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Livable cities in Russia

February 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

When you blog, you “meet” a lot of interesting people around the world. Russian blogger Vladimir Zlokazov writes LiveStreets in both Russian and English. Although he doesn’t translate everything into English, what he does is high quality and methodically written.

His latest English article is a critique of a developer’s plan for a neighborhood in Yekaterinburg, population 1,293,537.

Academichesky – is promoted by the developer (Renova Stroygroup) as a project that utilizes the most innovative practices in architecture and urban planning. However the first built blocks clearly show that advertisment promises are not always consistent with the reality.

He offers suggestions for curb radius, intersection design, bicycle paths through intersections, appropriate locations for parking spaces (stay off the sidewalk!) and curb cuts. The draw for his particular critique are the beautiful 3D architectural renderings to show the suggested solutions in place.

“In places where pedestrian and bicycle crossings are located afar from the intersections additional measures should be taken to make them clearly visible for motorists. Such as using coloured asphalt for instance.”

I love the colors. I also like the City of Amsterdam's official typeface.

Welcome to Amsterdam

February 22, 2011 / / 0 Comments

The coolest city in Europe [editor’s note 12 years later: I don’t agree anymore]. I carried my GPS tracker with me at all times in Europe. I had to edit the routes to exclude my train trip to Utrecht and back. In the end, I biked about 134 kilometers / 83 miles (see my map, which is embedded at the end).

My trusty rental whip
My rental bike on the docklands in the ‘t IJ looking towards Centraal Station. The cruise ship passenger terminal is on the left. The bike is a Gazelle Superieur Special. I paid €5 per day and a €50 deposit. Thanks to Ãlvaro for the recommendation of Recycled Rentals.
Ferry to IJ-Buurtveer
One of the free ferries, this one to IJ-Buurtveer. I took this one instead, to Buiksloterwegveer (Amsterdam Nord).
Port of Amsterdam 7
Amsterdam can be described by a few things : Bikes, beer, and water. This post is heavy on water, and light on bikes. A beautifully yellow tugboat owned by the Port of Amsterdam.
Lots of trains from Paris and Brussels
Amsterdam has trains going everywhere, from Centraal Station, every few minutes. 32 trains every hour. An additional 18 trains daily. The Thalys has service to Brussels, Belgium, and Paris, France, nine times per day.

I arrived in the station from Wuppertal, Germany (via Venlo and Eindhoven). I left the station to get to Utrecht for a day trip and then I left the station on the DB CityNightLine to Copenhagen (a magical 15-hour journey).
House boats
Houseboats in the canals and Amstel river are quite common. A Flickr commenter describes a little more about it (click on the photo to read it). Editor’s note in 2023: One of the episodes in Ted Lasso season 3 episode 6 takes place in Amsterdam and Rebecca falls into a canal and is helped out by a man who lives in a house boat.
Not everyone has a bakfiets (cargo bike) in Amsterdam
Not everyone has a purpose-built cargo bike in Amsterdam, but more exist here than anywhere else (except perhaps Copenhagen). Just tote your stuff under your arm, including a sheet of plywood. You might want to try out the WorkCycles Fr8 – a locally designed cargo bike.
Not sure why I didn't smile more

And a gratuitous shot of me bicycling towards the docklands. I should have been smiling – as I was having such a wonderful time, but maybe I’m not because it was kind of cold.

View the 60 other photos I’ve uploaded of Amsterdam. If you want to visit, let me help you plan your trip.

Tracks around Amsterdam
Map of bike rides in Amsterdam over a few days (83 miles).

Bike crash map in the press

February 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Thank you to the Bay Citizen, Gapers Block, and the Chicago Bicycle Advocate (lawyer Brendan Kevenides). They’ve all written about the bike crash map I produced using Google Fusion Tables. And WGN 720 AM interviewed me and aired it in April 2011.

View the map now. The map needs to be updated with injury severity, a field I mistakenly removed before uploading the data.

The Bay Citizen started this by creating their own map of bike crashes for San Francisco, albeit with more information. I had helped some UIC students obtain the data from the Illinois Department of Transportation for their GIS project and have a copy of it myself. I quickly edited it using uDig and threw it up online in an instant map created by Fusion Tables.

A guy rides his bicycle on the “hipster highway” (aka Milwaukee Avenue), the street with the most crashes, but also has the most people biking (in mode share and pure quantity).

Why did I make the map?

I made this project for two reasons: One is to continue practicing my GIS skills and to learn new software and new web applications. The second reason was to put the data out there. There’s a growing trend for governments to open up their databases, and your readers have probably seen DataSF.org’s App Showcase. But in Chicago, we’re not seeing this trend. Instead of data, we get a list of FOIA requests, or instead of searchable City Council meeting minutes, we get PDFs that link to other PDFs that you must first select from drop down boxes. But both of these are improvements from before.

I would love to help anyone else passionate about bicycling in Chicago to find ways to use this data or project to address problems. I think bicycling in Chicago is good for many people, but we can make it better and for more people.

Read the full interview.

Photos from Milan, Italy

February 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I was in Milan on two separate days. The first for an hour while I waited for my train to Como after arriving from Rome. The second I spent eight hours there, walking around the castle, park, neighborhoods, and the Duomo. View the entire photo set.

Milano Centrale, the main train station, northeast of Piazza Duomo (I guess you would call this the “old center”). Grandi Stazioni is a company charged with “upgrading, valorizing and managing Italy’s 13 largest railway stations.”

On some of the pedestrian bridges in Parco Sempione, couples attach locks to signify their love. You may have zoom in on the photo to see the locks attached to mermaid’s “staff.” Here’s a closer view.

I brought my camera into the museum, Pinacoteca di Brera. This worker was busy restoring artwork.

In many places in Milan, the trams had segregated right-of-way. I think it looks beautiful when trains run over and through separated, landscaped corridors. See a smaller tram (one car) outside the Milano Centrale train station.

If the roof is open, go up! You get some nice views of the Piazza below, as well as the always-there crowds and the Galleria. You can also get a closer view of the cathedral buttresses.

Coming from Chicago, I don’t have access to protected or separated bike lanes. And I was surprised to see them in Milan! But I shouldn’t have been surprised, because most cities in Europe have them.

Why did women in Chicago stop bicycling to work? And other stories about data

February 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Why did women in Chicago stop bicycling to work?
Or is our data unreliable?

Showing relative cycling-to-work rates between 2005 and 2009 in Chicago. Data from table S0801 in American Community Survey, 1-year estimates. Read the comments on this post for why this is not the best data source – 3-year estimate shows same decline in women cycling to work.

Note: The sample size is puny – data was collected from 80,613 housing units in Illinois. I don’t know how many of those were in Chicago (and we have 1,063,047 housing units). The American Community Survey only collects data on transportation modes to work for ages 16 and up.

But we simply have no other data! Maybe the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning can release the Chicago data they collected for the 2008 household travel survey to show us bicycling rates for all trip purposes (they divided the report into counties). The sample size would still be small, but we could compare the work rates to find some support between the datasets.

We should look into how New York City counts bicycling as an additional way to gauge trends in Chicago (it has limitations of geography and area).

They conduct two types of counts. The first is the screenline count for bridges, Staten Island Ferry, the Hudson River Greenway, and all Avenues at 50th Street. They do this three times per year. Then, seven more times a year, they count at the same places (except the Avenues) from April to October.

While this data does not give them information on who cycles in the boroughs, it does give them a good indicator of cycling levels in Manhattan. It also disregards trip purpose, counting everyone going to work, school, or for social activities.

Sidenote: The New York Police Department will begin making monthly statistical reports on bicycle crashes in the city.