Mike Lydon
@MikeLydon
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Co-Founder @StreetPlans | Co-Author #TacticalUrbanism , Smart Growth Manual | Board Member @NewUrbanism | Creator @Open_Streets Project | Léo + Luca’s dad
Brooklyn
Joined June 2009
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This single graph is all you need to know about US transportation policy since I was born (1981).
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The quality public space found within this small French seaside town of 2,300 people exceeds that of most American cities of 230,000. Count the cars to find out why...
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I just realized how much better Apple Map graphics are in comparison to Google. Same NYC block. 😮
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Just as the marathon route closes to thru traffic, waves and waves of people take advantage of 26.2 miles of streets linking all five boroughs. What if we did this more often?
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It’s the opposite. If you love nature don’t go try and live in it. Pictured is the most energy efficient environment in the United States.
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Best to judge a public space not by its design but by how and how well it is used.
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Steal this technology. It saves lives; makes deliveries and emergency vehicles operate faster / smoother; reduces pollution and emissions; makes walking and cycling a breeze; lets children play in the street and allows laughter or the clink of glasses to be heard a block away.
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It is not a City's responsibility to provide free space for everyone's personal property, especially when it causes so many negative impacts to city life.
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When it comes to sustainable street space allocation, the debate is too often framed as what is lost rather than what is gained. With that in mind, this image shows 46 net on-street parking spaces gained.
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Traffic evaporation is a real outcome of sustained policy choices. Paris has reduced traffic by 40% in one decade and it’s a far more livable city because of it.
La pollution de l'air tue, nous ne pouvons regarder ailleurs.
À Paris, en diminuant la place de la voiture, nous avons fait baisser le trafic automobile de 40% en 10 ans, permettant de diminuer de 40% la pollution de l'air. Et nous allons continuer !
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Elfreth’s Alley in Philadelphia - the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in America - is historic and futuristic at the same time, demonstrating how modern life continues on without the undue burden of the private automobile.
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When we say streets should support cycling by people of all ages and abilities, we mean this.
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Highway removal along the Seine resulted in a 29% traffic reduction in the area, meaning projects like these increasingly feasible. Further vehicle traffic reductions and walking, cycling, and public transport gains are expected as Paris removes 70,000 on-street parking spaces.
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“It’s not my duty as mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me, it’s the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you’re going to put them."
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A traffic evaporation experiment is underway in real time. What might we learn🤔
“I don’t know when was the last time I got out of my neighborhood that quick on a Monday,” said John Gramlich, a plumber…There was less traffic than I’m used to having.”
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DC friends, how are these pre-cast concrete barriers working in terms of keeping vehicles out? We don't have much of this advanced concrete technology in New York City...
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Our neighborhood’s row houses and small to medium-sized apartment building achieves 75 people/acre (48,000/sq mile). It’s a lovely density that yields tremendous walkability. But the secret sauce is the trees, definitely the trees.
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Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, and Copenhagen are all different but one of the most underrated design moves found in each of these cities is the prevalence of street lighting strung between buildings rather than street lamps cluttering the public realm. It creates more walkability.
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After a few years literally no one misses an urban freeway when it’s gone...younger generations may question if one did ever exist, why?!
@awalkerinLA
@TheWarOnCars
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The chicane, the unicorn of traffic calming. Every design guide includes them, few cities build them.
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Low cost. Low maintenance. Sittable. The most under-appreciated/underused item in the Quick-Build material palette is the boulder. The new Underhill Bike Blvd strategically uses them to define/reinforce new pedestrian and bike space, and to prevent reduce vehicular incursion.
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Paris will restore 11.2 million sq. ft. of usable street space through the removal of 70,000 on-street parking spaces, because: “It’s out of the question to think that arriving in the heart of the city by car is any sort of solution.” -
@Anne_Hidalgo
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I’ve decided my favorite protected bike lanes are bike-protected bike lanes.
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Chinatown’s East Broadway shows how shade impacts street use during the summer. Also that the bike lanes are useless.
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Paris will fast-track a regional plan, adding 403.8 mi. (650 km) of bikeways (the most yet). Many will be delivered with temporary materials before May 11th when the city re-opens. The plan requires 72% of on-street parking to be removed.
#Covid19Streets
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There are 3 generations of bike lanes in the Paris network. The quality has improved but so has the demand, resulting in increased width and better definition from the vehicular and pedestrian realm. The removal of street parking removal will provide the space for growth, gen 4.
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This is some of the most valuable real estate in the country but the street, setback, form, density, and (lack of) parking is illegal in the vast majority of the United States.
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An important but too often overlooked architectural detail that supports walkability / urbanism is the chamfered corner facade. Park Slope’s 5th and 7th Avenues feature many good examples.
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Thompson Street
#Steateries
are keeping businesses afloat but also calm traffic. Cycling this street was a true pleasure, as it felt like humans have priority, not cars.
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It’s important to visualize the city anti-congestion pricing cranks and lawsuit proponents are desperately fighting for.
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Cincinnati also emerged from the depths of the pandemic with an impressive number of streateries and pedestrianized blocks. The latter make use of removable bollards, an advanced technology we are still struggling to adopt in NYC.
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“It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people - what is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished." - Holly Whyte
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You love to see it.
@mta
has finally installed countdown clocks *outside* our subway stop.
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Rue de Rivoli is a revelation. Even in its temporary form, it proves taking away space from cars is far more powerful than any specific bikeway design. There used to be 28,000 cars per day here and now there are 13,000 bikes and a few taxis. Mostly it’s just quieter.
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Leading pedestrian (and bike) intervals are one of the simplest and lowest cost ways to reduce traffic violence. Here’s one of my favorites at Hoyt/Atlantic in Brooklyn.
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#CityMath
: Our family went out for dinner + ate in the curbside dining deck. The meal yielded $10.22 in sales tax. We were there for 90 minutes. Ours and 2 other (occupied) tables fit into one parking stall, which over the same period would have yielded $3 in parking revenue...
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Two simple but transformative things we could do for pedestrians in New York City: containerize waste and raise crossings.
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You know that recent article about Vienna closing streets in front of schools for pick up and drop off? Jersey City is doing it too.
@schmangee
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No amount of “smart city” technology, Vision Zero policy, or modern zoning code could ever improve this street.
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You know it’s a good street if it would make an (most) American traffic engineer’s head explode.
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All you ever needed to know about using urban space effectively in one aerial image. 🚗 v. 🚲
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So, what does it take to change a New York City street? An imperfect thread about the recently completed
@ParkToPark103
SIP project.
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Cars don’t shop, people do. Make great places for people and one of the many things they will do more of is shop.
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Barcelona is one of Europe’s densest cities and it has very few towers. Livability is derived through the design of streets and other public spaces.
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In case you needed an image of the spatial efficiency of bikes vs. cars, here it is.
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1/2: One of the most important but overlooked metrics for walkable mixed-use development is the number of doors per linear foot. This single building on Brooklyn’s Court Street does exceptionally well: 100’ in length with 11 doors - 7 for retail.
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Breaking:
@NYC_DOT
@NYCMayor
is actively removing the Willoughby Avenue Open Street right now. No communication or process with the community. This is a horrible precedent to set.
@fgopenstreets
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New York City priorities in a single image: 1) cars 2) trash) 3) people
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In Heidelberg, Germany residents are given one year of free access to public transport after selling their car. This type of pragmatic policy incentive should be offered in every city with a usable PT system.
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Paris bike boom 🚲 💥
This is the Boulevard de Strasbourg at 9:15am. The city needs to remove another lane of vehicular traffic to meet the peak demand, a la Rue de Rivoli. 🚲 💥
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UPDATE: Louisville, KY quietly overtook Vancouver, and two others in the top five North American cities, with 11 miles of
#Covid19Streets
#OpenStreets
1) Minneapolis: 18 miles
2) Denver: 13.3 miles
3) Louisville: 11 miles
4) Vancouver, BC: 10.53 miles
5) Portland, OR: 7.5 miles
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Top 5 North American
#COVIDStreets
#OpenStreets
responses:
1) Denver: 13.3 miles
2) Minneapolis: 10 miles
3) Portland, OR: 7.5 miles
4) Cleveland: 6 miles
5) Winnipeg, MB: 5 miles
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🧵 Urbanists and transportation advocates often share this photo of Dr Martin Luther King Jr cycling each year. But the sad reality is that today, most streets named in his honor are not bikesble; they divide communities rather than unite them. Here’s Detroit.
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The gorgeous flowers lining this one block of the Allen Street protected bikeway is one of
#BikeNYC
’s loveliest moments right now.
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Update: the driver has been charged. The vehicle driven has garnered 161 violations since 2017. That’s one violation every 9 days or so. It’s a massive failure of local and state government to allow people like this to continue operating a motor vehicle. 🤬
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Hard to believe this hasn’t always been our city May - October.
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How does a city add 30,000 people within one square mile but not add any new road capacity? By building densely and investing in walking, cycling, and transit. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
I added all of Downtown Jersey City's Census tracts together and got a population of 73,350, showing 59.4% growth from the 2010 population of 45,992. Super impressive stuff!
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In Oslo, no parking doesn't mean no business.
"Well, according to the city, since all those parking spots disappeared, pedestrian activity in the area has risen by 10%." percent.
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It was supposed to be the end of the city. However, in an increasing number of New York neighborhoods it feels like just the beginning...
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👋
@GovKathyHochul
Small business owner in New York City here. None of my employees drive to work and would have benefited tremendously from congestion pricing in speeding up the reliability of their commutes. Many WFH because it’s easier than facing unreliable transit commutes.
So essentially Kathy Hochul & Hakeem Jeffries want to screw New York City businesses and residents and threaten the future of the entire region's transportation system under the guise of winning suburban swing seats
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The
@Open_Streets
movement has measured many positive impacts (pollution/noise reduction, physical activity gains, economic impact, participation rates). Harder to quantify is the collective joy, the wave of free-flowing endorphins and eye contact that temporarily restores trust.
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UPDATE: Barcelona will pedestrianize 7.5 miles of linear streets (322,000 square feet of space!), build 13 miles of additional bike lanes, and add bus lanes to make transit more competitive.
#Covid19Streets
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Why do we continue to tolerate this, New York City? Why are parked cars and garbage more important than people walking? People with strollers? People with wheelchairs?
@crystalrhudson
@BKBPReynoso
@NYCMayor
@NYCSanitation
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In front of this Paris school on-street parking was removed and replaced with a wider sidewalk, planters, seating, and a raised crossing. This and other variants should be the norm in US cities, never the exception.
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Two different types of bike parking at the same Brooklyn business. So, here, once again, is your quarterly reminder that the design of such things matters.
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At 203.1 miles (327km), Montreal's full package of
#Covid19Streets
surpasses Lima, Peru's 187 miles of temporary bikeways, placing it only behind Paris as the city with the most extensive response.
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Just flew over Louisville at rush hour. They built a massive new interchange to “fix” congestion they don’t have. If
@AOC
’s
#greennewdeal
or derivatives thereof don’t attack these wasteful subsidies / poor land use policies then we are literally sunk. (4 images for emphasis)
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Who saw this coming? Everyone saw this coming.
"But now Open Streets have entered their real-estate amenity era, where they are placed on par with parks and subway stops."
"Newer families are looking for space to roam, not park."
@JohnSurico
@Curbed
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“The fundamental reason why a dense network of small streets out-performs a sparse hierarchy of [wide] streets is that streets become less (not more) efficient as their size increases."
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The fact that a mere $100 metal barricade completely breaks the functional fixedness of how people understand how and who uses street space is an underexplored phenomenon right now. Literally, this is all it takes.
#OpenStreets
#Covid19Streets
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“A couple of decades ago, it was perfectly normal to smoke cigarettes inside...Today, very few would do that. I think it’s the same with cars in the city center. One day we will look back + ask ourselves why we ever thought that was a good idea.”
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Top 10
#Covid19Streets
(active or announced) by lane miles:
1) Paris (403.8)
2) Lima (187)
3) NYC (100)
Portland (100)
4) Oakland (74)
5) Bogota (49.7)
6) Quito (38.9)
7) Auckland (37.9)
8. Minneapolis/St. Paul (36.8)
9. Burlington (25.8)
10. Milan (22)
Total: 1,076 miles
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Here’s a thought: sell and turn them into housing for people, not cars.
Car park operators are losing tens of millions of dollars every day and say they'll need to recover costs after the pandemic.
@Fi_Willan
#9News
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That’s the out of service bus driver trying to find the owner of a double parked car-for 30 minutes-that blocked the street, between unbelievably loud fits of honking. She told me she didn’t want the driver to get a ticket but waking all the little kids on our block was fine. 🙄
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“The transportation agency is considering carving out temporary bike lanes and taking away traffic lanes from cars by using orange cones or movable barriers.” Call me 🤙?
#tacticalurbanism
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Pearl Street Triangle Plaza appreciation 🧵 In 2007 I was living in Miami and this image totally rocked my world. A rapid but simple transformation made with low-cost and flexible materials. 🤔 I wanted to live in
@JSadikKhan
’s New York City.
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Winning
@TheWarOnCars
. Oslo has only 50 parking spaces in the city center. A common sense policy where walking, cycling, + transit all work together with good land use mix, a moderate density, and a number of connected pedestrian streets and public space.
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Portland, Maine closed several streets to vehicular traffic for dining but barricaded them with concrete blocks stacked on top of each other. Here, they have adapted, adding the skills and resources of the parks and rec department. Pic: Troy R Bennett for the Bangor Daily News
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If you could add 87 linear plazas to your city at once, save 100,000 jobs by removing asinine bureaucracy, remove thousands of parking spaces in your city in one fell swoop, and more permanently activate streets and sidewalks, would you? NYC just did.
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If you have a driveway, make it a garden you occasionally drive over.
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