One Street News
Winter 2019
Vol. 12, Issue 4
- Bicycle Program Support with Book Purchases
- San Francisco’s Market Street Car-free!
- Resources – Informal Footpaths
- Resources – Home Zones Seattle
- Hot Topics – Feds Crackdown on Crosswalk Art
Bicycle Program Support with Book Purchases
A great way to support One Street’s bicycle programs is through purchasing our books. All proceeds go to our bicycle programs, and you get a book that will help you with your own efforts to improve bicycling. They also make wonderful gifts for the bike enthusiasts in your life.
Read about each of our bicycle books on the One Street Press page of our website.
Most local bookstores can order them for you. They are also available at online booksellers around the world. Barnes & Noble offers the best availability for U.S. orders. Check your favorite bookseller. We also sell them through the One Street website, but cannot offer very affordable shipping.
San Francisco’s Market Street Car-free!
By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director
This recent article unveils the bold new car-free design planned for Market Street through downtown San Francisco. I rode that street countless times every day when I worked as a bike messenger in the 1980s. Back then, cyclists rode amidst the cars, trucks, and busses, choosing the widest slot between them as we wove our way through the chaos.
As a bike messenger, that equated to fun. But most people who want to choose bicycling to simply get to their destinations do not enjoy rubbing sheet metal as they pedal. When the city first installed the bike lanes along Market and I got to ride them on various visits, I was stunned at how much easier the street was to navigate. But the intersections were still a battle for survival.
Now the city has committed to a full and proper fix of this popular street by removing cars all together. What a shock it will be for me to ride it after this project is complete! I can hardly wait.
Resources – Informal Footpaths
City planners are learning to pay attention to where people already walk in order to better design their cities. This recent article offers some excellent examples from city planners studying footprints in snow in Finland to mapping of footpaths through vacant lots in Detroit.
Resources – Home Zones Seattle
Seattle has embraced a much more effective design option than the daunting task of installing sidewalks along all their streets. Instead, they are tapping a movement that started in the Netherlands in the 1970s and has spread throughout Europe and beyond. Home Zones drastically changed the use of neighborhood streets from car travel to use by people to play and enjoy. This means extreme traffic calming so that any car that travels that street does so at crawling speed thus removing the need for sidewalks. Read more in this recent article.
Hot Topics – Feds Crackdown on Crosswalk Art
Sometimes momentum with new and effective ideas such as creatively painting crosswalks can meet with a backlash from government officials. U.S. officials at the federal level have decided that crosswalk art is just too much for them to take. Without any data to back their claims they are asking cities to ban this fun and lifesaving practice. Read more in this recent article.