20mph/30kph Zones

Quite a bit has been written in regards to the English "20" mph zones.  These are typically residential or commercial areas of low auto traffic and low speed by design.  What auto traffic there is, is required to travel at not more than 20mph.  These zones are typically dead end or limited access for drivers and so are self fulfilling in terms of reducing auto trips, however they commonly maintain through routes for pedestrians, cyclists, and sometimes transit.

These zones can be found all over Europe and even in the US. NYC is experimenting with 20mph zones and is slowly rolling them out.  Article on the progress in NYC from Streetsblog Here.  England has been rolling them out for a number of years under the "20 is plenty [for us]."

However, the undeniable champion and proponent of these low speed streets has been the Netherlands and their Woonerf (Living Street, or Home Zone).  I will pass you over to David at "A view from the cycle path" and his article about these zones so you can read up a bit more on them.  A second article from "A view".

These zones are typically connected with 20mph (18kph in metric countries) roads which are clearly marked as such and designate entry (there is no mistake or I didn't see the sign here).  In The Netherlands these are residential areas and very limited access, but usually provide quick connections for bikes and folks walking.

These are great and need to be implemented here but it is typically harder since the roads in these "Home Zones" need to be designed for "walking speed" and I am pretty sure that would blow the head off many engineers and planners on this side of the Atlantic.

The point of all this is not just to let you know about these areas and there benefits (of which there are tons!) but to showcase an example in Spain.  I visited my girlfriend as she was teaching in northern Spain back last April.  This is Santoña, a small village to the east of Santander.  She worked at a school here back in 2010.  This was installed between the time I visited here in 2010 and when I came back in 2011. Their main commercial area had already been pedestrianized with limited access but this was new, I will have more on their commercial center in the near future.

Sign roughly translated:  "Shared/coexist zone with preference given to pedestrians" 

I love this sign.  The main commercial corridor for the town is just after this section and within the shared zone.  There is a school just a bit out of the photo too.

Here is a raised crossing of a different surface with clear "give way" lines in red and white.  I love the sign the most though, basically I translate that to "attention, kids playing in the street"  12mph max and pedestrians(people) have the right of way.
This is a one way section that use to be two way and was converted as part of the redesign.  You can visit it on Google Maps Here (warning: bad imagery and no streetview so not so useful)

We need to implement 20mph zones in the US, every community across the country can benefit from these. However, we also need to do more since implementing a 20mph zone does not really cut it or equal what the Europeans are typically doing.  We need "Living Streets" areas that are designed for walking speed where kids are free to play and separation by mode is not needed.  Areas that provide pleasant connections for residents as well as others walking and bicycling through. Safe areas for everybody.

Yes we need to get good pedestrians and bicycle infrastructure on the main roads that is critical, but quite a bit can be done by focusing on these "living streets" that can get people out and moving.

At the end of the day that is what is critical, getting people outside going places under their own power; safely.


If you would like larger copies of this picture please send me an email or add a comment and I will gladly provide.  All images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

An old, new Breezer

(click for larger image)

From Plattsburgh late February 2010. A Breezer in a box!

Bought from the great guys at Harris Cyclery in January of last year.

High Line NYC update

I don't think I mentioned this when it happened, so I will now. back in the late summer of 2009 I was in NYC and took the time to take pictures of the recently opened HighLine Park. You can read my review and see many more pictures of that visit Here.

In the meantime around December of last year I was contacted by a magazine editor for an Italian magazine that covers various topics. They wanted to use my photo in the print version of their magazine as a highlight for some notes on urban renewal. They found it via Flickr, where I typically upload all my photo's for the blog.

After some edits later, it was published, I have the hard copies in Italian. I was able to find the article on their website, but the picture was different for the online version, so I can't show you until I get a chance to scan it.

It is nice to have something published though, for sure!

Hey, how about a photography post!

Image courtesy of Paulo Brandão via flickr

I did want to work in photography to this blog more than I have, and while it has happened to a degree when talking about food or certain infrastructure, my photography, or the photography of others, has not come up too often.

So it was with great excitment that I saw this post over at Treehugger on HDR (high dynamic range) photography
HDR from Wikipedia

...high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight

I had heard about HDR before, and I am sure I saw some examples, but I had mostly forgotten what it truly looked like and the amazing beauty of it.

The pictures in this slideshow are of natural settings and not man made, unlike the photography that graces the start of this post. It is almost another world like in its quality and colors, I wish I had the equipment and the knowledge to do something like this!

So please follow the link over to the slideshow at Treehugger.com on HDR photography and be amazed!

Note, each image has a an artist on flickr that you can link to and see more of their work, look in the lower right for the link. I highly encourage this, as their work is gorgeous!

HDR Photography on Treehugger

Pictures at last!

Well as promised, a day or so late but here nonetheless. These are pictures of the wonderful goodies produced in my kitchen Sunday night. The food I linked to in this post, Multi-modal food transfers. I Will try to bring the camera into the butter making process next time and get some pictures of the process, but I don't know. It will take some work to do that and involve me not making butter at 10pm. The first picture is the butter made from 32oz of heavy Organic Valley cream (sold at the north country co-op) and the second is the buttermilk pancakes I made from scratch, with a little OV milk in the background.

enjoy!

I made this in two batches due to the amount of cream I used, and the limits of my containers.


a wonderful dinner was made with honey and a bit of that butter!!

An Endless Summer

For those who pay attention (I think its just Jim left now really :P ) I do cover photography work, both mine and others, here. Its been awhile since I have done something in-depth but since loosing all my work from Washington DC I have been in a bit of a slump, not to mention midterms just passed and I am headed toward the end of the term faster than a zoobomber!

However I want to point interested parties over to the wonderful folks at EcoVelo. Now as a photographer, I envy Alen, who is the main contributor to the blog, man does he take some good shots! He has beautiful situations, with excellent colors and boosted contrasts; I know he does work in Photoshop to give his images that extra boost but none the less wow!

This time though, he has opened up the Endless Summer Contest to any member of the general public anywhere in the world to submit their best photos of an endless summer. I wish I had some for him really, but alas I don't think I do, anyway that does not prevent you from heading over and submitting something! I will make a note here once the contest ends and the voting rounds begin, and voting is very much worthy of your time.

He posts 4-5 entrants a day and will post ever-single entrant he gets, there is a 5-day backlog at the moment but nonetheless. There are also tons of cool prizes from lots of well-known companies!

Please take the time and navigate over there and enjoy the beauty that is EcoVelo and enjoy these summer photographs as that cold north wind starts to blow.

I have 3 food reviews in the pipeline and will be going up in the next 2 or so days, I also will do a bit on the DC bike sharing initiative, there will be pictures, just not mine unfortunately :(

Profile Image

so for those that noticed (all 1 of you out there) I managed to get myself up a nice (I think so) profile picture(click for full size!!) its very exciting!. For a bit of background on it, the picture is taken outside the walls of Cardiff Castle in Cardiff, Wales. There are huge expansive gardens surrounding the castle and the river. The shadows were right, the time was good, and it was my last few hours so I thought hey why not! It was also yet another opportunity to show off me and the Velocampus bike in yet another location. Part of the whole reason I did show off the bike so much was my work right before I left on a case study for Sustrans and the Velocampus Leeds programme, there will be more on that a bit later, and I will post and link here once the study has been compiled and is online. I did some contrast and colour boost of that in Photoshop, in case you were wondering

the Park is Bute Park

Google Maps

A little bitty rant

For something not so off-topic for me, but way off-topic for this blog so far, I shall introduce you to some of the ladies on the Putney farm. For those that don't know, I am currently working at the Putney School in Putney Vermont, apprentice teaching photography, but because of my interest in agriculture I help out down at the farm bit of the campus every once in a bit. Yes I do this for fun, and yes 5am is early. So the farm has about 60head of dairy cows, of different breeds, these are milked 2 times a day, 6am and then around 4 in the afternoon. There are sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and a large veg patch as well but the cows are where I typically help out. Most of the job involves shoveling shit, you start the morning cleaning out the gutters behind each cow, this involves a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and needs to be done quickly and with open eyes because they can shit on you at any time. It then progresses to haying, feeding, cleaning the utters, attaching the milking machine, and then getting them back out again, and shoveling the shit they produced while you were feeding, haying, and milking. The younger ones, that do not go out to pasture, require other things but usually it’s a whole lot of shoveling shit and laying down fresh sawdust. Its great work and certainly works up an amazing appetite for breakfast, and certainly makes you appreciate that milk even more.

So how does this relate? Well small-scale dairy farms are hurting very much thanks to the giant Midwest factory farms where most of your milk (in the US) comes from, and the artificially low prices that they create. However it’s the small-scale operations done mostly by hand involving pasture raised cows that we need to keep, and these are the ones most hurt by this economy and changing milk and feed prices. Its the skills involved that we are at risk of loosing and when the oil runs out will have to try and relearn, but there will be nobody left that knows how to do it properly if we are not careful. It’s these practical skills that need to be taught again in our high schools, thankfully Putney does just that during the summer programmes and during the main year. It also comes back to reducing your dependence on foreign energy as well as increasing your health, and the health of your local economy. There are many on the environmental side that don’t like dairy or beef production and see all of it as bad. The problem is, as with most things it’s not that black and white. Small-scale organic pasture fed beef and dairy are fine, so long as you are not having meat and or large amounts of dairy with every single meal (like most Americans do). Yes there is an environmental impact from the production of both meat and dairy, but when done right and combined with a change in our diet it can be ok and easily offset by using renewable energy or using the cow shit to produce methane and power the facility. Just because traditional large-scale agriculture has destroyed the environment in many forms, does not automatically mean that small scale local production is just as bad. It just annoys me when many vegans and environmentalists constantly beat up on all meat and all dairy and don’t distinguish between them.

a couple more pictures,here, and here

The Putney School

Friday Feature, infrastructure pictures!

So it’s a known fact I am a bit of a dork, I was in York recently and was more interested with the cycle infrastructure then with the old town, the walls, or all the amazing historical stuff in the city. It was the same in Vienna when I was there in early April; I was more interested in the Tram lines, then the amazing elements of old Vienna. Anyway going to start a Friday feature on cycling/sustainable infrastructure pictures. I will take from my collection as much as possible, and that should last me a good long time, as mentioned above I have a great deal of pictures of European transport systems. Sometimes it could be lack of infrastructure as the focus but I will try to pick images that focus on what is being done well, even if it was a token effort by the council.

So without further ado, today's image is from Glasgow, Scotland, which I visited in March of this year. The image is taken along the main waterway through the centre of town looking northwest. The Sustrans rout is Cycle Network rout 75 and the picture is taken at the Clyde Street access point. Enjoy


Sustrans Map location
Google Maps location