Treatments and technologies | Design and innovation

A new wiki-based online bicycle route mapping tool that promises to make it more convenient to plan your next bike trip in the seven county metro area! - Read a brief overview in an earlier post >

This brief video from our friends at Streetfilms shows a bicycle-only drive-thru lane at a bank in Boulder, CO.

I often bicycle up to the drive-thru lane at my local credit union, but it is not the funnest experience siting in a queue of idling motor vehicles. The bike-only lane would make the experience much more pleasant.

Via Streetsblog and Spacing Toronto:

Spacing teamed up with the highly-regarded photoblogger Sam Javanrouh to create a fun time-lapse of the new Yonge-Dundas pedestrian scramble (see below). We’ve written a handful of posts on it over the last few days ...

This is from the launch day of the City of Toronto's first pedestrian scramble intersection (also known as "Barnes Dance")  at Yonge and Dundas near downtown.

Leading Pedestrian Intervals (or LPIs) are a traffic signalization strategy that assigns pedestrians an exclusive 3 to 5 second signal (in some cases much longer) to begin crossing the street before cars get a green light. Consequently, they are also known by their sassier nickname, Pedestrian Head Start. But in my view the best variation on what LPI stands for comes from Christine Berthet of the Hells Kitchen Neighborhood Association who proposes: "Life Preserving Interval". That's what it is.

Portland's Office of Transportation (PDOT) goes the extra mile to accommodate cyclists. Rex Burkholder, the Metro Counsellor and founder of the the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA), explains how to operate this bike signal placed at an intersection that is potentially hazardous to cyclists. The light gives riders a dedicated signal which maximizes safety and allows the convenience of having to wait through only one signal pattern.

Since taking over as New York City's Commissioner of the Department of Transportation in mid-2007, Janette Sadik-Khan has taken on the challenge of making NYC streets more bike & pedestrian friendly while emphasizing livable streets and re-orienting them to accommodate all modes. She and her staff have done it quickly with innovative concepts, thinking outside the box and drawing on successful street designs from around the world to come up with a NYC model that is already changing the way the city feels.