Welcome to Bike talk, streaming in Southern California at KPFK, Western Massachusetts at Valley Free Radio, WNBR in Cambridge, and worldwide at biketalk.org. I'm Nick Richert. The Los Angeles City Council is about to vote on whether and how to adopt Healthy Streets LA. Michael Schneider, the founder of Streets For All, which started the initiative, explains.
In 2015, LA passed a mobility plan full of thousands of miles of safety improvements, including for people that walk, people that bike, people that take transit, and they've done 3% in seven years. So it's supposed to be a 20 year plan, but it's turning into a 200 year plan. That's the pace that they're on. And so after a couple of years of using logic and data, and simply just asking the city to do what they said they wanted to do, this, this plan was already adopted, we got frustrated to the point where we realized the only way the city is actually going to implement the mobility plan is if they have to. So that's all Healthy Streets LA is. It's a ordinance that would be created that would mandate the city implement its own already adopted mobility plan. Anytime they repave a street, which is the lowest hanging fruit way to change a street, when they repave the street, it's black permanent, they have to restriped it anyway. So it's essentially free striping a bike lane or bus lane at that time. And because of that, that's really when the city makes changes to streets, during the repaving schedule. So that's why we keyed off of that.
It would be big.
It would be game changing for the city. Again, it's thousands of miles, the city has about 7000 miles of streets, I want to say there's about 2000 miles of them on the mobility plan. So its probably about a third, or roughly a third, of all streets in LA would change in some positive way. And we've been working on this for a year and a half, we've been collecting signatures for most of 2022. We turned in over 100,000 signatures to the clerk this week. On Monday, we got officially certified by the clerk saying that we had enough signatures. Tuesday, our council file was created. And now it's in the hands of the city council and they have 20 days to either adopt us as an ordinance, so in that case it would just become law, or send us to the next ballot, which in our case, is the 2024- or March 5 2024, for the primaries.
So they just released these two options just right now, right?
We knew what the two options were but yes, just within the last hour or so the council file, our council file was 22-0910. And the city attorney just posted both options. The first option is our ordinance. And the second option is a resolution to send us to the ballot.
And what about their own version of it?
Yeah, so we're in a kind of an unusual situation where the city council has a city version of Healthy Streets LA, you can blame that one on me. I got Nury Martinez' office really excited about this prospect. And to her credit, she took the bull by the horns and showed leadership and introduced it. The key difference for us between the two is if City Council just passes the city council's version, at any time in the future-- political winds change, it gets too difficult, you got a loud minority of people yelling and screaming about the changes-- City Council can undo it with eight votes. And we have nothing. With our version, if it's adopted, then it can only be undone with another ballot measure going back to the voters asking for permission to undo it, and the voters would have to vote for it. So it's a much higher level of protection with this idea. The council version also has stuff we don't have, which we support: equity based implementation of the repaving schedule on the mobility plan, there's a local hire program in there, there's a lot of stuff around coordination of city departments, which is great. So there's a lot in there that we support. And it's not in any way conflicting with ours. But the very first moving clause in the city's motion directs the city attorney to draft an ordinance based on Healthy Streets LA. Why, why substitute it when you can have the real deal? We just want them to adopt Healthy Streets LA. And that would mean they would not have the City Attorney draft their own ordinance, but instead focus on equity-based implementation and all the other stuff in their motion. So both can happen. They could adopt ours, and we could get what the Council President wants.
That's the best case scenario.
That's the best case scenario, it's a scenario we'd be very happy with.
Is it gonna happen?
Do you have a crystal ball? I don't know. We're working extremely hard. I have been calling council members left and right, and I've done a million zooms this week and more next week. And ultimately we'll sit down with the council president next week and see where she's at, and see where the votes are at and we'll go from there. If we get sent to the ballot, it's not the end of the story, it just means we need to wait about a year and a half. But our polling shows that this would very likely pass with flying colors by the voters. And so we're not worried about it passing. We're more concerned with the year and a half gap. A pedestrian is killed once every three days. If we essentially don't do much to change that, it just means more death and carnage in our streets. And of course, this is in a week where we saw that horrific crash at La Brea and Slauson which killed a pregnant mom with her kid who was also killed. We saw that horrific crash in Mar Vista. We don't need to live like this. And I feel like we've gotten conditioned that car crashes like this are just part of living in a big city, but they're not. So the longer we don't do Healthy Streets LA, and the longer we don't implement our mobility plan, the more people are going to die and get injured. We would like to avoid that.
Yes. When is the next thing that we find out?
Counsel has until two weeks from today. You and I are talking on Friday, August 12 so they have until Friday, August 26 to take action. That's for the City Charter. So there's no flexibility there. It's likely Friday, August 26, possibly before, City Council will take a vote. And they will either vote to send us to the ballot or adopt this as an ordinance. So one way or another this will all be done within two weeks from today.
All right. And there was just an LA Times article about Healthy Streets. I don't know if it's even necessary to go over it but do you get a sense of which way public opinion would go based on the article?
Well, we don't really need the article to see which way public opinion would go. We have our polling; we invested at the very beginning before going down this path of doing scientifically valid political polling. And we had a random sample of Angelenos from all over the city. And we asked them what they would do. Seventy-three percent of them said they would vote to adopt it. And then we started giving them oppositional arguments, well, if you put a bike lane in, you're just going to slow cars down, and that's going to make traffic worse. Or if you put a bus lane in, you're taking away from cars, and then it's just going to make the situation worse, etc. And that would have the support down to 64% from 73. But this only needs a majority, we need 50 plus one. So it would pass with flying colors, a 14% margin is a very comfortable margin.
All right, well, is there any kind of outreach you're going to do now beyond what you've done?
Well we're doing outreach to city council offices right now. That's the focus for the next two weeks. If we get sent to the ballot, we'll probably stay quiet for a bit and then ramp back up probably late next year. And if we don't get sent to the ballot, if we pull it off and get adopted, then it's time for some champagne. And I think you'll see the city change much quicker than anyone would expect.
More power to you, more power to Streets for All, and we'll check back in around the 26th.
Thanks. I will add one thing. For anyone that wants to help us, for anyne that wants to try to get council to adopt it, we have a toolkit on the website. There's a bitly link, it's bit.ly/hsla-council. So bit.ly/hsla-council. And if for whatever reason that's too complicated, you can go to healthystreetsla.com, and there's a link to the toolkit at the very top. But now's the time. If you live in the city of Los Angeles, we need you to email your council office. That's part of the toolkit, we make it super easy with one click. We also need you to physically show up at City Council on the day of the vote. City Council committees still take virtual comments, but the full City Council no longer takes comments by telephone. So you can only make public comment if you show up in person. Pencil: August 26, probably around 10am. And we would love to see as many people as possible there. And we're doing everything we can beforehand to ensure victory.
And if people live in a different coast, a different country?
Email a city of Los Angeles councilmember. But frankly, if you don't live in the city of Los Angeles, it's not going to have a big impact. But if you have friends that live in LA hit em up. Now's the time.
Thanks Michael Schneider.
Thank you, Nick.
This is Bike Talk. Next, Nedra Deadwyler talks to Bike Talk co host, Ruthie Woodring, about her bike tours of the human and civil rights stories in the history of Atlanta.
It's Tuesday, August 2, 2022. We're in Atlanta, backyard of Nedra Deadwyler, and roses and dogs. So Nedra, one of the things you're famous for is Civil Bike.
Yeah, Civil Bikes, it's a heritage tour company, like, essentially, we do biking and walking tours. We've done a lot of advocacy around transportation as well, within bike education, a lot of advocacy around mobility, and also advocacy around like history, historical narrative, how we talk about where we're from. And it was started really not necessarily about tourism, it was really more about bringing people together, talking about history, talking about place, and maybe having some understanding and being able to, I wouldn't say coexist, but live more interdependently. And not, where I had moved from other cities, just adult life, you know, gentrification is a thing and--but like, you know, maintaining that cultural memory or connecting to the cultural memory of a place.
Can you talk a little bit about how you started it?
Yeah, really, it was on a whim, I had grown to love riding a bike. And when I came back to Atlanta, I found it very difficult to keep up some of the things that I was doing. At that time, I had moved from Seattle and like, I joined the bike club but I'm not a road cyclist. That doesn't really interest me. I don't mind riding in traffic, but I was just like, okay, commuting, and then whatever, I lost a job, or I was let go from a job. They told me I didn't fit the culture, and give too many opinions; I wasn't trying to give opinions, I was just trying to help. But with that, I was like, I'm done with social service. Maybe this is just not for me. And so I was like, "I'm just gonna do what I love. So if I can do something about biking, and people, and history, great." So I met a friend, who was a journalist from Belgium, was here, that was when Alabama was starting their civil rights trails. So he was doing like a press tour of their civil rights trails. It all conveyed this feeling. But we're going, we're traveling from different towns within Alabama in a car. But I'm in the back of a car. So I can't necessarily hear all the narratives she's saying to him, because I'm in the back. But I know enough of history and seen, you know, eyes on the prize and various videos. Thinking in my mind Alabama, or even just what it's like to be in the South. So I'm in the back of the car, looking out the window, and I'm thinking this is going to be way more fun on a bike. And that's how the idea hit me. And then I started trying to be like, "Okay, wait a second, I could do this in Atlanta." I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I didn't know, I just kind of followed inspiration. So this was back in 2013. It was that summer, June of 2013. By September, got a business license and registered with Secretary of State. And then it was like, I am really a shy person. I'm not wanting to be like, "Hey, let's like sign up at a meeting or do all these things." So it was like, "Well, I got to." I started attending meetings. I started, I guess, like, going to some bike shops, like I went to some big bike shops, and I met this guy named Neil Walker. He was a league bicycling and Master Coach, I didn't notice at the time, but he was doing a lot of trying to help black folks start organizations. So he helped me with getting bikes. That was one thing eventually, like I went to Performance Bicycles, which no longer exists. But Neil Walker, eventually met him. And he encouraged me to become a League Cycling Instructor, an LCI. So I'm a LCI. And he helped me with getting my first load of bikes, which, thankfully, I was with someone at the time who had been in bikes from being a messenger, someone who had raced, someone who knew how to work in a bike shop, understood like how to mechanically fix a bike; because these were pretty low end Raleighs, and they broke, like the plastic components, and things broke and had to [be] replace[d]. So just spent a lot of the money that I earned that first year, replacing parts on these bikes. But then the next year, I used money to earn, to buy 10 bikes because I needed something that were better. And then there was is also another thing that was taking place because this was again 2013, 2014. And Atlanta was trying to make this change; really it's like the creative class, if we're talking about Richard Florida's theory around what is going to make a city kind of an interesting place to live for this change in economy that we have, that you have to have certain type of amenities for the creative class. And bicycling was one of those things that fit into that category. And so Atlanta was developing some bike stuff. So there were some initiatives where people wanted to include biking into those initiatives. Open Avenue had been a black community. So just economically, a lot of people who had had businesses there, if they were not part of the economy that catered to lower income folk, then they left the area. And so I mean, it might be like a corner store or something like that that was there, but it was hard to find a restaurant or hard to find anything else. And so this was their, the city's, idea to put in other businesses to bring people to the area. We were given a space for three months. So I had a space. I mean, I put a lot of my money into it to paint it and clean it up. I did get a small grant from them to buy resources. But because the building had been unused for a long time, it needed a lot of plumbing, it needed a lot of work. So I had a free space, a free storefront. But you know, after three months, I couldn't pay the rent there. Business has never been like robust. And then I would go on different tours that were taking place in the city. And I met one person, Dr. Cliff Kuhn, he started Oral History Program at Georgia State, a private Master's and Heritage Preservation, and really became a really good support. And just like, "you should go back to school and do this," and a good connector. So just had opportunity to meet some people that were supportive. I started as you know, doing more teaching, and then I eventually started working with Georgia Bikes, which is a statewide bike advocacy organization. It's kind of always been like a side project. But it really takes up a lot of my personal time. Because it's something that, yeah, it's a passion project, so to speak. And then the other part is, even though it's Heritage Tours, we're talking about Black History or talking about history more deeply; it's not about tourism. So I think that part misses people too, because the whole thing is like, let's have a conversation about the history and about where we're at. And sometimes that can be a challenge, myself and the tourists that have a different agenda. So it's an anomaly in that sense. It's not really about tourism. And so like, it's hard to be in one camp or the other. And sometimes we've been pigeon holed like, "Oh, you just do civil rights history." And it's like, "no, we actually talk about a lot of other things, too." But I think it's easier for people to like, put it in a box. Just because it's more digestible. It's easier to explain. The bottom line for Civil Bikes really is about creating and building community and therefore creating change. And so if I'm also like, "I want to survive in this world," then, you know, it creates a frustration for me if I'm putting my resources back into this.
I told you, I pulled out the map of Atlanta from probably like, 1969 or something?
Yeah...
[It] was in my dad's old stash of maps.
It's amazing.
And when I read the tourist sites on that map-- It's a very, like, white golfer kind of map, like it's got the golf clubs, the golf courses listed on this map as sites of attraction, like who's driving cars at that time.
Yeah.
And so it's like, okay, well, those maps, that tour map, that's more than just a tour too, you know, the Civil War sites. And whose perspective is that from? So, yeah, any tour has its agenda whether the tour leaders think it does or not.
Yeah, I mean, you're 100% right. Every tour that that you go on is going to have an agenda: the perspectives, who is telling it and then how they're telling it, what story's being told, you know, what artifacts are being used, if its artifacts or buildings, and how they name, say, other people-- how they're called out. For instance, I was on an antebellum trail recently. And you know, in some places, they're still calling people slaves. And it's just like, the term has evolved now, it's like enslaved people, or people who have been enslaved. And that's been for a little bit of time now. The opportunity that we have now to look back at, you know, these sort of like blueprints. You know, a lot of these people are blueprints: Ella Baker was in Atlanta, you know, she's a blueprint, like, her whole life's work is a blueprint if we understood her. If we looked at Ruby Parks Blackburn, and like the work she did, and how she built these communities, got women involved in all of these issues, and kind of became this national advisor, you know, another blueprint. If we can look more, you know, zoom out and like, understand principles, policies, you know, understand these like pillars that could really be an anchor to what we're wanting in our society today. If we're saying that we want equality, we want justice, then if we can look back at this, and like, see how that was, those principles were infused in these organizations and the impact that they were able to create; we can take those things and then like, personalize them, pull them into our work, then maybe, you know, we could actually move the needle a bit further. So it was less about like, dates, and events, to be really more about how can we create change? We really need to embody this, the spirit of these people in order to heal society, you know, broken society. Broken in the sense that we're creating systems that are really set to destroy us. And we're talking about capitalism. You know, we've talked about like, everything is designed for money and not for sustainability. It's bigger than me.
Yeah.
I stopped riding my bike for a while, because it became a bit of a frustration. And really the thing that got me back on my bike, I got sick. And then I went on that trip, Sierra Leone, and now it's summer working with young people.
So are you excited about going on a bike ride today? Or tomorrow?
Yeah, no, right. Yeah, I am. I am. I like riding the bike. I like riding my bike. And so that part makes me excited. Because everywhere I look, there's construction. The city is rapidly has changed in the past years, like all these neighborhoods...
Do you feel like Atlanta is getting more bike friendly? Or less bike friendly? And for who?
I think it's more bike friendly. Good questions. I think it's definitely more bike friendly, people slow down sometimes. I mean, sometimes not. Some people get-- I mean, there's also a lot more road rage. People just drive faster, you know, faster and faster than used to on surface streets, coming through neighborhoods even. But it's nice to have a trail system that connects. Who is it built for? I mean, it's still definitely a design expectation, regardless of race, is like someone who has money. And people who don't, like there's an assumption that they're gonna steal your bike. We're at like a public space last week with bike camp, and we were told, like, "Watch your bikes, you know, homeless people might come and take your bikes." So whether or not it's true, you know, it's just kind of like, the expectation is, it's okay to go on a bike if you're a person of means. But if you're not a person of means, then there's going to be the extra, added level of scrutiny. Atlanta is a city that has a lot of Black people that are on bikes, there are a lot of different organizations here that even took off over COVID, that has allowed that to take place and become manifest. And there are organizations that are working for, like we have WTF group, we have (?), and then just more people are getting on a bike. Maybe every group isn't for everybody, but everybody can find a community of cyclists. Again, if people are of means then it's a lot easier. I will say it's harder for children. The South is just becoming a place where people retire because it's more affordable to live. And so a lot of retired people have means, they're riding bikes, or ebikes, like ebikes is allowed for that to be a thing here because it's not Seattle, but it's a hilly place. Atlanta is a hilly city. Bike share, I don't think it's been a successful project here.
There's electric scooters though, right?
There are electric scooters and people love the scooters. Yeah, scooters have definitely made a dent and it's-- they're here to stay.
So the beltway is...
Beltline.
Beltline. Okay. Describe that briefly.
Yeah, the Beltline. It is a 22 mile loop around the city connecting maybe its fifty-four, a number of neighborhoods in Atlanta. The idea of the Beltline as it stands started with a Masters student from Georgia Tech, Ryan Gravel, and he worked with city councilperson Kathy Woolard to kind of vet it through communities; we have this this thing called NPU, Neighborhood Planning Unit, and basically it's one of the pathways that development is to go through in order to be approved. The way the Beltline has been developed [has been] in stages. There's the East Side, West Side, North Side, South Side, and there's another organization called the PATH Foundation. And the Path Foundation has created other paths that connect and intersect with the Beltline. But it wasn't supposed to be just like biking and walking. The whole goal was to put a light rail along the Beltline, but it's like a matter of fundraising and grants and maybe even political will to get that...
Priorities?
And priorities [to get] these things to take place. We do not yet have a light rail that's going around the Beltline. So to make it more egalitarian and opportunities for everyone, put the light rail on in the beginning. It would allow people to access different and better jobs. The lack of a light rail is not the only reason, but all development along the Beltline has been luxury. I think it was like 95% of all development over the past whatever years has been luxury. So it's just create[d] a city-- the beltline has been part of the impetus to like, luxuriate Atlanta. We have a dearth of affordable housing and a dearth of of housing. It's been great to be here Ruthy. It's a refresher to remember there are reasons, you know, like principles and values matter. And live, you know, like kind of constructing everyone's life around that is important. Something that inspires me: artists. I mean, I'm kind of creative.
Oh yeah, your Civil Bikes artwork, it's really beautiful, artwork around your house, it's really beautiful. And your yard, backyard.
Thanks. Nature is a thing that is inspiring. Trees. It's nice to listen to the birds, listen to the wind.
We sort of skimmed a bunch of different projects, Civil Bikes, the Bike Camp... If people want to connect with you or go on a bike tour, or--
See what's next?
What's the best way to like, find out more about what you're up to?
I think email us, 'cause-- or Instagram sometimes but it autoposts to Facebook. Website is not really up to date... but enail works, Civilbikes@gmail.com. And then maybe social media.
Is Civil Bikes going on tours actively now? Is it postponed for Covid?
We postponed for COVID. We've done a few tours just because, with organizations like the Swiss consulate, you know it's like "Of course, I'll take you on a bike ride!" But I'm really thinking about, like I was saying earlier, about blueprint and looking at the life of Ella Baker.
And can I tell people that you picked me up at like two in the morning from the Greyhound station last night?
Sure, but you know, it was in that spirit of like, you're a community-oriented person, like-minded person, so I just felt you know, it was like a like-minded thing. And yeah, I know you'd do the same for me if I was coming to your town. So I hadn't had the opportunity to even practice that in a long time.
Well, thank you.
So I missed, I missed the opportunities to like, do these things because they just don't present themselves anymore. I mean, I kind of miss like the ways to be in community with folks. So thanks for an opportunity, Ruthy.
Yeah, thanks so much for all your work, your work and your being, and all that. For sharing this time, making time.
Yeah.
This is Bike Talk. Next, San Francisco bike activist Stacey Randecker and street redesigner Zach Katz. This is Zach Katz and Stacey Randecker, Zach is putting up AI generated street transformations on Twitter. Zack is BetterStreetsAI.
He's making Twitter much a lovelier place.
Thank you!
With all of his artwork, shall we say.
Yeah, these pictures are great. How did you make them? Is it AI? Really?
Yeah, there's a new type of artificial intelligence software called DALL•E, typically DALL•E 2, it's the second generation. And it's insanely good at making images, either from scratch or you can edit any image you want. And that's kind of what I've been doing is just feeding it pictures of streets and telling it to add a protected bike lane or make a pedestrian promenade or whatever.
It knows these words?
Yeah, it can do anything. You can make it make some crazy thing. You could have it do Bob sitting in a movie theater, and he has latte in his hand. And it's painted in the style of Rembrandt.
I've been imagining the software and it exists?
Yeah.
That's incredible. And so you take a picture of what is one of those streets that you've used?
Yeah, say Irving Ave in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Is that near where you are? Are you in Brooklyn?
Yeah, it's my street. Yeah.
Oh, cool.
He's also done Valencia Street.
Oh, that's your street?
That's my space. Yeah. Valencia For People, Forever.
Yeah, you've been trying to get a protected lane, or you're trying to make it pedestrianized or...?
Pedestrianized, yeah.
I rendered that with a bike lane. That's what's kind of difficult sometimes is I'm not familiar with the particularities of the certain streets. So in New York, I know which street should have bike lanes in which should be totally car free or whatever. But in San Francisco, I need some help determining that.
Well, how would you determine that?
Well, people like Stacey, who would know.
And you take submissions, is that right, Zach?
I do. Yeah, it's a very early stages of this project. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage submissions 'cause the first couple of days, I've got hundreds of DMS with submissions for different streets around the world. And I'm still getting them. I just can't do them all myself. So I'm trying to figure out should I partner up with some other people who also have DALL•E AI? Or do I charge? I'm figuring out how to manage all that.
It sounds like you need a SETI project or something, using people's processors in their downtime or something, you have all these things that are running it for you.
Oh, you mean like a team?
Well, looking for aliens or something, that's "Oh, we'll use your...ah..."
Oh, also, the biggest misconception with this is that you can just feed it the picture of the street, and it'll automatically make an amazing picture of a bike lane. When in reality, it's kind of in between. Some of these pictures, I'm spending an hour tweaking everything to get it right. Because basically, you take the picture of the street and you erase the part of it you want it to replace, in most cases, just the cars on the pavement, and then you type in what you wanted to replace it with. So you erase all the cars erase the asphalt, and then you type in "pedestrian promenade," "people benches," "ornate stone water fountain," and then it comes up with something. It comes up with three images but the images it comes up with are kind of random. If you're good at prompting it, which I'm getting better at, you can elicit better results. But some of the things that renders are awful, or maybe half of the image got really nice trees or pavement or whatever, but the people look really messed up. So then you have to erase the people again and have it render new people.
Ohh...
Yeah, it's automated, but you're still piecing it together.
Well, so that was one of the things I was thinking about. Couldn't a lot of this be solved Portlandia style, instead of putting a bird on it, just put a planter box on it and street paint or something like that. Or I guess that would get tired, because part of yours is you have all these different treatments.
Oh, do you mean standardized? They all look the same? Or like pilot project style?
I don't know. That's my whole thing is how do we actually get these things to happen? Or what's the quickest, easiest way and oftentimes I'm, "Ah just put a planter box there, we're good."
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've been meaning to see how well it can make planter boxes because I agree that that's the first step. But also I think there's a chance you can sell people on the vision of the car free street with the capital build out with a nice pavement and the benches and stuff or the water fountain and then once you get people excited about it, then you alright, well the first step is we're going to put some planters and paint down.
Have you done this in real life, you've gotten projects to fruition through visualizations?
I tried in Portland back before DALL•E existed. I paid some artists to make visualizations of various streets without cars as promenades. So it's called the Portland Promenade Project. And it got a lot of buzz. A lot of people were really excited. And I was even talking to the city planners that PBOT, the Bureau of Transportation in Portland, and they kept on leading me on, "Well, we'd love to make it work but there are some challenges, and we need to figure out traffic plan." And so I actually paid a transportation planning company. I paid him $500 to put together a freakin' traffic plan. And the commissioner at the time during the pandemic, I guess they were probably overwhelmed. But even though I didn't actually make any promenades happen, I think it significantly pushed the Overton window that will eventually happen.
Thank you for your service. Thank you for doing the work. It just takes so much.
Now that we don't need to pay artists to do work and wait for them to do it, I think it'll be a lot easier to do a lot more of that type of advocacy at a much bigger scale.
So these renderings they use these as part of the process to actually design streets, right?
Yeah, departments of transportation will sometimes make renders, they're privately renovating like Union Square in New York, or Market Street. Sometimes they'll put together renders but historically, there's been a huge barrier to entry to get renders made for a project because it costs hundreds of dollars for even just one picture. And now that you can make one of these renders for free, essentially, really just $1 or two, and instantly, the game has changed.
Did you have DALL•E because you wanted to do this? Is this part of what you were doing for something else?
No, I signed up for the waitlist a couple of months ago, just out of curiosity, because I saw people generate really funny pictures of like dogs and stuff. The first couple of images I made were a Shih Tzu or a Yorkie riding a bike, or like a hamster eating a piece of pizza or just silly things. Then I was like, "Well, what if I uploaded a picture of a street and change it a little bit?"
So this is what you've been thinking about for a long time? Streets?
Yeah, since I was in high school, I started learning about urban planning, just browsing the urban planning subreddit. It was just an armchair educational hobby, I guess. But then I moved to Amsterdam a couple months ago because I was fed up with car culture in the US. And I recently moved back. But I learned a lot just living in Amsterdam and experiencing what peak urban design is. So there's a lot of the renders I'm making, I'm not afraid to just remove cars entirely from a street, because I know that that's possible, because they've done it on various streets in the Netherlands.
So you're not an urban planner or an engineer?
Not formally.
My vote is that people like you should be the urban planners and the engineers because we need to start erasing the cars. And if you have people that are too afraid to do it, we're just not going to get there. You know?
Yeah, urban planning as a profession: I feel like it was basically invented in the 20th century in order to basically facilitate the expansion of car infrastructure. To be an urban planner in the 1700s, "Alright, I guess we'll make a street here." It's not complicated. Cities weren't even designed, originally, European cities just naturally evolved, according to human behavior.
Can we describe some of these pictures?
Yeah!
It's funny to do pictures on the radio, but why not?
I kind of have the Valencia Street memorized. We have a street for people. There are trees, there's planters, there's a nice green bike lane that has fresh Kermit paint on it. And a girl happens to be biking by on her nifty red bike, her hair blowing in the breeze, not a care in the world. Because there are no cars. It's beautiful.
It's gonna go viral on Tiktok, by the way, if you were to do that, and then just upload a picture with that narration, I think that would be a good way to advertise the stuff.
Ok. Done. Sold!
I see one tweet you had was a thread "four ways you can use these images to help make them a reality: 1) share them online, 2) put up flyers, 3) present them at community meetings, and most importantly of all 4) demand results from politicians. Remember, change is possible if enough people demand it."
When you look at these - I'm looking at Prince Street, Boston - Does anyone want what's really there? When you see what could be? If it doesn't matter how nice or pricey that car is, it just looks awful compared to the brick pavers and charming streets. It's like watching the Belgian ones, oh my gosh, where they erased all the cars for real. And you can just imagine the coffee date. And then later the couple is off to the wine bar down the street and they fast forward to their anniversary dinner and then riding a bike with their children and fast forward to they've had this wonderful life. And there they are in their golden years sitting on, at that same cafe that they did so long ago. And it's friends. It's people. It's love stories. It's not stupid, freaking killer cars.
I love that. I love the picture you're painting. That's powerful.
You built housing over a Dollar Tree.
Yeah, something I've just started doing is transforming strip malls, turning the parking lots into plazas and building apartments on top. Yeah, it's wild to see.
Wow, it's just interesting to think about what this kind of freedom, with being able to see whatever you imagine, is going to do to the real world.
Yeah, well, I was saying AR is next. You could put on goggles and go walk around and be able to see these overlaid onto the real street.
Just walking in the middle of the street, "Wow, this is great!" And there's a car barreling at you?
Well, that's me, that's trying to manifest it.
Yeah.
Until the cops come. Yeah, it would be really cool to see this, if you could somehow see this in the real world. And then after that, it's the magic wands, or potions or something to actually make it happen.
AI robots that are actually building the thing.
You gave your four steps to how to actually manifest it.
Oh, but robots overnight would be awesome, much more efficient.
So are these the peak streets, would you say?
Like the perfect design?
So you see a street and you think, "Okay, this is what needs to go here for these reasons." And you're not just doing it for the colors?
Yeah, there is a planning element, or a visioning element, especially on the streets I know. But yeah, there is a bit of planning involved, even if there's like buses on the street. Okay, well, maybe in 20 years, there'll be an underground high speed rail so then you can pedestrianize the street, you don't need buses. There's a city in the Netherlands that did that - maybe the Hague? I forget which one, but that's the end you don't want. You want the street to be as pleasant as possible. You obviously don't want cars going through but also public transit. The streetcars in Amsterdam are really convenient for getting around, but they're also kind of a hazard and a nuisance on otherwise pedestrianized streets. So something to figure out. Same with cycling, honestly. Amsterdam, they have the problem with bikes that the US has with cars, it's which streets do we encourage biking on and which ones do we ban it from? Because you can't have thousands of bikers streaming through a narrow pedestrianized street, it just becomes kind of chaotic.
Wow, bikes are the new cars in Amsterdam?
Oh my gosh, can you freaking imagine? Zach, these are problems I want to have!
Some futurist on Twitter who is talking about how eventually, he projects in the 2040s or so, when bikes have really taken off in the US and they're just totally mainstream and it's like Amsterdam, he thinks that eventually bikes will become too big. And they'll start to look like cars again. People will have cargo bikes that are tricked out with giant speakers. So that'll be a problem to reckon with as well. But we're not there yet so it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, as long as we keep taking space from cars, give me a break. The population won't explode to a point where we're gonna have traffic jams. And if we do, with tricked out big cargo bikes with speakers and stuff. That sounds like a party.
Yeah...
We need more parties.
Totally. Also, the US is better equipped to deal with mass biking, than Europe in a lot of ways just because the streets are wider.
Yeah. Looking at this one that you have here, Webster Groves, Missouri, where the streets are wider. Or Kalākaua Ave in Honolulu, I have been on that. And I was appalled at how car it was. I just couldn't - here you are along the beach and you have essentially it feels like a highway. It's not as fast as a highway, but still, it was just so car clogged. And your rendering is just-- yes, that's what I expected to be steps from the beach in Hawaii!
Can you describe it?
Oh right, so here we are on radio. So what it is in reality is blue water, the sandy beaches, the palm trees all along the gaps of the hotels, these massive hotels that are along the ocean front. And then right behind it, you have huge swaths of asphalt for cars to be driving on and there are tons of shops in this area. It really should be pedestrianized. In fact, I happened to be there one year, it was Halloween, and so they did pedestrianize it! And it was wonderful. And I thought that's the way it was. And then the next day the cars came back. And it was just like dragging a needle across the record. It was so jarring to be steps from this beautiful blue ocean and all of these fanciest shops and some regular ones too and restaurants and just a car sewer running through it.
It's not just that street, but it's a shame that Hawaii as a whole, or at least why that island, is so car centric.
Have you been to most of these places? You've got them all over the world, and you've got these states like Missouri...
I basically have never been to the Midwest and I don't really visit the small towns here that often. So most of those I haven't been to, but like bigger cities. I lived in Portland for a few years. I went to school in Boston. I live in New York. I grew up in the D.C. area, so I've done [some] in Virginia and D.C.. I lived in LA for a bit, I can go there a lot. Yeah, there's definitely been a bias towards places that I know and I'm familiar with but I've done a couple of streets in Australia, which I've never been to...
You have like three different versions of Mayfield Road in Cleveland, Ohio.
Oh, yeah, cuz it spits out a few versions, and it's hard to choose which one's the best. So I just put out all of them. That's one of my selfish reasons for making these. If they can eventually make that street in Cleveland, Ohio or whatever, like, car free, then maybe I'd be more likely to visit.
I'm ready to cry. This Walnut Street in Philadelphia. It's a merchant corridor. It's all of this little retail and stuff. It is currently skinny sidewalks, lane of parking, two lanes of traffic one way. And then instead, Zach has put in these awesome planter benches that have trees and low plantings, big, wide maple plank benches, sidewalk in between them, but close enough for conversational space. And then it looks like maybe bike pathways behind them. But you don't have to "Kermit" [color paint] them. they're just these lovely pavers. And it looks so nice. It's so inviting. You want to go there! "Where's the ice cream shop?" "I want to go get a new outfit" versus the other one is "Where the hell am I gonna park?" "What is this? Oh my gosh, traffic." "Where'd we say we'd meet them? I have to circle again." It looks like a headache versus loveliness.
Did you use the term "Kermit?"
Yeah.
What is that?
What do we know about Kermit?
Green! So the green bike lanes?
Yes, now you've got it.
So do people send you these pictures, Zach, those streets before?
Yeah, I've gotten a lot of requests. And some people send pictures, some just suggest a city or street, some send streetview links.
What's the most interesting person that has sent to you requesting?
Hmm, the most surprising thing 'cause I really wasn't expecting these to get any attention, I was just posting them for fun, but some city council members in various cities reached out to me on Twitter, and were really into it and wanted the images to help sell their fellow council members. And even one mayor reached out to me who wanted to use the images to help inspire his colleagues at City Hall to make these things happen. So...
Will we publish them at some point so we can support their reelection campaigns or higher office? Because those are the people we need!
Oh, I'm sure they'll get reelected. People crave a visionary leader who is not afraid to make bold changes and improve their lives in unexpectedly delightful ways. Yeah, any politician that does this is going to get reelected.
So you have over 18,000 followers. Is that a result of posting these pictures? I guess you have always posted these pictures because your name is BetterStreetsAI.
Yeah, I started the account just two weeks ago.
Okay.
He was at zero and now he's at 18,000.
You could probably get a job from this.
Yeah, to be frank, I've been thinking about how to monetize it. I'm conflicted. Because on the one hand, I want to help advocacy groups and just people around the world make better streets for their city. So I want to do these all for free just to help do that. But I can't spend all day making renders, because each one can take half an hour to an hour and I'd need to charge for them.
Yeah, of course. Well, I think that's where we need to look into some philanthropists or whatever that would be able to help this because there have to be people who want to see these changes take place. And this seems really catalytic. So why not sponsor that?
Yeah, if any philanthropists are listening, DMS are open.
DMS means you can message them.
Yeah, direct message.
Some people don't know that. That's true, actually.
What's next? What do you want to do with this?
Well, there's obviously a lot of potential to use these images to make actual change happen. And I think that images are one of the most powerful marketing tools that exists. And I've always seen advocacy as a marketing problem. The problem with most safe streets advocacy groups is that their campaigns are targeted towards people who are already really into biking, or safe streets, walks, or whatever. But in order to really get the movement started, you need to target everyone. Just someone walking down the street, all demographics, young and old, whatever, people don't bike, and images are an amazing way to do that. Because people who don't know what a protected bike lane is, it's hard for them to imagine what that would look like on their particular street and so images allow that and so okay, I have this theory of mine. I'm going to test it and see if it works in practice. Can you plaster a neighborhood all the telephone poles? With these images and get a conversation started and somehow make it happen?
Are there examples that you think that if you just show them?
I know one...
Really, you're going for the one on Valencia? Do you have any changes that you would suggest?
I can't wait to see what Zach gets it to spit out for Valencia. And yes, I have a small army who would be more than happy to staple to every telephone pole. I think that is such an awesome idea that overnight, you'd wake up and whatever the vantage point is, you'd be able to see. In fact, that's probably what we should do is go out and look where the telephone poles are.
Have you done the pole stuff? Out of curiosity?
Have we done that? Yeah, it's usually how another person died here and what the tally is up to in the city.
Oh, yeah.
Another person was killed by a car here. We put that on all the telephone poles. So to have something that is, "Hey, look what we could have," it'd be nice to spread some hope...joy.
You haven't done Valencia yet?
I did but it was a protected bike lane. And the ideal, it sounds like, is make it car-free. So I need to redo it.
All right. And then you're gonna put it up on telephone poles, Stacey - you and the Safe Streets Rebels?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. As soon as we have four or five blocks done, I have the printer ready to be fired up. Yeah.
Amazing.
Yeah, we will do it. Totally. That would be fantastic.
So would you be willing to, where people are seriously trying to get a particular street design changed, would you be willing to have them approach you and get at the head of the line?
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. If you're an advocate in any city in the entire world, please send me a DM. I'd love to have a conversation and see how I can help you.
Very good. All right, Zach, BetterStreetsAI on Twitter. Stacey Randecker, BikingMzStacey on Twitter. Thanks for introducing me to Zack, Stacey.
Oh, my pleasure.
Thank you for having me on. It's been fun.
This is Bike Talk. Now, Chicago safe streets activist and Segway tour guide Mike, aka "Segway Batman," led a protest to enforce the law at a crosswalk Friday to raise awareness of deadly driver behavior that killed Gerardo Marciales earlier this year.
Lakeshore drive in Chicago is a road that spans our lakefront. The speed limit on the road is about 40 miles an hour. However, the drivers do 60 to 70 miles an hour. Most of the road doesn't have intersections with stoplights to get on and off. It has exit ramps and exit ramps just like a highway, or just like an interstate. It's a highway. It's an interstate. People like to pretend that it's not, but it is, because the drivers do 60 and there are ramps to get on and off. There are, however, a handful of intersections on Lakeshore drive, specifically the ones downtown that don't have ramps, instead, they have stoplights. All of the other intersections, the pedestrians and cyclists are able to get around the drive by going over bridges or underneath underpasses. These four intersections downtown do not have bridges or underpasses. So the drivers are expected to yield to the lights to allow pedestrians to cross the street. Balbo and Lakeshore Drive in particular is the worst one out of all four of the intersections, because it's the first one when the pedestrian crossing starts so the drivers are coming in pretty hot. And the other three, the drivers get backed up and this causes drivers to also get backed up all the way to Balbo. So they drive right through the intersection despite the light telling them not to, because you know you're supposed to stop your car if you can't make it through the intersection before the light changes, and drivers have a habit of not doing that.
And someone was killed?
We've been complaining about this for years. February 28th, 2022, Gerardo Marciales was riding a Divvy bike, that's one of our Bike Share bikes, crossing the road with the pedestrian signal, heading west. A driver proceeded straight through the left turn lane while the light was red, and struck and killed Gerardo Marciales.
What are you doing?
My plan is, I'm going to get some of us out there with stop signs. Now, it's only the northbound lanes that are the problematic ones. So I'm going to get four of us out there with stop signs, myself and three others, and I'm going to have other pedestrians just crossing the street. We are not breaking the law, we're actually enforcing the law. We are only going to be out there while the pedestrians have the pedestrian light, while the driver light is red. And I'll have some picket signs and I'll have my megaphone. Four of us out there blocking all four lanes with stop signs. We're enforcing the law, we're not breaking the law. There is already incredible traffic in this spot. And the objective here is to create even more traffic. We're going to create a severe traffic jam. The city simply does not care about our lives, and that's demonstrated by the fact that I have submitted videos, almost every- well, not every day, but I've submitted thousands of videos of this problematic intersection of drivers almost killing me, of drivers almost killing children; other people have too. If we're going to get this fixed, we're going to create traffic. The city cares more about that than they do about our lives.
And what are you calling for, what kind of improvements?
The timing of the light could be different, although that won't make too much of a difference. The ideal one would be Lakeshore Drive would be torn down and there isn't a highway spanning our lakefront (we're 50 to 100 years out from that, I don't wanna get my hopes up), followed by bridges and tunnels. But again, that's expensive, and nobody wants to do that solution. The only feasible solution that people are going to-- well, no they won't support this here, is cameras. Speed cameras and red light cameras are actually illegal. They're outlawed on the road. Everybody speeds and everybody runs the light. Because of this, everybody would get tickets. And because the state of Illinois fears the outrage of everybody getting tickets, they have outlawed cameras on this road. The road needs cameras, and that will pretty quickly discourage drivers from doing the things that they do.
Two of the things you mentioned, just tearing down Lakeshore Drive and getting cameras, are not going to happen...
The cameras are the most feasible one, the least feasible are tearing it down and building bridges and tunnels at these four intersections. The cameras are the most likely thing that will happen, and that's still not too likely.
And then the other one you mentioned was signals timing?
Yeah, changing the timing of the yellow light. I don't think that will have much of an impact.
It's a uphill battle. Thank you, Mike. I will keep following your account.
Thank you.
This is Bike Talk. Dave Shelna, the biking lawyer, in Ontario, Canada, talked to us about the High Park protest ride in Toronto this Friday.
I've been doing cycling advocacy in the city for probably close to 10 years, and it's the biggest showing of solidarity amongst cyclists that I've seen. Certainly there were some back in the day before my time, but in recent memory it's the biggest.
And can you say what it's about?
We've come into another summer here, where Toronto Police have descended on High Park, which is a park in the middle of the city, kind of like Central Park in New York. It's the only place that you can sort of cycle safely. And so they've been ticketing cyclists for speeding and not stopping at stop signs. And the problem though, isn't that; you know, people should obey the rules. It's sending police in to solve community problems. They just create them. One week ago, a cyclist was ticketed for trespassing in the park because he asked a Toronto Police officer to move his cruiser out of a bike lane, and as a reprisal was ticketed for that. A day or two later, a woman was chased down in a bike lane and pulled off her bicycle by a man that turned out to later be an off-duty Toronto Police officer. And the day following that, a sergeant was driving around a police SUV in the park, ticketing cyclists for not stopping at stop signs, and later that day in the park didn't himself stop at a stop sign and hit a cyclist, damaging his bike. Thankfully he was uninjured. But that police officer wasn't ticketed for the very thing he was ticketing that day. The mayor came out and supported the police crackdown on cyclists in the park. And that just really got out of hand.
Wow. There's so many people came on the ride, there must be a sense that this is a real problem. I mean, this was only--we're only talking about three incidents or so. But the community feels, you know, this is an urgent enough need for them to come out.
Exactly. Our safety is at stake with these particular incidents. And people were upset about those incidents. But it's also seen as an affront to target and ticket cyclists in a park where there is no data of serious collisions causing major injury or death. Whereas on the streets adjacent to the park, we have huge numbers of collisions. The intersection bordering the park, I myself had three serious cyclists collisions come in as clients in between August and September 2021. You know, broken pelvis, shattered kneecap, broken collarbone. This stuff is happening on the streets of Toronto. But we're turning resources to a park where injuries aren't happening. It seems to those of us who ride every day as a bit of an affront.
What do you attribute it to, this kind of anti-cyclist behavior among the police in Toronto?
Well, it's probably a couple of factors. You know, there are some good officers. A lot of these folks don't live in the city, and hence, they don't cycle in the city. And so maybe there's some biases there. But we know there was a small vocal group of people complaining about cyclists' behavior in the park. And you know that's fair enough, people got to be safe, and you can't be blowing by pedestrians who are out walking their dogs. But the solution to this is having city staff and Cycle Toronto, our advocacy organization, go in and volunteer and teach people the rules of the road and talk to cyclists. And if there's conflict between park users, create the infrastructure that takes the conflict away. Solving these problems doesn't happen by sending in men with guns.
Is there an estimate on how many people were at the ride? How many cyclists?
Five hundred at least.
Wow that's a big ride. So how did it get organized?
Myself along with many other community advocates started the conversation about making a stand and showing our numbers in the streets. A week or two ago, the anger and frustration amongst the cycling community was palpable. It was just a matter of giving those folks an opportunity to express themselves.
What's going to come out of this?
There is a High Park Movement Strategy, sort of a survey that talks about how the park should look in the future. So that's one thing that's going to be really a focus of the cycling community is make it car free, like Central Park, and have faster bike or cycling hours early in the morning, or late in the evening, like Central Park as well. We've got municipal elections coming up. People are really going to hold the mayor and their counselors accountable to make sure resources are being dedicated to proper enforcement, infrastructure, automated enforcement. I mean, infrastructure changes to make the streets safer. People know it's dangerous out there and want the city to do their job.
Would you say that connections have been made here?
Absolutely. Solidarity and collaboration within the cycling community runs deep. But last night was really unique in that you had everybody from spandex Cervelo riding road cyclists to kids and folks in cargo bikes. Folks from across the city come down, a huge diversity of riders, it was really something to behold. It shows the, the future of cycling in Toronto.
Next steps?
Well we're going to fill out that survey, as sort of tedious and vanilla of a prospect [as] that is. We're going to get that done in great numbers. We're going to hold our elected officials to account, and we're going to keep monitoring the police behavior. My law firm is going to pro bono, bring two Police Complaints, one for the woman who was assaulted by the off duty police officer and one for the racialized cyclist who is charged with trespassing, which we think is an abuse of power. So we're going to bring those police complaints and try and get some accountability as well.
All right, Dave Shellnut. Thanks for talking with us today.
Hey, thanks so much. And thanks for putting a spotlight on advocacy and safe cycling.
This has been Bike Talk. you can check out more archives and get in touch at biketalk.org Thanks, Kevin Burton, for editing. Have a good week.
Push on a pedal, push on a pedal, get your (gasp) heart started. Push on a pedal, push it down and up again! Push on a pedal, push on a pedal, get your (gasp) heart started. Push on a pedal, push it down and up again, get on your bike, sit on the seat! Push your feet on the pedals, and ride it all around, ride it all around! Oh, get that car out of my way, I want to ride my bike today! It keeps me fit and gets me there and won't go stinking up the air. Leave behind the daily grind, and let your mind unwind. If it's life you tend to like, you'd better get yourself a bike. Oh, oh, get yourself a bike!