Streetsblog New York City

One of these bike-share workshop participants is the star of this classic Streetfilm.

It was another evening of hands-on bike-share station planning at Manhattan Community Board 2 last night, as New Yorkers hunched over maps of SoHo and Greenwich Village, marking the best places to site bike-share kiosks.

If you live or work in the bike-share service area, you really ought to mark your calendar for the station planning meeting in your neck of the woods. There’s something very gratifying about the process that NYC DOT and Alta Bikeshare have put together for people to rate different sites. Each time you put a sticker on the map, you’re shaping the bike-share system in a small but tangible way.

The other thing is that you never know who else will show up. Last night, former Talking Heads frontman and one-time Summer Streets spokesperson David Byrne was in the house, marking up a map. If the pattern holds, it looks like Jay-Z will be on hand for the Manhattan CB 6 workshop later this month, and John Franco and John Starks might turn up at Brooklyn CB 2.

Addressing a packed house in Washington last night, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, posed a Zen-like 'universalist cyclist question'.

Photo: Cities for Cycling

"How many people, right now," he asked, "are stuck in traffic on their way to ride a stationary bike in a health club?"

The quip got a big laugh. But at yesterday's launch of Cities for Cycling, a new project spearheaded by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), Blumenauer urged fellow cyclists to consider their cause "serious business."

The mission of C4C, as outlined by NACTO President Janette Sadik-Khan, is to collect and share best practices for the introduction of local bike lanes and other cycling infrastructure -- the type of strategies that have succeeded in cities but not yet been added to the Federal Highway Administration's traffic control manual, also known as the MUTCD.

"Some of the most celebrated and popular [bike] improvements are not even in the national guidelines," Sadik-Khan explained, adding that C4C ultimately aims to help develop "a new MUTCD, designed for cities, not highways."

The C4C kickoff, held in the shadow of the Capitol and sponsored by the Brookings Institution, was imbued with a sense of hope for future federal and local policies to encourage bicycling expansion. The Obama administration had a strong presence in the room, including Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, befitting its public push for more sustainable community development.

Still, Blumenauer and Sadik-Khan emphasized that bolstering the uneven federal commitment to bicycling, and its urban benefits in particular, would require hard work and political organizing on the part of bike advocates.

What was billed as a book reading by famed Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on Tuesday evening took on the air of a teach-in on cities and bicycles, with Byrne and fellow cycling superstars Janette Sadik-Khan and Paul Steely White taking turns extolling New York City's blooming bicycle infrastructure before a packed house at the Union Square Barnes & Noble.

The occasion was publication of Bicycle Diaries, Byrne’s idiosyncratic meditation on cities, urban form, culture and fashion, distilled through his three decades as touring musician and bicycle tourist. In the introduction, Byrne writes of navigating New York and other cities a velo, as both a smart way of getting around and a means to a fresh vantage point:

This point of view -- faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person -- became my panoramic window on much of the world over the last thirty years -- and it still is.

Byrne "came out" as an urban bike advocate a few years ago and periodically does events with Transportation Alternatives. Over the years, too, his artistic focus has branched out from art-rock innovator to world-music collaborator and design philosopher. Inviting DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan and TA head honcho White on stage allowed Byrne to serve his twin impulses of advocate and curator.

Byrne’s presentation drew on his mordant photos of dreary cityscapes drained of human activity. “Most of America is like this,” he intoned over scenes of empty boulevards and ghoulish strip malls, mixed with design images from brutalist architect Le Corbusier (“We must kill the streets”), which Byrne likened to termite mounds. “We’re not termites,” he insisted, invoking livable streets deity Jane Jacobs before turning over the mic to the professionals.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson was at Town Hall on Saturday night for the New Yorker Festival's "How New Yorkers Ride Bikes," hosted by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Clarence wasn't allowed to film the event so he published a nice write-up on StreetFilms. Some excerpts:

Mr. Byrne, dressed in black and sporting his cool taxi-yellow bike helmet (see our previous StreetFilm here) then rode onto the stage and locked up. Moments later Hal Ruzal, NYC bicycling icon and mechanic at Bicycle Habitat, emerged from behind a curtain to pick his lock with a variety of tools. Mr. Ruzal's advice on not getting your bike stolen? "Have a bicycle lock that is real expensive, and a bicycle that's really cheap."

Danish urban designer Jan Gehl extolled the many benefits of biking in Copenhagen, where 38% of commuters ride: "This is important because if you see a pretty girl, you can easily jump off the bike and start kissing."

Mr. Byrne then introduced Jonathan Wood, the hilariously dry Deputy Chairman of the U.K.'s Warrington Cycle Campaign, who burned down the house with his "Bicycle Facility of the Month" slide show.

Here is a "Facility of the Month" example from the Warrington web site:

Keeping cycle lanes clear of parked cars is a problem the world over. This design from Mulhouse in France provides a self enforcing solution; yellow bollards have proved to be much more effective than yellow lines at deterring illegal parking.

Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick and David Byrne prior to the Manhattan Borough President's "Manhattan on the Move" conference, October 2006.

Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne writes about his 30 years of cycling in New York City on his website.  Byrne is an avid bicyclist, and an alternative transportation advocate:

I have been riding a bicycle in New York City for almost 30 years! For transport, not for sport. At first there were only a few of us. Loners, losers, maniacs and nerds. Some of the members of Talking Heads used to make fun of me and say I was going to turn into Pee Wee Herman.

Over the decades things have improved in New York for cyclists — a little. Now there is a wonderful bike path up the Hudson that runs almost the entire length of Manhattan. I use it to commute to and from work. Now there are markings on some streets indicating imaginary bike lanes (imaginary because the traffic and pedestrians often ignore the markings) but they are there in spirit, at least. Someday they will be taken seriously, I have no doubt — when gas hits $10 a gallon.

Now Paris is embarking on a bicycle plan that should make New York envious. A collaboration between business and civic affairs than may just work, as both the city and Deceaux can benefit. Bikes as a means of local transport has worked elsewhere; the mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, relieved traffic congestion AND made his city more livable by converting streets to bike/pedestrian use and by adding dedicated bus lanes. Of bike lanes he said, “If an eight year old kid can’t ride on it safely then it isn’t a bike lane.” I don’t remember Paris having very many bike lanes, and the drivers adopt a “survival of the pushiest” approach, as I recall, but that may be changing.

Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick schmoozes with David Byrne prior to the Manhattan Borough President's "Manhattan on the Move" conference, October 2006.

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne's foldable Montague mountain bike was stolen outside the IFC Center this weekend. Byrne is an avid city bicyclist, and an alternative transportation advocate.  Gothamist and Papermag have the story:

"If anyone sees a bike with both a Che sticker and one for the MOST space telescope that's mine," says Byrne who's already back on the streets sporting a new two wheeler as he goes around organizing an Alternative Transportation Music Festival for Oct. 6 at Town Hall.

You can see Byrne and his bicycle in action in this classic StreetFilm.

You know that a change in the zeitgeist is afoot when Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's transportation policy conference tomorrow provides fodder for the New York Post's Page Six:

We Hear That... some of the city's better known alternative transportation advocates - Moby, David Byrne and Matthew Modine - plan to pedal over on their bikes tomorrow to attend Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's transit conference.

Come to think of it, has anyone ever seen Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White and Matthew Modine in the same room at the same time?