Taking imagery of bike lanes at risk and using it to help fix bike parking

Taking imagery of bike lanes at risk and using it to help fix bike parking

We took street-level imagery on Bloor St, Yonge St, University Ave, Queen’s Park Cres, and Avenue Rd to create a digital record of bike lanes at risk from Ontario Bill 212 and to help analyze…

Taking imagery of bike lanes in Toronto: 60,000 photos later…

Imagery Update After a summer and fall of taking 360 imagery of bike lanes, I finished capturing street-level imagery of all the protected bike lanes in the City’s dataset. The last segment on November 8 was the final part of the new Harbord St bike lanes E of Grace St. So far, I’ve captured over…

Dissecting Doug Ford’s Bike Lane Removal Annoucement

A blog about cycling and political advocacy based in Toronto, Canada. (#BikeTO)

Street-level imagery: licensing challenges and benefits of recording from a bike instead of a vehicle

In the previous post, I talked about collecting street-level imagery while biking using a helmet-mounted camera and sharing it via services that are open license. In this post, I’ll dig deeper on two related questions. First, why is it important to use open license services instead of Google Street View? Second, what are the advantages…

Intranational International Boulevard: A Street's Atlas - Oakland - LocalWiki

The Intranational International Boulevard: A Street's Atlas is a cool mapping project done by students in the UC Berkeley’s Cartography and GIS Education (CAGE) Lab. It maps International Blvd. in a variety of hyper-local ways.

Chicago's Bike Lanes Don't Hurt Businesses, City Report Finds

As protected bike lanes face opposition in some neighborhoods, city-backed case studies found lanes in a half-dozen corridors have not contributed to a negative impact on economic activity.

Panoramax BikeSpace

Panoramax is a digital resource for sharing and using field photos. Anyone can take photographs of places visible from public roads and contribute them to the Panoramax database.

Meet the army of amateur archivists racing to save US history in national parks

Save Our Signs aims to document every sign in the more than 400 national parks and historic sites across the country before the Trump administration removes them

Public trees

The public tree dataset includes a listing of public trees on boulevards and public trees in parks, in the City of Vancouver and provides data on tree coordinates, species and other related characteristics. Private trees are not included in the inventory.Tree records that do not have coordinates data will not show up in the list. Data currencyThe dataset refreshes daily on weekdays. Tree attributes are updated on a regular basis but it may be several years between updates for some attributes. Priorities and resources determine how fast a change in reality is reflected in the data. The coordinates were originally provided by the 2016 Geospatial Data for City of Vancouver Street Trees project. Data accuracyTree attributes are updated on a regular basis but it may be several years for some attributes. Note: 0 value in latitude and longitude fields mean there is no related information available Websites for further informationStreet Tree BylawCity trees

Biidaasige Park expansion

The portion of Biidaasige Park west of Cherry Street opened this weekend. Had to see if for myself. It was great to see plenty of people walking and biking about to check it out. Here is a view of …

Marking One Year Since Cycle Toronto’s Court Victory

A blog about cycling and political advocacy based in Toronto, Canada. (#BikeTO)

The curb-cut effect

The curb-cut effect illustrates how when we design to benefit disadvantaged or vulnerable groups we end up helping society as a whole. Angela Glover Blackwell explains how campaigning by students with disabilities in Berkeley in the early 1970s led to adding curb cuts to the Berkeley sidewalks to make access easier for those in wheelchairs. Yet it wasn't just people in wheelchairs that it helped. Curb cuts also made life easier for people pushing children in strollers, people using trolleys for deliveries, people pulling a suitcase, those wheeling bikes or on skateboards, and it also helps save lives by guiding people to cross at safe locations. Another example is adding closed captioning to TV that helps anyone watch in a noisy bar, a waiting room, or watching an airline safety video. Or a classic example of universal design in the OXO Good Grips range originally made to be comfortable for holding a peeler even if you have arthritis. It's also a useful analogy for "how laws and programs designed to benefit vulnerable groups, such as the disabled or people of color, often end up benefiting all," (PolicyLink) whether that be increasing broadband access, improving public transport or taking cuts out of curbs. Here's a short, fun video of Gary Karp explaining the curb-cut effect. Thanks to my patron Quintin Balsdon for sharing it with me.

In Pictures: The Possibilities of Vancouver’s New Villages Plan | Sightline Institute

The Four/Five design prioritizes green space, daylight, affordability, and accessibility—all for greater connection and community.

Bike Routes to Look Forward To | Offprint

A hopeful view toward the future of biking in the Bay

National Zoning Atlas

The National Zoning Atlas is digitizing, demystifying, and democratizing information about zoning conditions in more than 33,000 jurisdictions in the U.S. — empowering advocates, revealing insights, and driving research.