Streetfilms Portland Week: Safe Routes to School

By Aaron Naparstek
Nov 3, 2006

As someone who lives in Brooklyn and pedals a two-year-old to daycare three days a week, I find the scenes depicted in this video to be completely incredible. There is no question in my mind that the future of New York City has to look something like this. –Editor

Portland’s Safe Routes to School
A Clarence Eckerson Streetfilm
Running time: 4:14
Download: 16.40 MB

The students and faculty of Sunnyside Environmental have an entire curriculum dedicated to bike safety and the use of non-motorized transportation between school and home. Children as young as second graders are able to ride their bicycles to school solo thanks to neighborhood traffic calming and an agressive Safe Routes to School program. Kids also arrive by foot, skateboard, and scooter. In the morning, it is just an incredible scene seeing scores of parents drop off their children by bike — some carrying as many as three children.

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Streetfilms Portland Week: Bicycle Boulevards

By Aaron Naparstek | Oct 31, 2006

Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson has been spending a lot of time in Portland learning about the politics, planning, engineering and culture behind that city’s phenomenal bike network. Working closely with Greg Raisman from Portland’s Dept. of Transportation Clarence produced a half hour documentary called "A Celebration of Portland Transportation." On Saturday, the film was shown on the big screen at Portland’s Bagdad […]

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Portland’s Bike Boulevards Become Neighborhood Greenways

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Nov 8, 2010

Transportation planners in Portland, Oregon are taking their famous bicycle boulevards to the next level. By adding more routes and stepping up the traffic calming treatments, the city is not only making these streets more attractive and usable for cyclists, but also for pedestrians, runners, children, and anyone else who gets around under their own […]

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Streetfilms: Voices From the National Bike Summit

By Elizabeth Press | Mar 15, 2010

Last week, hundreds of bike advocates descended on Washington D.C. for the tenth annual National Bike Summit — the largest one yet. Hosted by the League of American Bicyclists, the summit is always a great opportunity for advocates to share ideas and make the case for cycling on Capitol Hill. This year attendees encouraged their […]

Streetfilms: The Case for Bicycle Boulevards in NYC

By Elizabeth Press | Dec 3, 2009

We’ve seen lots of new, innovative bikeway designs appear on New York City streets over the past few years. But there’s one very promising concept we haven’t seen — bicycle boulevards. Bicycle boulevard design uses a variety of techniques to create low-traffic, low-speed streets where cyclists mix comfortably with cars. They’re very popular in Portland […]

Streetfilms: Making Streets Safer for Seniors

By Elizabeth Press | Apr 22, 2009

Transportation Alternatives’ Safe Routes for Seniors campaign began in 2003 to encourage senior citizens to walk more by improving the pedestrian environment. Funded by the New York State Department of Health, it was a pioneering program to address the needs of elderly pedestrians. In 2008, New York City launched its own Safe Streets for Seniors […]

Give to Streetsblog and Streetfilms and Enter to Win a New PUBLIC Bike

By Ben Fried | Dec 3, 2013

As recently as 2007, there were no protected bike lanes in New York City, plans to enhance major bus routes were sitting on a shelf, and city transportation officials were still trying to do things like convert neighborhood commercial streets into high-speed traffic sewers. Streetsblog and Streetfilms helped change that. We raised expectations for our […]