Ore., are working on similar events.

Details of the New York Ciclovía have yet to be revealed. Streetsblog will fill in the blanks as this story develops.

Photo: themikebot / Flickr 

Peter Jackson ain't got nothing on Clarence Eckerson. Here is the third and final installment of Streetfilms' Bogotá trilogy based on the New York City Streets Renaissance team's visit with Gil Peñalosa in Colombia last September. Clarence writes:

You'll find lots of tasty video morsels including: riding some of the great ciclorutas and cycle paths, a visit to a thriving pedestrian-only street where they said it couldn't be done, a "bollard farm," mucho footage of the city's parks and public spaces and comments from the city's residents. And we couldn't resist -- just a wee bit more dance mania from the Recreovia.

If this is your first foray into Bogotá, you may want to check out these as well:

• Ciclovia Bogotá, Part I (9:41)
• Bus Rapid Transit Bogotá, Part II (7:29)
• Mark Gorton Interviews Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa (12:07)

 

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has a new online "clearinghouse" of information on Bus Rapid Transit.

From the Mobilizing the Region blog:

The clearinghouse explains what bus rapid transit (BRT) is, how it compares to other modes, how it can be implemented in suburban and urban contexts, and how it can anchor transit-oriented development. The clearinghouse will continue to be updated.

Earlier this month a new coalition called Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE!) called for expansion of New York's BRT plans, and for electeds to support BRT through congestion pricing. Their effort was punctuated by a visit from Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, which is home to the TransMilenio system.

Check out the Bogotá StreetFilm to see BRT in action.

Streetfilms captured highlights of Enrique Penalosa's appearance with COMMUTE.

One of the most entrenched fallacies in the congestion pricing debate has been the assertion that blue-collar New Yorkers get the short end of the stick. The claim never withstood scrutiny, but now it is facing an especially strong counterargument from Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE), a coalition of organizations from low-income communities of color underserved by transit.

COMMUTE calls for giving poor New Yorkers better access to transit by implementing extensive, inter-borough Bus Rapid Transit corridors, funded from pricing revenues and the MTA capital budget. On Monday, they hosted an appearance by former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who described how he addressed what he calls "quality of life inequality" by improving public space for pedestrians and building the TransMilenio BRT system.

COMMUTE presented Peñalosa's story as a challenge to New York pols. "People want to see that pricing is going to benefit them directly," said Joan Byron of the Pratt Center for Community Development, a COMMUTE partner. "He really demolishes the argument of electeds who oppose the plan and have 20 percent car ownership and 5 percent commuting by car in their districts."

The Pratt Center's Elena Conte brought this point home when she addressed the room following Peñalosa's Q & A: 

The example of Bogotá... reveals that inequities in the mass transit system can be addressed when elected leadership has the will to place the needs of the underserved above the long-established privilege of the tiny minority who drive cars

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As attention turns to the next federal transportation bill, and livable streets fans scan the platforms of presidential candidates for glimpses of what to expect from Washington over the next four years, Alex Steffen, editor and CEO of the blog WorldChanging, has posted an essay-in-progress called "My Other Car is a Bright Green City." Steffen says that reining in fuel standards and auto emissions, for instance, is not nearly as important to present and future generations as developing communities that behave more like cities, which are, by environmental measures, much cleaner than commute-intensive suburbs and exurbs. Here are some excerpts.

Our vehicle emissions are a major climate change contributor, but what comes out of the tailpipe is only a fraction of the total climate impact of driving a car, and the climate impact is in turn only a part of the environmental and social damage cars cause. Improving mileage will not fix these problems.

We can't see most of the ecological and social impacts of our auto-dependence in our daily lives. And those impacts are so massive that arguing about fuel efficiency standards (especially in terms of gradual increases) fails to acknowledge what we're up against with this crisis.

All that driving takes some pretty big social tolls, too, of course. Car accidents are a leading cause of death and disabling injury in the U.S. Auto-dependence is a major contributor to obesity and other chronic illness. In addition, more and more people are finding themselves driving longer commutes: more than 3.5 million Americans now drive more than three hours a day to get to and from work, spending a month of their lives on the road each year. Meanwhile, people who live in the newer fringe-burbs are reportedly the least happiest of Americans, and the long commutes they endure are a major reason why.

We know that density reduces driving. We know that we're capable of building really dense new neighborhoods and even of using good design, infill development and infrastructure investments to transform existing medium-low density neighborhoods into walkable compact communities. It is within our power to build whole metropolitan regions where the vast majority of residents live in communities that eliminate the need for daily driving, and make it possible for many people to live without private cars altogether.

The personal happiness index is not lost on those in Paris and Bogotá, where reclaiming public space from the automobile has worked wonders, as enRoute reports:

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A map produced by the Pratt Center [pdf] shows neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-income commuters with long commutes.

With congestion pricing now before the City Council, the coalition pushing it forward shows signs of strengthening at exactly the right time. One group we'll be hearing more from is Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMM.U.T.E!), a recently-formed partnership between the Pratt Center for Community Development and community organizations in low-income neighborhoods around the city. At a press event this morning, COMM.U.T.E! representatives spoke about their strategy to lobby for congestion pricing and greater funding for BRT in the MTA capital plan. 

Their campaign will call attention to stark inequities in New York City commute times. The Pratt Center has crunched 2000 Census numbers showing that two-thirds of city residents with commutes longer than one hour earn under $35,000 per year [pdf]; and that black New Yorkers face a 30 percent longer commute, on average, than white New Yorkers [pdf]. Disparities were present, if less pronounced, across other racial groups as well. Considered alongside the transit improvements that congestion pricing will make possible, the findings again pierce the argument that pricing is a regressive tax.

The problems revealed by the report are fundamentally about "human rights and dignity, rather than dry economic measures," said Joan Byron, Director of Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center.

Time lost to long commutes is "corrosive to community life and family life," said Silvett Garcia, Senior Planner at Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice in the Soundview section of the Bronx. "That is time people cannot spend with their families, cannot meet with their children's teachers, cannot go to community events." She noted that bus commuters in the Bronx have to transfer twice to make a trip across the borough, which takes an hour. The same trip only takes drivers ten minutes.

Byron applauded DOT's commitment to a BRT pilot program, but noted that the scale of a BRT system would have to exceed current plans to seriously address inequities in transit access. The only way to dramatically improve transit access in neighborhoods that are currently underserved, she said, is to implement congestion pricing and significantly boost MTA funding for BRT.

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