Getting around in Hong Kong

I'm on vacation visiting family in Hong Kong and I couldn't resist shooting some geeky transportation videos to post here. Bear in mind that these were shot on a cheap casio camera that I only just learned could be used for video. So its rough but hopefully illustrative of my uninformed impressions.

Where are the bikes, you ask? Stay tuned for a full on audio podcast to come some time in the next month.

Here are some off-the-cuff impressions of high density living, Hong Kong style in the upper crusty Mid Levels neighborhood



Here's a view of De Voeux Street taken from above on a pedestrian walkway



A ride on the MTR, the privately operated subway system which is more like a horizontal elevator than a train.



The MTR is always clean, cheap and efficient and the advertising is entertaining too!



If you have some time, the "ding ding" streetcars are a treat.



Here's a longer video from the shotgun seat on top as we trundle down De Voeux Street.



Some shaky video of the streets of Kowloon in the densest square mile on earth.

An Interview with Gary Fisher

In this episode we welcome the legendary Gary Fisher to the show for a long, rambling chat. We talk about growing up in Marin County during the dawn of mountain biking, the growth of the industry he and his friends started. We also touch on the future of bicycling as the business gears up to tap the new markets that want bicycles for every day transportation and the massive infrastructure changes that will be necessary.

After the interview there's an update on the Octavia Blvd and Market Street intersection where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority want to remove a hard won bike lane.


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Photo courtesy Fisher Bikes

An Urbanist President

One overlooked advantage of the Obama win is that we are going to have the first non-suburban or rural president in recent memory. His years as an inner city community organizer tell us a lot about how he'll lead but underlying all of that is a deep understanding of how cities work and what makes them succeed or fail. Obviously transit, walkability and cycling are an integral part of urban living whereas parking lots and freeways invariably cause its downfall. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to me that our president can actually speak extemporaneously about my heroine Jane Jacobs and has even read her book. Even Biden seemed interested!

Of course, this video was shot during the campaign season. Now that Obama's headed for the White House, He's not speaking about a big infusion of money towards transit. Let's hope its just astute political gamesmanship! Go to his website and push for the things that will result in the successful life of great American Cities.

h/t to Beyond DC

An Endless Tour with Cindy and Tim Travis

Tim and Cindy Travis have been on the road on their bikes since 2001. They checked in with Bikescape when they passed through San Francisco. Here's the interview.

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Visit Tim and Cindy's website to stay in touch with their travels and order their books here. The first chapter of The Road That Has No End is available in audio format!

Bikescape is now a member of the Streetsblog Network!
Transportation for America is the antidote to the Freeway lobby.

Press release sustainability vs. the real thing

A Conversation with Clarence Eckerson of Street Films

Last Halloween I met with video documentarian Clarence Eckerson of Street Films and Bike TV and we had a great and sprawling discussion about the role of internet-based video and blogging in transportation activism. Street Films is a part of Streets Blog, both of which are produced by The Open Planning Project.

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After our chat Clarence went out and shot this, the definitive film about Critical Mass, capturing the essence of the ride on a balmy San Francisco Halloween.

Driven to Despair

As the exurbs transform into slumburbia PBS's Now produces an excellent piece about the collapse of sprawl. It connects with real people as it dawns on them that the often overlooked nexus between the high cost of energy and the housing crises means they need to change their lives. While they still look at driving as their ticket to freedom and they don't want to sit next to others on transit, they sit as prisoners in their mcmansions, unable to finance a full tank of gas.

For contrast, host Peter Brancaccio showcases car-free and car-lite Pasadena urbanists show that yes, its possible to have a full life in Southern California without becoming a slave to the gas pump.

It runs about twenty minutes.

Sunday Streets in San Francisco

In this episode we ask the perennial Bikescape question: What is a street? Is it a place to travel through to to go to? For thousands of years streets have been a place for friends and strangers to meet, a place where the threads of community are woven, the commons. Somewhere along the way, around the time of the rise of the automobile, the purpose of the streets narrowed and they lost their sense of place, becoming instead a conduit for traffic, where each person passes through without consideration of the space, cocooned in his warm leatherette pod.

At best. At worst, its a dangerous battle zone or an inhospitable, unhuman world.

Fortunatly, as the post-car era dawns, cities are waking up to something new, yet as old as the first village - streets where anything can happen. The first modern car-free streets or ciclovias appeared in Bogota twenty years ago. There, over ninety km of urban streets close to cars every Sunday for a few hours. Now, we are seeing the meme progress into Paris, Portland, New York and, at last, San Francisco.

Bikescape, rides and walks the first Sunday Streets experiment on a lovely San Francisco day to see what develops.

The Bike Kitchen was out in force, along with some clowns from the Cyclecide bike club.
I promised a link to Don Byron who performed an album of the music of Raymond Scott.

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Activism at City Hall and in the Streets

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition leads a protest on the steps of City Hall decrying the slow pace of progress on the environmental review for the Bicycle plan as a court injunction drags on. Then we go inside City hall to knock on doors to promote the car-free Sunday Streets trial on Aug 31 and Sept 14.

Finally (at 44 mins) the SFBC hits the streets to set up a photo booth to take pictures of cyclists and their bikes to deter theft.

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Free Wheelies: Pedicabs of New York: An Endangered Species

I tracked down Frederic Choiniere. He's the film maker who presented his work at the pedicab workshop during the Towards car-free Cities Conference in Portland. Here's his film about the politics that swirl around New York's pedicab industry.