Cities and Countries

The rumors were spot on. Yesterday DOT announced a 35 percent increase in commuter cycling. This year, an average of more than 12,500 cyclists were counted crossing DOT's screenline -- a set of checkpoints leading into the Manhattan CBD -- up from about 9,300 in 2007. It's the biggest jump in raw numbers since the count began and the largest percent increase since 2003, when the count went up 36 percent. Overall, cycling in the city has doubled in the past six years. (See the stat breakdown in this PDF -- the full version of the bar graph at right is on page 5.)

Here is a mesmerizing time-lapse video from Spacing Toronto and photoblogger Sam Javanrouh. The clip shows traffic moving through Toronto's pedestrian scramble -- a.k.a. priority crossing, a.k.a. Barnes Dance -- installed at Yonge and Dundas Streets last August.

Last week Freakonomics picked up a story from the Riverfront Times that connects an uptick in shoplifting, fighting and other crimes in the St. Louis suburbs to a two-year-old expansion of the city's MetroLink rail system.

Texas officials this week marked the opening of new lanes on the Katy Freeway, a stretch of Interstate 10 that runs 40 miles west from downtown Houston. The state has added 20 miles of interior lanes, including 12 miles of HOV lanes, which officials say will eventually be converted to variable-rate HOT use. The rebuilt Katy Freeway is 18 lanes wide.

Here are tipster-submitted pics from the bike-and-ride Radstation in Muenster, Germany -- where a train depot sits adjacent to a massive bike parking garage, featuring, among other amenities, a bike washing machine. Price per wash: 3.25 Euros (about $4.13 currently, thanks to the leveling exchange rate).

Via the Bike-Sharing Blog, this vid shows a modular bike-share station getting set up in what must be record time. It's part of a trial system in Montreal called Bixi (contraction of "bike" and "taxi," rhymes with pixie), which launched last month and is set to ramp up with 2,400 bikes next April. Bike-Sharing Blog's Paul DeMaio explains what sets Bixi apart:

Vision Zero is about more than looking both ways.