Episode 97 w Mike Lydon (note: timestamps are probably just estimates due to music intro)

[00:00:00] John: Together in the neighborhood, for sure. I'm excited to try something to try and experiment, just to see how we can use this space better. It's getting cars off the street is really what the city needs. Let's make New York a pedestrian.
[00:00:11] Mike: We are standing in a little prince Plaza. It's a new demonstration Plaza here in SoHo New York City. And we're going to be testing this out for the next four Saturdays.
[00:00:27] John: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the active towns podcast conversations about creating a culture of activity. My name is John Simmerman. I'm the founder of the Active Towns Initiative and I'm honored to serve as your host each week on this podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's always wonderful to have you along for the ride.
This is episode number 97, and I'm excited to welcome Mike Lydon co-founder of Street Plans back onto the podcast for a quick chat about some of the amazing Plaza projects and street transformations. He and his firm have been involved with over the past 18 months. We also discussed some of the powerful changes.
He witnessed this past summer while traveling in Bordeaux and Paris. But before we roll into those discussions, please allow me a brief moment to say that this episode is being brought to you by the generous contributions of our donors, sponsors and monthly patrons on our Patreon page. Thank you so much, folks.
I simply couldn't do this without your support. If you two are in a position to make a donation and would be willing to do so, just head over to my website at activetowns.org and navigate to the donation page. It's also important to mention that there are a few other ways that you can really help support my efforts.
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Thank you all so much for tuning in and for whatever support you're able to provide. As I strive to grow this movement, to create a culture of activity for all ages and abilities. Okay, let's get rolling with my conversation with Mike Lydon
Hey Mike it's a wonderful to have you back on the act of towns, podcast.
[00:02:26] Mike: Thanks, John. It's great to be back. It's good to see you digitally again.
[00:02:30] John: Exactly. One of these days, we're actually going to get together again in person. I feel like we're in a little bit of a CNU Congress withdrawal.
Cause that's usually when I see you in person.
[00:02:41] Mike: I was going to say this has been our longest gap since maybe 2013 or 14, perhaps each other in real life. So yeah, we're due for a run.
[00:02:49] John: Yeah, definitely. And speaking of which. I was looking back to when our last conversation was, and it was 18 months ago.
So to say that the world has changed yet again, would be an understatement. What have you been up to in the last 18 months?
[00:03:05] Mike: It's a blur, to be honest, we've been extremely busy. I'm at the firm doing a range of really exciting projects. Some of which would have likely happened anyways without the pandemic and some that are very much been in response to that and cities and communities, seizing opportunities to create livelier safer, better streets.
And so we've been very engaged with that. And then personally we've had another child, so that's kept me plenty busy at home with a three and a half year old and an eight month old baby. Which is super exciting. So we're busy at both ends my wife and I.
[00:03:36] John: That's fantastic. Yeah. And what was interesting too, is that so w it was literally 18 months ago. So it was in April when we published the podcast the first time. And I was amused by some of the things that we were talking about in the sense that at that stage, we'd still didn't really know much about how the virus spread.
We were talking a lot about the apprehension of pressing buttons at crosswalks and things of that nature. We didn't know as much about the contagion the virus could be spread as easily with touch. We now know a little bit more about that, and we know that it's primarily an airborne and respiratory type of a virus and pandemic.
But it was very interesting too, to see the, even at that early stage, even in April of last year, we were seeing the shift, the paradigm shift over street space. I get the sense that it just got even more, it just, that snowball just kept rolling. Talk a little bit about that because you are right at the pointy edge of that movement to, to redefine and recreate what our streets are for.
[00:04:45] Mike: Yeah, you're right. We didn't know how long this was going to last. We didn't know all the details of transmission, but you could see that once the ball started to roll with cities, not just in the U S but around the globe, starting to take different measures to rethink and reallocate space in their streets that there was going to be a lot of that activity.
And I think that's, what's really interesting about how ideas and best practices spread is that it's very much these patterns get developed and cities play catch up with each other. And everyone thinks through what, how can they allocate resources to respond to a crisis. And that's exactly.
Many cities did around the globe and have continued to do. And it's been interesting to see some which have doubled down on those changes and are investing in those changes. Some are very much keeping things in play, but not necessarily committing to long-term rethinking of streets and public spaces.
And then other cities have reverted back in a number of ways to pre pandemic life. So there's definitely like those three buckets that are out there. And it's been interesting to be in New York because I'd put us somewhere in between the keeping things in place, but not quite yet marshaling the resources to fully seize this moment of, Hey let's take these things we've learned and let's put more intensive resources behind and accelerate them.
And I think that's really where I am locally. That's a really big opportunity that will hopefully come in to focus when the new Mayoral administration here in New York city gets into office on January one.
[00:06:14] John: Yeah. Now I, I also noted that at that stage in April of 2020 you were helping capture and document a lot of the activities that were out there, like a database.
I get the sense that you probably got really busy doing work and, but was that sort of the, that process of being able to collect was that on autopilot? Are people still putting information into that?
[00:06:41] Mike: Yeah. So that's a great question. Yeah, so I started to build a database of all these changes and organized it typologically to what different interventions that cities were doing.
And I certainly wasn't the only one who did that and there was maybe three or four other people that started roughly around the same time in keeping track of this. And so I got to the point where I couldn't keep up with it. And I started that in April or may. It was actually late March.
I started that. And then by middle of June, I just couldn't keep up with the changes and track it. And so wound up very happily giving over the spreadsheet control to a couple other folks who were basically stitching all the different databases together to keep track of the changes that were made during that period.
And I think what they are actively doing now is analyzing the results of all that work what has moved on to be permanent? What lessons have we learned, who's referred back to pre pandemic. And so that's, yeah, that's in someone else's hands, cause I really was happy to contribute.
I saw the need for it and thought this is something that is going to be a transformational shift and maybe need to be able to share those best practices. So I know that many people around the globe were accessing that spreadsheet and Google sheet. So you could see who was on it or how many people were using it at the time.
And there'd be oftentimes hundreds of people on. Spreadsheet at the same time through mid to late spring of 2020. So it was great to be able to contribute that and proud that people have taken that work and continue to dive into it.
[00:08:04] John: Yeah. Fantastic. And I think what would it be fun to do is for our audience here is to give a little bit of a visual of what it is you've been up to.
So Clarence with Street Films sent over the link for a recent film that he shot of one of your projects. So I won't introduce it at all. I'm just going to hit play and it's not very long, so we can, I think it's pretty, self-evident what this is all about.
[00:08:29] Mike: Uh we are standing in a little Prince Plaza. It's a new demonstration Plaza here. And SoHo New York city, and we're going to be testing this out for the next four Saturdays to communicate to folks in the neighborhood that there's a possibility of reclaiming even more space for the public, for walking, for sitting in for enjoying the beautiful architecture.
And we want people to be able to see it, to walk in it, to sit in it and really understand the long-term goals of district. What we've heard from people is there's like very few places to sit and relax while they're in the neighborhood, we have tons of visitors, but no public. They have four different suites that they're focused on prince street being the first I know that you've heard also people don't have a lot of places to sit in cell hall.
Now this gives you a place to have a cup of coffee or sit and talk to your friends. I think more importantly, it says we want open streets. This is a lot it's a very busy street in general. I'm going to sell all the time. I have a nice public space is just sit down.
Somebody that's lived in the neighborhood, we need something like this. I'm really looking forward to so we can all enjoy the streets of Soho. So come down and enjoy your witness and spend your money. And these are fun. These are cheap and comfy seats that you can move around. So we expect you'll be using them over the course of the day, moving them from circle to circle or pulling them up to the tables and chairs.
And I love it. And I love the color palette, all the blue, but the blue and the yellow lower streets.
So these fun little magnets and her going onto the tables and they are just a survey to get, share feedback from the public on what they think about these changes. We're getting ready to release a public realm, vision plan that will make some other recommendations for the broader Soho Broadway district.
We have a lot of buildings and a lot of people that come here, so we have to be creative and finding public spaces.
[00:10:18] John: So that was fun.
[00:10:19] Mike: It is a lot of fun. It was insane for us to organize the release of this new vision plan that we've been working on for 10 months with the Soho Broadway initiative and align that with the demonstration project.
But the opportunity was there to really showcase what's in the plan and the concepts and bring it to a much, much broader audience. You only reach so many people through a planning process and particularly during a pandemic we weren't able to get together with folks in the neighborhood personally.
So it's been really valuable for us as a platform to show, not just tell. And the response has been unbelievably positive as we predicted it would be because to Mark's point in the video, there just isn't space for people in this district. It's really overrun by, by cars. Despite it being one of those beautiful places to walk around in New York city.
Plazas like that and reusing streets is the opportunity. That is how we're going to enhance the public realm in this part of the city. Yeah, we're very excited about it.
[00:11:18] John: So what was really the driving force with this particular project?
[00:11:22] Mike: Well, I think it was certainly the need for it was, or the opportunity for it was accelerated by the pandemic.
If you've ever walked those streets in lower Manhattan, you've walked through Soho, particularly along Broadway, which is the main quarter that the BID oversees it's very uncomfortable particularly on the weekends or particularly at rush hour. There's a lot of through traffic driving west trying to get to the Holland tunnel.
And there was a lot of traffic coming from the north down Broadway also trying to access the tunnel. So between Broom Street. And Broadway, there's some real serious quality of life and business impacts to the district as popular as it is. And so the opportunity here was to rethink all of that, how the streets work, how transportation works, how the public space works, and to really set a framework and a vision for transforming Soho into a low traffic neighborhood.
And we've been very lucky to have a client here that is visionary to actually see. This has being possible, sees the vision is being really important to the work that they want to do as a small organization, there, there were three people plus a clean and safe team who's out there at daily picking up the garbage and removing graffiti, et cetera.
So they're under-resourced to take on this bold ambition, but I think they can get there and this will hopefully create the impetus for that. And we have great partners at the city of New York. We have people from the borough president, Gale Brewer, she was in that video.
She has been tremendously supportive of this initiative. The Department of Transportation has been very supportive of this initiative it's really gonna fall on them to take some of the big next steps. But I think we set the table pretty well for it.
[00:12:51] John: I pulled this photo up, is this also from that project?
[00:12:55] Mike: That is that project. from the hours of typically one to five or six o'clock on weekends this is the scene that you would have. On Prince Street Broadway, even busier. And you can see that before this project was installed or when this project is not in place, all those people are on those tiny sidewalks left and right.
And here in New York, we have a lot of construction all the time and scaffolding and old buildings are being rehabilitated. So that pinches the space even more. So you can see this street is already oversubscribed. And as I have mentioned over social media in the last couple of weeks but we counted in just one, three hour period.
We counted 9,000 people moving through this space 9,000 and then on a whole day, the street average is 4,500 people driving. Broadway sees 15,000 vehicles a day. Then many, many more times. In terms of people walking. So it's obvious, right? It's obvious what needs to be done.
This was not, this demonstration project is not technically challenging one. We weren't concerned about people not showing up and using it. This is probably the easiest place to just lay out a little bit of color and some tables and chairs and have them instantly used. It's been really great to get that response again from the community saying, we want this is really needed.
[00:14:05] John: Fantastic. For the benefit of those folks who are only listening in but even for those of us who have this video visual can you walk us through the different elements? I think it's fairly self-evident, but maybe there's some things that I'm just missing in, in looking at the shot.
[00:14:21] Mike:
We had a number of constraints with this project. So the reason why this is now easier to do than ever in New York city is because of the pandemic. You can apply and receive an open streets designation from the New York city department of transportation. Pretty easily. We had to find the line of best fit between what they're trying to achieve, which is consistency and impact over time of the program.
With the clients the BID their resources right there, again, they're three people. We were not able to paint the street at this time. We weren't able to make more interim changes yet. And so would that designation of the open street, they gave it to us at a minimum. They said you could the fewest times you can do this as four times in a row on a weekend.
And so we pick that just because of the lack of resources to manage and steward the space. We need to put those resources into play, which I can get to that later. We'll be done, but not yet. And then, so all those materials had to be 100% reversible, roll it up pack it away.
In fact, We're storing it. I won't tell you exactly what these materials are stored, but in a very clever location on street, just not to give it away, but there's a very clever place where approximate to this site, we have this stuff stored and then we can roll it out and set it up. And so you've got your blue turf circles the blues, a color that we use throughout the actual vision plan.
And it's the color of the bids. We wanted that to that kind of a visual consistency. You'll see the cones that. Yeah, intending to separate the high levels of cycling traffic that come through this corridor at peak hour that doesn't happen as you can see in this image. But I would say that largely cyclists have been really amenable to the change and have behaved.
And we've witnessed a couple of people yelling at pedestrians, but for the most part, it reads as a public space. It makes sense why it's there and people cycling tend to slow down and just take it as a space is right. But those cones are meant to indicate. Look there will be people cycling through here and create a little bit of a permeable barrier.
The tables and chairs are obviously what you see there and the umbrellas. We really don't need umbrellas on the street. It actually doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, but we really wanted a linear vertical visual pop right down the street. So as you walk through their section on the west or the east, you can look down the street and kind of see that, that line horizontality of the color.
Which offsets from the blue really nicely. And then we want some more fun elements to draw in kids and families to use the street, literally sit on the street sit on the circles and use those cushy yellow and orange seats, which are lightweight. I found out this weekend when my son was with me, that you can flip them over.
They make really great drums. Kids have seen the space and know exactly what to do with it. They're the ones who start to jump from circle to circle or slalom in between them making up games. They know how to jump on top of or stand or roll. Like they can roll their bellies over, back and forth on those orange and yellow cushion seats.
So it's seats. Nice. It's flexible, it's lightweight, it's fun and colorful. It's low cost. So it's been really quite easy. And I'd say it's the things you don't see, the images that we have created barricades either under the. That are your typical metal French barricade. And we then wrap those in sort of a mesh liner that is also branded with the circles and the blue and name the project as being little Prince Plaza.
So that is meant to reinforce it. This is a public space that you can come in and use it the way that you see fit and use that same materiality to create a large screen over the scaffolding. It's hard to see in this image from this vantage point, but there's that ugly scaffolding there. So we dropped in a very large screen to give the Plaza a backdrop and hide some of the aesthetic challenges that come with the scaffolding itself.
So those are the main components pretty simple. It takes about an hour to set up and about a half hour to break down.
[00:18:02] John: Wow. Very fun. And I did, when I saw the video of it the first time I was just like, all right, Mike, and I definitely gotta talk about this. There's no doubt.
[00:18:16] Mike: I'm very pleased with it.
it's a moment in time, I'd say in the last 18 months, really, since we talked last, where we've gone from doing projects here and there in New York city largely been working all over for more than a decade to really being able to align both personal things like starting a family.
And then with the pandemic being able to help organizations and collaborators here in the city, pivot their streets and public spaces. So it's been really exciting for me. It's been really edifying and it's it's challenging work in New York with all the different layers of bureaucracy, but so much of that has been cut and reduced and people's minds open to the kinds of things that we like to do in terms of delivering change and doing that quickly.
So it's been quite exciting and um,
[00:18:58] John: Yeah. When you look at not just in New York, but also in some of the other cities that, that you're working with, are you seeing that this is becoming easier to have these discussions?
[00:19:12] Mike: It is. Absolutely from when we started doing this work in earnest eight or nine years ago at that point there were no RFPs calling for tactical urbanism, right?
There was very few examples of communities doing this work with permission, with support, with staff, from staff resources from cities and now it's everywhere. Every every corner of the globe, communities doing this type of work where they're figuring out how to get things going faster and then putting the measures in place to be able to evaluate and pivot and then invest in, in future change. And that's that's really exciting the city, not the city, sorry. The country of New Zealand has a program called Innovating Streets Program, which comes from the national transport agency called Wakako Tahi.
Incredibly ambitious work. They in one year funded 70 plus projects around the country to make all sorts of changes to streets and public spaces. What's fascinating is that program was in place. Before the pandemic, or was about to be announced and launched before the pandemic. So really early 2020, and then the pandemic happened and they quickly pivoted the program and the reason behind the program to support the need for physical distancing on our streets and our public spaces, which is amazing.
And exactly the point is be able to be that flexible, to think of this as a tool that can respond to something as terrible as a pandemic and in bad times, but also in good times, be a way to accelerate the change that cities need to undertake, to offset climate change, to be more inclusive, to be safer an active.
So yeah it's been incredible in the last less than a decade to see that shift go from nobody asking for this work. And I was just trying to beat that drum as loudly as we could to just being too busy servicing the work that we're doing now. So it's great.
[00:20:55] John: Fantastic. Yeah. And I want to pull up another image here that that you shared with me. I get, get a sense that this is a little bit about what you're talking about in being able to codify and have some tools available. And I guess that's right in the title there, materials and tools and equipment library.
Talk a little bit about this program because I get the sense that this is exactly what you're alluding to.
[00:21:20] Mike: Exactly John. So this is a very new project. We also worked on this over the course of 2021, and this was just released last week with the office of planning in Washington, DC and funded by the metropolitan Washington council of governments, which is the MPO for the Washington metropolitan area.
It was a resource that is really seen as the next important step for public space in Washington, DC. They have done a lot of work around public life. They've worked a lot with Gehl and others to study public life, to bring activation to public spaces, I'd say really over the last seven or eight years.
And we've done a little bit of that work with them as well, but it really became a need to better support local neighborhood groups and residents. At the very small scale of the block, right? Just being able to provide the actual materials, the actual tools to move on projects and public space.
And so we define the kind of typology with them on the kinds of public spaces. We went through a lot of the different types of resources and equipment and tools that are needed for community members to do this work. And really are trying to empower small groups rather than BIDS know how to do this work and larger advocacy organizations know how to do this work.
So this is useful for them, but really this is for for neighborhood residents and block associations and under-resourced nonprofits and others who are doing good community work to get access to things that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. So there's a very strong sort of equity component to this project.
And so the idea is that it lives now as a sort of digital library and resource. The next step is to maybe even partner with the DC public library system to start to embed these tools materials and equipment at libraries themselves, or maybe at community rec centers where anybody could check out the materials and go use them and then bring them back.
And that's of the next step and let's work what we're envisioning as part of this program.
[00:23:16] John: Fantastic. And I gave a quick little snapshot of what the next thing I was going to ask you about was it looks like you're helping with the additional active transportation plans and other types of programs and initiatives like that.
[00:23:29] Mike: Yeah. And New Haven has been interesting. I'd say it's probably one of the only projects that we have. Here at the firm that really got put on pause for quite some time with the pandemic. We actually started this work as a first phase back in 2019, and this is working with a a CDC grant. So coming from the federal government that got distributed to a nonprofit called Care, which is really a healthcare organization and service providing organization in New Haven that works in the what's been identified as the six most vulnerable neighborhoods around public health outcomes.
And so they have they're the recipient of this grant. And so we've been working with them as well as the city of new Haven who also threw in a lot of resources into this effort to create the city's first citywide active transportation plan. And we started, like I mentioned, a minute ago, we started in 2019.
We did six different demonstration projects or not really demonstrations, but pilot projects. And the idea there. Let's go work with volunteers out of these different communities. He's these six that are the most underserved with terms of safe streets and public space and public health outcomes. Let's get these projects in the ground quickly, just as a showcase for what can be done as well as a kind of lead in to the larger work that we've done now in phase two, which is this actual transportation plan.
And this is focused on cycling, walking and making the bus experience better for all in the city. And so this has not yet been formally released. We actually had a big public meeting in a local park where we had a great turnout a couple of weeks ago, and we were unveiling all the concepts and a lot of the ideas that are in the plan, but the plan itself will be released for public consumption as a draft, probably sometime in the next week.
So we're not quite there yet, but we're close. New Haven is one of these places where it's an older, new England city, it's got a grid of streets. It's already very walkable. You've got 3% cycling mode share, which is not as high as we want it to be. But for US, it's a pretty good starting point for us city high walking mode share.
So you've got a lot of good things to work with in terms of the built environment that's there. And what really, what this plan needs to do is get the political will behind it to start to really further invest in safer streets. And I think we'll get there pretty quickly with the city with a very supportive mayor and staff.
[00:25:44] John: Yeah, good stuff. It older cities that are scratching at trying to reclaim their streets and Victor was on last week and talked about. Paris becoming Paris yet again, trying to reclaim the fact that until the automobiles took over it was a completely different scenarios, completely different situation.
And the same with these older US cities we're seeing that same type of struggle of whether you're talking Providence, Rhode Island or new Haven, it's a situation where it's trying to come go back to the future. You need go back to what the built environment used to be like, or felt like in, in many ways.
Now you spent a fair amount of time in, in France this summer, correct?
[00:26:34] Mike: I did. Yes.
[00:26:35] John: Talk a little bit about that because I think that you were probably a little bit like a kid in the candy store when you were in certain parts of the country. Given the fact that Paris is really doubling down on making big changes.
I was there in 2015 documenting their very first car free streets day, and I know a lot has changed since then.
[00:26:58] Mike: Yeah, no it's it's such a phenomenal place and now it's not just Paris that's doing this work and France. Yeah, it was a couple other examples. We were on an island, just off the the coast the west coast of France this summer.
And they it's an island where most of the landscape is salt farming actually. So they, the, all these irrigated saltwater pools that they create salt that of right. They harvest salt. And so these massive white mountains of salt in these pools throughout the whole center of this island, and there's these villages that kind of ring the outside of these wonderful beaches and the entirety of the island is linked together with the cycle paths.
So you can get everywhere on a bike from these villages and from beach to beach and town to town, it's really it's really quite amazing. So there's things like that you find and France, or many other European contexts. I Really hadn't been stitched together in the way that, that we do it here in the U S yet, at least not at the scale that you see it there.
But I was so impressed with Bordeaux and the work that's been done there, the public spaces, the transit the car-free spaces the plazas and I learned while I was there, that work has been done largely in the last decade, that Bordeaux is not a place that you would think of for walking, cycling or transit or public spaces that it's really completely reinvented itself in the last decade.
And so it's really inspiring to be in a place that is not Paris, right? This is a city of 250,000 so much more at that Providence new Haven scale. That in a decade's time could do what they've done. So seeing that as an example that's not that's not that context of Barcelona or London or Paris is really important, I think in terms of learning about how smaller cities are doing this level of.
But of course Paris has been it's been so exciting to me for a long time, but I think in the last couple of years, the work that they've accelerated in their squares and public spaces, they've turned whole large intersections and auto dominated roundabouts into squares like literal car-free squares and spent millions of dollars investing in that.
They've got all the cars kicked out of the highways along the Seine the reducing the speed limits. They're about to remove 70,000 on street parking spaces to free up even more space. They're already known for their cafe and street life. But now they've been doing a lot more of that in the curb lane as part of the pandemic and then the Corona piece, which are their their bikeway network.
They had 50 kilometers of bike lanes that they. To fill in gaps in the network as part of their response to the pandemic. And I'd say the signature street there, Rue de Rivoli, which is really the, one of the major east west streets that goes right along the sentence, right by the loop. So huge visibility, huge amount of foot traffic, huge amount of car traffic.
They used to have 29,000 cars a day on this street. And they've completely inverted the relationship of mobility and human beings on that corridor. So instead of having multiple lanes for buses and trucks and cars to share, and a little slice of the street for pedestrians and cycling, they've inverted that, so that there's only a one little narrow single lane for buses and taxis.
And then the whole rest of the street is basically a two-way bike lane and pedestrian space. And they now are seeing over 13,000 cyclists a day on that corridor where there used to be 29,000 cars. And that number just keeps on growing. And I think when I talked about the three different. Kind of responses and where we are in this moment with the pandemic they're on the side, where you can see on the same street, the yellow markings and the yellow delineators and signage that they use for their Corona piece, their temporary bike lanes on the same street, you can see them maintaining that for construction, but then the construction happening at right next to it, where the sidewalks are torn up and the permanent protected bike lanes are already being made on these quarters where they had infilled with this temporary network.
And so they're transitioning that system already a year into their 18 months into that program. So it's it's happening there and at such a scale and speed that I know that makes a lot of residents uncomfortable we go to France a lot because my wife is French and her father lives in Paris.
He's somebody who has a very nuanced opinion about all these things, but we have lots of fun conversations and debates about the impact. And what's good. What's not in terms of the street design, but the point is that they're doing it right there. They're ready for getting themselves more ready for the climate emergency.
And we need to see more big cities out there and small cities doing that work.
[00:31:17] John: Yeah, I had heard that that Bordeaux was heading in that direction and really striving to make a difference. It's good to hear that that it seems like it accelerated even during the pandemic, I've had a chance to make it to Strasburg.
And so I th they, of course are a little bit influenced because of their proximity to Germany and to the Netherlands. But Bordeaux was a little bit of a reach to try to make it to when I was there in 2015. So it's good. Next time, for sure. Now do you know what they did to really help activate the the infrastructure or was it just build it in.
And the pent up demand was really there.
[00:31:54] Mike: I think it was a number of things. I'm certainly not an expert on the history of what's transpired there over the last decade or so, but I was told one of the very first steps was to clean the facades of the buildings. Bordeaux has, I think historically in the country been known as a little Paris because a lot of the architecture is very similar and they have some kind of key, major boulevards that are basically Paris, but two or three stories shorter in height.
So hence mini Paris and all those facades were dirty. They were covered in soot and they were covering air pollution and particles and all the things that come out of tailpipes. And so there was a mayor I'm sure a majority of council is supportive of just like really rethinking look, we're not gonna attract people here.
Aren't gonna attract investment. If. Buildings looked in G we are dominated by cars and it's ruining the architecture of our city. And so they cleaned all the facades and spent a lot of resources on that and unveiled this gleaming white city that people hadn't seen for decades. And then as part of that work started to invest in a tram network to interconnect major destinations around the city and then investing in the public spaces.
So they have really incredible old medieval center and many of those streets are either shared space or they're or they're car-free. And all the plazas and squares are enlivened by great cafes and retail and restaurants everything being human scale, and really just a lovely place to walk from square to square.
And then on their riverfront, they've invested tremendous. On making this very long linear public space that includes one of the coolest fountains that I've ever seen, which is very long big rectangle right at the center of the city on the waterfront. And there's this very like thin layer of water and then every 15 minutes or so it the water runs again and it slowly drains and then it runs again.
And so it's something where like a kid my son, Luca, who at the time was six months old. You can have him just sit there in the summer in the in the fountain and it's perfectly appropriate for him, but there's a whimsical nature to the space and a beauty of the space that someone who's an urban design, a steep like myself can really take pleasure and just taking it all in.
And it just attracts a huge diversity of people from around the city to go to that space, particularly on, on warm days, which was quite warm while we were there. That thin layer water as well, reflecting. The historic architecture across the street. It's just, it's this really incredible linear space that we don't see a lot of waterfronts like that in the United States, particularly those that have emerged in the last decade as they've really transitioned from industrial use on the river to to public realm public space.
[00:34:33] John: What a great point though, too, of talking about do the basic things first clean the soot off of the buildings from probably decades worth of automobile exhaust and other types of smoke that is polluting the city and So start with the basics give the city a good cleaning before moving forward.
Talk a little bit about the design of the cycle network that is going in place. What I'm looking for here is are they following the Dutch model of the protected and separated, and then when there is shared space, we're looking at extremely low motor vehicle speeds.
[00:35:10] Mike: Are you talking about Bordeaux or Paris or Bordeaux?
[00:35:13] John: Yeah, I was thinking more of the smaller example when I was in Paris they were already started with the protected infrastructure and and some of the separated infrastructure. And I'm assuming that just got accelerated at even grander scale.
[00:35:28] Mike: Yeah. I can touch upon Paris in a minute, but Bordeaux has so many tiny streets in the city center that you don't see a lot of protected infrastructure because it's it's not needed. You've got a lot of these streets that are shared space there maybe 10 feet wide at most, no parking right in the city center, everything's basically off street. So you get walking space, sidewalk, space, and then you've got either a very low curb or no curb at all.
So cycling happens very naturally in those environments. I think what I'd heard from a few locals is that there's still some concern about speed of cyclists and that environment. But for the most part, that city center is shared in that manner. And then as you get a little bit further out, you're getting.
Along the riverfront, for example, there's a two way network that's emerged along the corridor, which is pretty common along waterfronts, right? Unbroken space in terms of intersection. So the concerns you have with two-way facilities doesn't really exist in that context.
And it links all the way down to a major new bridge, which crosses over to the other side of the river and a system that is basically like a riverfront trail. That brings people back to one of the city's main bridges, the other direction. So they've got this nice center loop along the riverfront. It actually reminds me a little bit of what in your city in Austin, where they've really done a good job connecting the waterfront with paths.
But then from there, it's a bit of a mix you can see they've got some of the sharing of lanes, which doesn't really work very well. You've got some protected network that's one way so directional, right? With the direction of travel for the most part where those facilities exist. And then you've got a lot of like streets that are that are major, that don't have that infrastructure yet.
So I think the cycling has been very popular and common in the core, but I think they've got work to do as they build out that network further to the edges of the city.
[00:37:13] John: And then since we brought it up on Paris the transformation, when I was there in 2015, I felt like the protected infrastructure was just okay. Having just been to, to spend a few days in Strausberg, it was certainly nowhere near as advanced in terms of the comfort and the level of safety that you felt on the streets.
But quite honestly mostly it was just the streets and the boulevards, where there were a lot of cars that was the biggest.
[00:37:45] Mike: Yeah was Paris as I've been explaining. So when I was there, I got to go on this really amazing three hour bike tour to see all these changes with a colleague who works for it would be the equivalent of RPA, right?
It's a regional think tank that does work around the whole Paris metropolitan area. So not just the core city. And he's been a part of these changes for quite some time. He had all this institutional knowledge, which was great. And he walked me through and cycled me through three different generations of bikeways in the city.
And a lot of it started with sharing bus lanes with and bike lanes. So basically that space was curved and protected from moving car. But as a cyclist, you you you're still meant to share that with buses which is not super comfortable, those buses are running with any frequency. And then the sec, next generation really moved to being on the sidewalk and carving space away from the sidewalk, which I think was also not ideal because not having any differentiation and height or enough differentiation of material, you just had a lot of conflicts that were emerging with pedestrians.
And the lanes themselves are quite narrow and not meant to handle the volume of cycling that's happening there now, which is again, been something that's completely exploded over the last 18 months. And so those lanes feel very uncomfortable now because they're not wide enough and you're squeezing a lot of things into a limited.
Real estate they're third generation is directional for the most part. They are most often separated by some sort of curbing or barrier element that makes it much more clear that spaces for cycling and the lanes themselves are wider. I think there's concern that there's still not wide enough, but there are certainly wider than that second generation.
So being able to ride that and see the difference was key. You understanding how those facilities get resolved as they move through squares and plazas that basically they mostly drop away and you're meant to share that space and make sure that pedestrians have priority. At least that's the thinking or that's the hope And then you're still, definitely seeing those challenges, John, at the intersections where all three generations come into these major junctions and they don't do a whole lot to protect cyclists. At the intersection, there's not enough splitting of the signals in terms of phasing for cyclists and pedestrians, and there's no protected intersection.
Turning movements are a challenge and issue and you know, where those major boulevards cross each other, they're very large intersection. So you still very much feel exposed and you very much feel like you are impinging on pedestrian space at the intersections themselves. So there's still a lot of work to be done there, but there certainly have improved the design over the last decade pretty tremendously.
[00:40:24] John: Yeah. And I would say, yeah not wide enough based on some of the videos that I'm seeing out of Paris right now. It's wow. It's amazing. How quickly the numbers have come. So I hope that seeing those, that number of people riding bikes out there that'll really help them to try to figure out those intersections really fast.
[00:40:45] Mike: Yeah. I think that will be, that's definitely the hope and goal. I think of advocates and planners and whatnot, but at the trajectory they're going, I was more enamored with the route of Rivoli example, which was literally just give to everyone in the space, like the whole street and then carve off a small segment.
The cars. So there's a car lane, like there's a bike lane today on most of the American streets like that little sliver and let them deal with that issue and the, that the cyclists have pedestrians have more free reign of a much larger percentage of the street. If you do it that way, then you don't need as many issues investments and changes infrastructure at the intersections.
You don't need as much physical protection. It just works a lot better and more smoothly in a lot of ways. So I'm keen to see cities try that strategy here in north America. Like literally just take a couple east west, north, south quarters, run through a city and just do it on one street, doing a one corridor or two corridors and feed into that system where you could have a total bike and pedestrian priority street that is a major avenue or thoroughfare. And you will see, I think, tremendous gains in riding if that were to be the.
[00:41:51] John: Yeah, that's a good point. You're completely flipping the narrative here rather than just trying to create space for people who are not driving a motor vehicle.
You're just saying no we're flipping this around. We're going to do what we can to maybe accommodate you if you happen to show up in a motor vehicle. But primarily the prioritization is definitely going to be people walking and biking.
[00:42:14] Mike: Yeah. It's the least expensive way to do it as well.
In terms of just thinking about budget. And I know that probably sounds radical to most Americans or north Americans, but if you think about. Almost every single street being, not just accessible, but dominated by cars. It seems like we could start with a few different key corridors and connections where the cars are the guests.
And we totally invert that relationship. So I'm fascinated by that opportunity and that idea and that way to approach it. And it takes this notion of a bike lane and it blows it up. It just becomes a bike street. I think we've seen some of that in other European countries.
They've definitely played with that design typology, but it's hard to see that example in such a major car dominated corridor as the route Rivoli once was right. I It's just so symbolic that, and really just evaporated the traffic along the Seine right along the very center of the city.
I forget the exact number, but they've seen a huge reduction in VMT and car trips in the city center in Paris. And they're still happening. You still see cars. It's not, it's definitely not like this total Nirvana when you're there, but it's so much different now than it was a decade ago and so much different than it was 18 months ago.
In terms of the, there were people using the streets on bike.
[00:43:27] John: Yes, the great law of of traffic evaporation. if you build a welcoming places for people to walk and bike and take transit and it becomes a little bit, okay, let's be honest. If it becomes really a pain in the butt to, to drive it, it's amazing how a traffic just evaporates.
It goes away. It disappears
[00:43:47] Mike: Our entire Soho public ground vision plan is based on that single principle that we will divert away. And eventually those numbers come down. A lot in conjunction, obviously with that, with a lot of other policies and tools that are at our disposal, but we can build these low traffic environments if we want to, but we have to believe in that principle.
[00:44:03] John: Yeah. Looking forward into the rest of 2021 and into 2022, what are you excited about?
[00:44:10] Mike: Um, I'm excited. I think for the work that's been done in the last 18 months to really start to normalize itself I think that broader and as much more broader than just mobility, right? We've talked a lot about public spaces, but we haven't talked a lot about parks, I think parks are been such an underappreciated asset in the American community for so long and the pandemic shine a really bright light on park space. And I think here in New York city our parks system is very under-invested in, and we're seeing massive calls for investment in that system.
So I just think seeing resources, marshaled politically behind this need, that's been there all along, but now having a lot more political will, I hope built to invest in parks, in public spaces, in transit. Hopefully it's going to be there. And I know that's a really, it's really patchy in the U S.
And where that's being accelerated, where it's not, but it certainly is something that I'm excited about and the opportunity that's out there with the work that we do with the communities. So that's exciting. I'd say for us, we've got a lot of really exciting projects that are about to be implemented.
We've worked on a little, really exciting things in the last couple of years, but I'd just say stay tuned for a project in Culver city, which will be implemented before the year's out major corridor overhaul and proposed to be one of three major corridor overhauls that put a lot of the principles we've been talking about today.
And to practice. So that's going to be one that's fun to watch and fun to see how that progresses. And then I'm excited about our team. We've built a really great team street plans. It's taken a decade to get the work at the scale and the level of resources that we have now with our team and teaming.
And that's been really edifying and we've got just a great group here and I've loved working with them every day and just want to continue finding ways to for all of us to make an impact. That's what we, as we're all about
[00:45:58] John: Now, when you say Culver city is in the Los Angeles area.
Wow. That's exciting.
[00:46:05] Mike: Yeah, it is. Yeah, starting let's see, the second week, I believe in November, we'll be out there almost our full team installing a corridor redesigned for cycling for. Bus transit and very large curb extensions and murals that our team has designed for the street.
So it's bringing all the things together that we work on. Oftentimes individually sometimes we're doing intersection redesigns or working on pedestrian space or sometimes we're working on the bike network piece. Sometimes we're working on making the bus work better and be more comfortable.
But this project has all those components in one and very sort of supportive political environment to, to try these things. So it was born from the pandemic in a lot of ways, but also I think is going too far out last, the sort of initial impetus for the work and we're almost there get this thing installed.
So we're excited.
[00:46:53] John: All right. Let's let's pull up one last photo and we'll end to where we started, which was on some visuals of the Plaza is that that you've been working with. So I think that this is a, this is another different project in a different scene. So I'll pull this up and I'll have you walk us through what's going on here.
So this is a neat overhead that's happening here. Tell us about this one.
[00:47:16] Mike: Sure. So this is called Nomad Piatsa, and this is another project here in New York city, also on Broadway, just further north from the Soho project. And this is between 25th and 27th street. And the client here in collaborator was the Flat Iron, a Business Improvement District.
So they're called the Flat Iron Partnership and they oversee all the public spaces and streets in their district, which recently has doubled in size. And this was an opportunity that kind of came up very quickly as a collaboration. And the BID had been working, I believe in a pro bono way with AIA.
So the American Institute of architects chapter here in New York city to develop some ideas and concepts for what's been called Nomad Piatsa. And these two blocks have been open for dining and for public space as an open street for the last year or more, I should say over a year. You had all the old striping on the street, still had cars parking on the street.
It didn't feel like a Plaza and the. The Flat Iron Partnership has invested in creating some really wonderful spaces in around Madison square. That's completely transformed street space into public space largely to be car-free. So I don't have to be shared space over the last 10 years. And this is like the next this is the next project to do exactly that and they wanted to test it out for a month.
So this is what we call a seasonal street in New York city. It's when you can do this for a season and observe how it works and then take those learnings and then go to the next level. And I think that's really the goal here with the Piazza's to see the feedback that it gets to see how it works for businesses, for operations, for pedestrians, how the cyclist share the space.
And the bids have been learning about. I'm at large, I have a phone I've heard has been a tremendous success. So we worked with them to help design what you see there. Just the pattern, the paint, and then help them execute the project. And so we started talking about this project to the end of August, and then we installed it at the end of September.
So it moved within a month. We went from, Hey, would you like to help with this project to us all out there with blue paint on our shoes getting this one done. It's been a very exciting project for us, right? On random Broadway or in the heart of New York city.
[00:49:25] John: I had to laugh at the motorcycle hit that's in this photo,
[00:49:29] Mike: Right. That's actually, I think it's a, it's an electric delivery bike. And so you see a lot of those. Yeah. You see a lot of those and that's actually been one of the challenges with this project is that as it closed more and more of the the Broadway to through traffic, it gets a lot of not just southbound.
Cycling, which there's a protected bike lane all along Broadway through th through this part of the city, but now it's getting a lot of northbound way cycling traffic. So there's a very strong desire line because of the way that Broadway works and the way the surrounding bike network works to have those north out movements.
And so I think that's one of the biggest takeaways from this is that the cycling has to be better accommodated with those two way movements. And to do that will be a little bit complicated because the the blocks are so short north south in this part of Manhattan. So you get a lot of intersections.
And so really thinking through how to do that effectively on Broadway and not just to here in Flat Iron, but further north through Harold Square to Times Square up to Columbus circle and Central Park where there's a real down to Union Square. There's this real connection that can be made there. And there's a huge amount of foot traffic, right?
Integrate cycling's at higher rates safely with space that's in very high demand for pedestrian. So it's going to be the coming, I think, conversation and challenge in terms of redesigning this more permanently,
[00:50:44] John: right? Any final thoughts that you want to make sure to leave the audience with?
[00:50:49] Mike: Geez, John, I don't know. That's I said a lot of thoughts already about what are you excited about in the coming a year where the work that you're doing and advocating for? What are you seeing out there? You talked to all these people are doing great things around the country, in the world.
So what are you seeing?
[00:51:02] John: I think it's really a magnification of some of the things that we've just been talking about. And as well as one of the things that Victor had mentioned last week in the episode was the fact that some smaller incremental things are starting to take hold and really that opportunity to do things quickly.
So I think it's a lot of what we talked about 18 months ago of can you do it lighter, quicker, cheaper? Can you try to take down some of the barriers that are in place within cities so that There can be some flexibility. There can be some trialing, there can be some piloting, but then at the same time, I know that we need to move quickly on some big initiatives.
And so I'm very excited to see the Paris's of the world and the Barcelona's of the world that are making big, huge, bold steps as well. So it's that combination of the smaller stuff that's happening that is helping to create, I think some momentum. And then at the same time, seeing some bold leadership globally that is taking place.
And yeah I'm excited at the direction that we're heading, but I feel that sense of urgency that we need to move forward with some big results.
[00:52:15] Mike: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's exactly it. And w where there needs to be a lot of work. Yes. Making the small things and the quick things easier to do still, there's still a lot of work to be done.
There. And of course we've be focused on that for a decade plus now, but what I'm seeing in that scene as in the last couple of years is there needs to be a much more intentional pipeline. That's established a process that's established that looks at those incremental and temporary pilot projects and changes and backfills them with a process to make them permanent creating the criteria during the budgets.
And they have the capital process to deliver transformation. We have literally no time to waste on these projects with the superblock proposal in Barcelona. That's, it's amazing it's setting the bar, but I think Barcelonians the politics are such that they feel that urgency because it is urgent and we need more cities to feel that urgency and build the system to make sure we're connecting the dots between yeah, that was a great temporary one block plaza.
And we painted a couple of times over 10 years, and now we're thinking about redoing it to, Hey, that was successful for nine months. In two years time, that's going to be completely rebuilt and we'll be car-free space. And for the reducing emissions, creating more equity and access to open space and creating a better environment for business, right?
Like we're not there yet. Many cities really struggle with that pipeline and making that connection. And I think that's where a lot of work has to be done next. So yeah, I guess you asked for some parting thoughts that those are them.
[00:53:40] John: Good stuff. I love it, man. Hey, thank you so much, Mike, for joining me once again on the active towns podcast.
[00:53:47] Mike: Thanks John.
[00:53:56] John: Thank you all so much for tuning in to episode number 97 of the active towns podcast. I really hope you found this chat with Mike inspiring. I'm always amazed by the impressive projects and designs. He and his fabulous team pull off and come up with to learn more about his firm's street plans and to access some of the fabulous visuals featured in this episode.
Be sure to check out the links in the show notes and more importantly, over on the landing page for this episode activetowns.org.
Well, that's all for this week's episode, but first it's time for my final weekly reminder and request to help me grow the culture of activity movement. Please consider making a donation to Active Towns, spreading the word and subscribing thank you all so much for your support and for tuning in until next time.
This is John signing off by wishing you much activity healthy and happiness. Cheers!