Cities and Countries

While spending a week in Montreal, my wife and I stayed right along the Rue Sainte Catherine, which we discovered is closed to motor vehicles from May 15 through September 6 in two main sections. The first, a mile-long stretch that's been car-free in the summer since 2008, has a lot of restaurants and is filled with pedestrians all night long. The second, a more recent addition, is a smaller section to the west which features plenty of programming and music near the Place des Arts.

Amsterdam cycling advocate Marjolein de Lange regales us with this tale about how in 2006 cyclists came up with a very simple solution -- draw bike box outlines directly on the pavement! -- to better organize the bike parking outside a popular supermarket. It's so simple and shows how sometimes engineers might over-think a problem.

Faced with an impending budget crisis, the Texas Department of Transportation has decided not to rethink its $5.2 billion plan for a third outerbelt through undeveloped grasslands around Houston. Instead, the agency has developed a proposal to basically shift a big part of its costs to the state's major cities.

One thing that impressed me during my three days in Zurich was I saw no cyclists crash while navigating the surface rails for the 15 tram lines that run all over the city. I was told by some there are certainly problems, and crashes happen, but I saw some real pro rail-riding behavior.

Donald Shoup may be known as a guru of smart parking policy, but even he has found a few surprises in the data collected so far from SFpark.

By now there's not much doubt that protected bike lanes can be a game-changer for cycling in U.S. cities. Making streets feel safe to bike on boosts overall cycling rates, attracting people who otherwise wouldn't even consider cycling. The safety benefits keep accruing as more people on bikes hit the streets, since drivers become more aware of the presence of cyclists and pay closer attention.

Can we all just pause for a moment and give Vancouver a standing ovation?

On the morning of March 29 last year, Chris Bucchere biked through a crowded crosswalk in San Francisco's Mission District, striking 71-year-old Sutchi Hui, who died of his injuries four days later. As should be the case for any traffic fatality, SF District Attorney George Gascón spent considerable time building a case -- collecting GPS data and surveillance footage and tracking down witnesses. While footage of the crash did not conclusively show that Bucchere had entered the intersection on a red light, he had been seen disobeying other traffic signals leading up the crash. In June, Gascón announced he would charge Bucchere with felony vehicular manslaughter.

In June, the New York Times published a story headlined "The Dutch Prize Their Pedal Power, But a Sea of Bikes Swamps Their Capital" that instigated much debate (over 365 reader comments in one day) and a torrent of emails to the editor. The Times followed up by seeking a "dialogue" with its readers about the supposed "swamping" of Amsterdam by bicycles. Then came all the echoes of the Times narrative inothermedia.