Streetfilms: Learning Bike Safety in the Schoolyard

Robin Urban Smith files this report from P.S. 76 in the Bronx, where students wrapped up a month-long bike safety course with a playground "rodeo" on Wednesday. This June, Michael Needham Jr., a fifth-grader at the school, lost his life after a speeding car hit him while he was riding with friends near the Allerton library.

Watching this Streetfilm made me wonder if bike safety can be worked into gym classes throughout the city. It also brought to mind the words of former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa:

In Bogotá, our goal was to make a city for all the children. The
measure of a good city is one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle
can safely go anywhere. If a city is good for children, it will be good
for everybody else. Over the last 80 years we have been making cities
much more for cars’ mobility than for children’s happiness.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Streetfilms: Tour de Bronx 2008

|
Over 4,000 riders turned out for Sunday’s 14th Annual Tour de Bronx, which covered miles of beautiful scenery — with hopes of more to come, should the Sheridan Expressway ever meet its reward (see the 2:00 mark).  Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson was there, and files this report.

StreetFilms: Tour de Bronx, in Pictures

|
 StreetFilms’ Clarence Eckerson put down the heavy video equipment and brought along a still camera for this weekend’s Tour de Bronx. Blessed by incredible weather, this year’s ride was kicked off by Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion (ahem) and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who Clarence says got "perhaps the biggest ovation I have ever heard […]

Streetfilms: Talking Traffic Safety at the Home of Vision Zero

|
Clarence Eckerson shot this great interview with Mary Beth Kelly of Families for Safe Streets and Claes Tingvall, director of traffic safety for the Swedish Transport Administration. On Queen Street in Stockholm, a car-free plaza once “choked” with vehicle traffic, and standing within sight of the parliament building where Vision Zero took shape in the […]

Times Square Then and Now: A Streetfilms Retrospective

|
Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce his verdict on Times Square’s new pedestrian spaces very soon. Will the changes be permanent? This morning Bloomberg told radio host John Gambling that we’ll find out sometime next week. In the meantime, it seems like the media has decided to fixate on rumors that Midtown traffic speeds may […]

Streetfilms: Building Greenways and Community in the Bronx

|
This Streetfilm from Robin Urban Smith and Elizabeth Press brings us an update on the state of greenway development in the Bronx. Writes Robin: The Bronx River Greenway and South Bronx Greenway plans apply community-driven design strategies to help undo years of top down, auto-centric planning and development in the Bronx. The greenways, when completed, […]