London

The City of London, the square mile in the heart of Greater London that is home to the city's finance sector, is resetting the speed limit to 20 miles per hour on all streets.

While polls have shown that upwards of 70 percent of New Yorkers support bike-share and DOT engaged in a multi-year public process for station siting, a vocal minority in Fort Greene is objecting to public bike stations in the landmarked district. At least one extremist has gone so far as to tar newly-installed stations with wheatpaste posters decrying the Citibank-sponsored kiosks. In response to the neighborhood chatter, Council Member Tish James has scheduled a community meeting about bike-share for tonight.

In the last few weeks, truck drivers have taken the lives of at least two NYC pedestrians: a 6-year-old child and a 60-year-old woman. Though the physics of the crashes were different -- one driver was turning, the other accelerating into a crosswalk -- in both cases the driver was said to have hit a person he did not know was there.

In some ways, London and New York have each leapfrogged the other when it comes to bike policy in the past few years. London's bike-share program launched back in 2010, but its bike lanes remain largely sub-standard, with little in the way of physical protection. Here in New York, the bike lanes are gradually forming a safe, useful network, while bike-share is a few years behind London.

When it comes to urban transportation policy, Americans often look longingly across the Atlantic. Paris pioneered big-city bike-sharing, London showed New York that congestion pricing works, and Sweden set the goal of eliminating traffic deaths. But here's a case where New York is leading a peer city overseas.

For your viewing pleasure this weekend, here's the animation produced by Transport for London explaining how to use Barclays Cycle Hire -- the 570-station bike-share system that launched about two years ago. There's a lot to cover in a little more than four minutes: when bike-share is useful, how to get a membership, what not to do with your bike, how to handle a bike that needs repair, and so forth.