With an enormous number of livable streets stories and activities on the horizon in NYC this summer, Streetfilms will be looking for help. So if you are very good with a camera, know transportation issues and are familiar with the current momentum of livable streets, send us your deets! The process to apply is here; as you can read please do not call or e-mail Streetfilms filmmakers directly. We will be compiling all resumes/work experience thru May 23rd and then on an as-needed basis start contacting potential freelancers for assignments. Thanks and good luck!

Job Posting - Freelancers, Streetfilms

If it’s Bike Month, then Transportation Alternatives must be hosting their annual commuter pit stops with help from NYC DOT and the five Boro President’s offices. Yesterday, it was a Queens afternoon snack and we thought we’d take the pulse of cyclists departing the QBB as they got some rehydration and filled their packs with literature (and mega safety schwag!) If you missed out, check the Bike Month calendar for future goodie giveaways and swing back here as we cover events all month long.

If you haven’t heard yet, it is bike month in New York. This year over 200 rides, tours, and events are planned. To help kick things off, City Commissioners & Transportation Alternatives held a bike ride down 9th Avenue’s protected bike lane and a press conference in the pedestrian plaza on 14th Street. Watch some highlights including: Paul Steely White and City Commissioners Janette Sadik-Khan, Adrian Benepe and Jane Beddell.

Finally cajoled into taking the long trip to Melbourne, I was told to expect a city where walking abounded, where the streets were flowing with energy, where the quality of public space would blow my mind. Little did I know my already high expectations would be pleasantly exceeded.

Melbourne is simply wonderful. You can get lost in the nooks and crannies that permeate the city. As you walk you feel like free-flowing air with no impediments to your enjoyment. For a city with nearly 4 million people, the streets feel much like the hustle and bustle of New York City but without omnipresent danger and stress cars cause.

There is an invaluable lesson here. In the early 90s, Melbourne was hardly a haven for pedestrian life until Jan Gehl was invited there to undertake a study and publish recommendations on street improvements and public space. Ten years after the survey’s findings, Melbourne was a remarkably different place thanks to sidewalk widenings, copious tree plantings, a burgeoning cafe culture, and various types of car restrictions on some streets. Public space and art abound. And all of this is an economic boom for business.

This Streetfilm is vitally important in another way: Melbourne is a new world city, it has a modern grid much like a typical American metropolis. Naysayers who do not believe a city can be radically transformed say that the already narrow streets of many European cities make it easier to have good pedestrian environments there. Melbourne proves that isn’t necessarily so.

Read up on Ethan Kent’s 2007 Streetsblog report which helped spur this trip.

Streetfilms Nicholas Whitaker took a back seat, rush hour ride with City Planner Deborah Murphy through the streets of Los Angeles. Murphy pointed out some of the difficulties one encounters in L.A. as a pedestrian advocate, commuter, and champion for change.

Murphy: “…people say, Yeah I care about the sidewalks and all of that kind of stuff, but they’re not down at City Hall beating on the door and doing all the campaigning you would hope there to be.”

Last night at the Municipal Art Society, NYC DOT Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, and her team unveiled “Sustainable Streets” - a Strategic Plan for 2008 and beyond. The house was packed and since many weren’t able to get a ticket to the hottest livable streets party in town, we posted highlights of her historic speech to share.

Nearly five years ago, legendary bike mechanic Hal Ruzal and I walked the streets surrounding Bicycle Habitat and graded the bike locking ability of New Yorkers - producing many humorous and enlightening anecdotes. The resulting video aired frequently on bikeTV and at many festivals, and because of it - Hal is still frequently asked by complete strangers to judge their bike locking.

I always endeavored doing another, but as with most sequels you need a new wrinkle. This time we thought we’d give Hal some company and invited former Recycle a Bicycle mechanic Kerri Martin (and founder of The Bike Church in Asbury Park, NJ) to weigh in with her expertise.

Again, bikes on the streets of SoHo provide lots of fodder for laughs and lessons to learn.We didn’t plan to but we walked the same loop and even used the same one-hour time frame. The results? The grades were a little better than five years ago. Sure, still some bad locking out there, but many more people are now sporting multiple locks and better strategies! Good news, maybe we made a difference after all…

With announcements from city agencies coming fast and furious, Streetfilms will attempt to document what we can during this on-going renaissance for pedestrians, cyclists and denizens of NYC. This is not only important for our city, but to show the rest of the world the incredible leaps being attempted here. Heck, there’s no better tool to inspire change then a well-edited, before & after video short.

So with Gansevoort Plaza nearly complete, we thought we’d post a montage of how Meat Market Plaza was birthed into existence back in the fall. The plaza is nestled between 14th & 15th Streets on 9th Avenue and - until I broke out the tapes - I forgot what all those ugly lanes of traffic used to look like!

Every Friday night and Sunday afternoon Parisians can take the streets and see their city on skates. And they do, by the thousands! Both mass rides, which are sponsored by different associations, started small and now are institutions of public street life in Paris.

In this video you hear from both, Tanao Terra, VP of Pari Roller, organizers of the Friday night skate and, Philippe Moulié, President of Rollers & Coquillages, sponsors of the Sunday afternoon Skate.

A little history: The Friday night skates were started by a small group of friends. After the transit strikes in 1995, which forced Parisians to find a new way to get around town, thousands of people began to show up on Friday evenings just to practice moving through the city on roller blades. The numbers inspired Pari Roller to form an official association working with Paris’, and the world’s, first roller blade national police unit.

Production note:  I got to chase both mass rides shooting on a velib (public share bike which you will see more on soon) while Caroline Samponaro from Transportation Alternatives skated with a helmet camera.

And if it looks fun, there seems to be a ride right here in NYC.

Greg Cantori, Executive Director of the Marion I. & Henry J. Knott Foundation, has been trying to get Baltimore to put in place a Ciclovia for over two years. With the help of other organizations - and now called Sunday Streets - this October it will (read his entry on the Audacious Ideas blog.) This is great news and one of many U.S. cities where there is a movement to bring some sort of periodic street closures so residents can enjoy their streets; not just used as thoroughfares for cars.

And we remind you, please, if you are out there advocating the same, Streetfilms can help you do it! Our films are being used throughout the world to demonstrate how livable streets initiatives work. Quoting Mr. Cantori’s e-mail to us:

….your film played a key role as we showed it to the city hall staff as part of our presentation. It was a hit! You can be very proud of the great work you are doing in creating changes in attitudes and behaviors. If a picture is worth a thousand words then imagine what thousands of pictures in a film can do.

In the first in a series on Los Angeles’ traffic problems, Council member Wendy Greuel, the Director of L.A.’s County Regional Transit Planning, Rex Gephardt, and Executive Director of the Transit Coalition, Bart Reed, discuss the L.A. Bus Rapid Transit program as a crucial part of the larger LA public transit system and a natural evolutionary step towards light rail.

While out filming livable streets improvements around Gansevoort and Ninth Avenue today, we roamed into a quagmire of paparazzi in a feeding frenzy. Soon it was apparent why: Mayor Bloomberg and Tyra Banks showed up briefly to beautify our physically separated bike lane on Ninth Avenue by planting a tree!

As Streetfilms viewers know we are the beacon of breaking Ninth Avenue News - chronicling the continuing metamorphosis of NYC DOT’s innovative initiative for cyclists. Flashback here to Halloween when some guy in a purple cape was running around saying he wanted a tree. Well, he got it!

In the past year, Streetfilms have been watched a half million times, and with postings on other sites like YouTube! along with advocates organizing screenings all over the world - and some film festivals - the true number is somewhere beyond that.

The momentum continues. The list of cities and countries has been incredible. Just a small sample reveals the spectrum of demand in the last few weeks: Durham, Thailand, Tucson, Philadelphia, Tasmania, Melbourne, Toronto, Eugene, Amherst, Edinburgh, Baltimore, St. Louis and dozens more.

So what do we have coming up? Nick has some Streetfilms from the L.A. area, Elizabeth is in Paris documenting the Vélib’ & more, and Clarence is just back with his camera from one of the most livable places on the planet: Melbourne, Australia.

Finally a last plug: one of our favorite festivals, Filmed By Bike, takes place next weekend from April 11 thru 13. Elizabeth and Clarence have four films showing there including Clarence, The Traffic Calming Sasquatch. We urge you to go, but if you’re not you can always take a gander here.

David Engwicht is a livable streets philosopher and author. Creator of the Walking School Bus, Mental Speed Bumps and many other innovative ways of taming traffic and increasing pedestrian safety, he has taken on “the challenge of a lifetime” to revitalize the downtown district of Wodonga, a small city in Australia often referred to as “Struggle Town” in comparison to its sister city Albury just across the Murray River.

Watch the video to see great placemaking in action. Engwicht has initiated the successful Lounging on High Friday night series. The diverse programming features giant versions of board games and an eclectic range of seating options, the goal being to encourage residents to take back their streets and re-imagine what is possible. To create a more human pace, on these Friday nights Wodonga closes one street and removes two lanes of car travel on another to encourage relaxation and fun.

David Engwicht (left): “If we can do this here…any city can take back their public space.”

Thousands of people flocked to the NY International Auto Show at the Javits Center on Saturday. In the midst of it all, Lady Liberty ended her 100 year “spectacularly combustible love affair” with the automobile. Lady Liberty said, “Frankly, this relationship has just gotten to be much more work than it’s worth. My health, liberty and freedom have suffered greatly, and now I hope that my new relationships will finally give me security and happiness.” Then Reverend Billy officiated her marriage to “Mr. Transit” and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir sang in celebration.