Streetsblog New York City

Earlier this week, London launched its first two "cycle superhighways" to decidedly mixed reviews. First announced by then-mayor Ken Livingstone in 2008, the cycle superhighways haven't quite lived up to the expectations for safe and fast bike travel implied by their name, as you can see in this BBC News video.

The superhighways are quite vulnerable to intrusion from motorists and they look like pretty standard bike lanes -- albeit with improvements at intersections, enhanced way-finding and some nifty new safety features like "trixi" mirrors at traffic signals, which improve cyclist visibility for the operators of bigger vehicles like trucks. They're also a very bright blue, which at the very least will raise awareness about cycling.

The current mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has a lot riding on the cycle superhighways. He's declared 2010 the "Year of the Bicycle," and the new bikeways will be paired this summer with an ambitious bike-share system -- 6,000 bicycles at 400 stations. Together, these two projects are expected to result in an extra 62,000 bike trips per day in London, making a big contribution toward the mayor's target of a 400 percent increase in cycling by 2026. But the question remains whether the superhighways will justify the hype and the investment. The first two superhighways cost about $35 million to implement.

If you only look at the bright blue bike lanes, though, you're only getting half the picture. The real innovation behind the cycle superhighways may not lie in the improved physical infrastructure but in the supporting "softer measures" to promote their use. Transport for London (TfL), the mayor's transportation agency, has been working closely with businesses, schools and households along the route of the superhighways to encourage people to cycle.

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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?

To replicate the Midtown street safety benefits throughout the five boroughs, New York could look to the example of the UK, where 20 mph zones have reduced automobile speeds across the country. The global city that perhaps most closely resembles NYC -- London -- has been installing 20 mph zones for the last decade, and they are saving lives. Already, 27 fewer Londoners are killed or seriously injured each year because of them.  

The standard speed limit in London, as in New York, is 30 mph. Since 2001, however, London has built more than four hundred 20 mph zones, as described in a 2009 report by the London Assembly [PDF]. The zones are located in residential neighborhoods or near areas of high pedestrian activity, like schools. As of last year, they covered 11 percent of the total road length of the city.

The safety effects of the 20 mph zones have been enormous for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike. In London, serious traffic injuries and fatalities have fallen by 46 percent within the zones, according to the prestigious British Medical Journal. Deaths and serious injuries sustained by children have dropped 50 percent. There's even a small spillover effect, with areas immediately adjacent to 20 mph zones seeing an eight percent reduction in total injuries and deaths. The science is so clear that in 2004 the World Health Organization endorsed 20 mph speeds as an essential strategy to save lives. 

These 20 mph zones do much more than change a digit on speed limit signs. London's zones include a host of traffic calming measures to make the speed limit self-enforcing: road humps, raised junctions, chicanes, and raised crosswalks are the most common. Increasingly, speed cameras are used to enforce lower speeds.

When paired with hard hitting public service announcements like these, London is addressing each of the three E's of traffic safety: engineering, enforcement, and education. As a result, the 20 mph zones really work, silencing skeptics who claimed that Londoners would just keep driving as they always had. As implemented, overall speeds in London's 20 mph zones have decreased by nine miles per hour, according to the London Assembly report. Transport for London recently recommended 880 more sites for the traffic-slowing treatment.

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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.

That's why this letter we received from two British tourists is so refreshing. It's both a stark admonishment of how much we've given up for the car, sometimes barely noticing it, and a heartening reminder that what often seems normal to us need not be: 

We are visitors to the States from England. Our main reason for coming was to visit friends, however upon researching into transport options we were horrified to discover that the only viable option to get from NY to LA via many small towns was by car. Many of our friends have tried to justify this saying that 'America is simply too big to have public transport'. To us, this is purely INSANE. Surely a huge country should offer the best public transport in the world! Bullet trains could cover the driving distances in no time.

We are feeling quite ashamed of ourselves as we write this but inevitably we did end up driving across America. We have found the American people to be welcoming and friendly and the landscape beautiful but we have not yet seen a single 'town' in the US that we, as Europeans would class as a town. I would class them more as motorway service stations. Buildings designed for cars. People waiting in line for a drive through. People competing for car parking spaces at gyms! These are not communities as we would recognise - market squares, parks, rivers, cafes, stations, public art, gardens etc. 'Towns' are simply not towns! We feel saddened that many Americans are not afforded the community lifestyle that we enjoy in Europe.

Our purpose of writing is not to attack your country and we do apologise if we have offended. I am writing to urge you, beg with you, plead with you to keep up the fantastic work that you are doing. Despite the wonderful time that we have had in the US I simply cannot wait to get home in order to walk from my flat and pick up a newspaper and a pint of milk, on my journey I shall say hello to everyone I meet, take note of the weather and breathe some fresh air.

Several American cities have made halting strides towards implementing bike-share systems recently, but which will be the first to launch the kind of robust network needed for public biking to go mainstream? Right now, the runaway favorite is Boston.

The Globe reported yesterday that Boston's regional planning agency has awarded a contract to the same company that launched Montreal's Bixi bike-share system earlier this year. Boston planners say the system specs are still getting hashed out along with other contract details. Many questions remain unanswered, but signs are promising so far.

In a report on the Times' Green Inc blog this morning, a spokesperson for Bixi "indicated that the Boston system will initially offer 2,500 bikes at 290 stations in downtown Boston." A system of that size and density would place Boston in the ranks of cities like Barcelona and Paris, where public bikes have become a critical component of the transportation network. Officials hope to expand the Boston system to neighboring Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville soon after it launches.

It's also worth noting that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, running for re-election this fall, is not distancing himself from the city's bike-share plan. In fact, he's embracing it. "I think Boston is the perfect venue to roll out a forward-thinking bike share program," he said in a press statement released yesterday. "Boston is a world class city, and over the last two years we have made tremendous strides in turning it into a world class bicycling city."

A big part of Bixi's attraction is that it's solar-powered, requiring no electrical wiring or underground utility work. In addition to Boston, London also announced yesterday that it will use the Bixi system for an ambitious bike-share network: 6,000 bikes at 400 locations.

Stations that can be installed without a jackhammer are probably a prerequisite for bike-share operations in New York, where streetwork can turn into an expensive, bureaucratic tangle. DOT released a request for expressions of interest from potential bike-share operators last fall, and a study published by the Department of City Planning this spring recommended that New York start its network with 10,000 bikes.

In 2002, then-mayor of London Ken Livingstone launched the 100 Public Spaces Programme, a campaign to better realize the potential of the city's public realm. With guidance from Jan Gehl, the initiative emphasized reclaiming space for pedestrians and enhancing street life.

Soon after Boris Johnson defeated Livingstone in last year's election, the new mayor shook up the city's public space plans, drawing fire from his predecessor. Some projects, like the pedestrianization of Parliament Square, got the ax, while others moved ahead. Last month, Johnson announced a re-vamped public space campaign, which he's calling "Great Spaces."

In her Streetfilms debut, Alice Shay speaks to Paul Harper, a head urban designer at Design for London who managed the 100 Public Spaces Programme. Here he discusses the origins of the program and guides us through projects currently underway in East London's Aldgate neighborhood, including a one-way to two-way conversion and the creation of a new public park.

There's no place quite like Times Square, and no exact precedent for the reclamation of street space along Broadway that Mayor Bloomberg and NYCDOT unveiled last week. But London's pedestrian improvements to Trafalgar Square certainly invite comparison. DianaD describes those changes in this week's StreetsWiki entry:

Because it formed the intersection of some of London’s busiest roads (junction of Whitehall, The Mall, The Strand and Charing Cross roads), Trafalgar Square had become an "undignified traffic roundabout." Visitors had to cross several lanes of traffic, which carried 1500 cars per hour, to reach the central monuments.

The redesign, completed in 2003, transformed the space in front of the National Gallery from this:

To this:

Check out Diana's entry for more of the story.

The Times' Lede blog reported yesterday that Tory chief David Cameron had his bike nicked while he ducked in to a store to buy some groceries:

Someone swiped the bike of the British opposition leader, David Cameron, who happens to be a national advocate for parking that gas-guzzling automobile and pedaling instead. Mr. Cameron, the Conservative party chief, regularly commutes to work at the House of Commons by bicycle.

As the story filled with humble details goes, he stopped at a supermarket on his way home, to pick up some items for dinner, and left his mountain bike locked to a bollard, a short and stout barrier whose main purpose is to block vehicle traffic while letting pedestrians pass. Mr. Cameron would regret the decision minutes later.

Sloppy locking technique aside, what's news to me is that the leader of the UK's right-wing party is a bike commuter and advocate for switching modes. This is the first I'd heard that Cameron is cut from the same cloth as London Mayor Boris Johnson, another Tory and avid city cyclist. Turns out several Tory MPs like to ride to work too. In America, this would be like Bloomberg biking to work every day, Republican congressmen joining Earl Blumenauer on his commute to the Capitol, and John McCain championing cycling as transportation.

Of course, associating bikes with one side of the political spectrum or the other may be missing the point, as one MP told the BBC: 

"I have to say it is not an ideological crusade as far as I'm concerned. It is just a convenient way of getting about."

Photo of David Cameron pre-bike theft: Daily Mirror

London Mayor Boris Johnson may scale back the congestion pricing plan put in place by Ken Livingstone, whom Johnson defeated in May. The Times is reporting that the current 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. flat rate charge could be altered in a number of ways, including a reduction in the hours during which the fee is applied and reversing an extension of the zone, which was implemented last year.

Johnson's director of transport, Kulveer Ranger, told the Times that Johnson is looking to the proposed Manchester pricing model, which charges for fewer hours per day.

Mr Ranger said: "Flexibility around hours of operation, flexibility around how it is charged; all of those things are options we're looking to consider.

"The mayor has been absolutely clear that he wants to make it fairer for people, not so much as a blunt tool, but something that's a bit more well managed and gives people a bit more flexibility in terms of how it's operated."

The Times, which opposes pricing, relies exclusively on sources from "motoring groups" -- who also speak of "making the system fairer," etc. -- to fill out the story. But in the comments, reader "Barry" recalls how candidate Johnson professed an interest in improving conditions for those who don't or can't drive.

We certainly need more sophisticated road charging, where payment is related to time of day and distance travelled. But to rule out extending the scheme shows that Boris's pre-election claim to support cyclists, pedestrians and bus users over the selfish minority of self-drivers was a sham.

Photo: Guardian Unlimited

Here's an interview from last year with London Mayor Boris Johnson, who ousted Ken Livingstone last week. It's pretty remarkable in that Johnson spends the first eight minutes talking about buses and bikes.

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London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who introduced congestion charging to the British capital in 2003, has probably been unseated by Tory challenger Boris Johnson, report Reuters and the Evening Standard. Labour lost across the board in UK elections yesterday, and the London mayor's race appears not to have bucked the trend, although the final tally has not yet been announced.

While foes of the congestion charge are already gloating over the prospect of a Livingstone defeat, the pricing mechanism is not in danger of being revoked. Should he gain the mayoralty, Johnson has pledged to shrink the congestion zone back to its initial, pre-2005 area -- before a western expansion that some transportation experts concede was poorly thought out. Livingstone's plan to increase the charge for the most polluting vehicles would also be off the table. However, the charge itself is there to stay no matter who emerges as the victor. It should also be noted that Livingstone successfully ran for re-election in 2004, after the charge took effect.

For those holding out hope that Livingstone will prevail despite the early returns, the BBC is running regular updates on the status of the vote count.

Update: The BBC reports that Johnson has indeed won the election, garnering 1,168,738 votes to Livingstone's 1,028,966.