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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:03 - 00:00:08:14
John Simmerman
All right, all right, all right. Hey, we are live here on the Active Towns channel IV stopper. Thank you so much for joining me once again.
00:00:08:16 - 00:00:11:04
Avi Stopper
Howdy. Thanks for having me.
00:00:11:07 - 00:00:17:28
John Simmerman
I love giving my guests just this opportunity to introduce themselves. So who the heck is Avi Stopper?
00:00:18:01 - 00:01:04:04
Avi Stopper
I am a entrepreneur. I spent basically ten years, 12 years building a tech company between about 2007 and 2018, and since then, I have worked on trying to make Denver a better place for people to ride bikes. So I lead an organization in Denver called Bike Streets, and we publish the low stress Denver Bike Map. That's something that we have been doing since 2018, and we now publish maps with advocacy groups in about 30 cities across the country, helping folks in their communities identify chill, low stress routes that they can use to navigate to any destination in their communities.
00:01:04:04 - 00:01:29:20
Avi Stopper
It's really a community powered enterprise for folks to be able to identify the best chill routes in their communities, publish those, and share them with other folks, much as we have in Denver since 2018. And the idea is that really anyone should be able to ride a bike to any destination in their city today. That's kind of the founding idea of bike streets.
00:01:29:22 - 00:01:46:07
John Simmerman
And really, this is a profound shift in many ways to how business as usual is coming about in terms of how North American cities build out bike networks. Talk a little bit about that profound difference.
00:01:46:09 - 00:02:07:15
Avi Stopper
Well, I like riding my bike today. I like the idea of being able to ride the bike when I'm, you know, in my 70s and 80s, but I want to be able to ride my bike today. And more than that, I want my kids to grow up in a city where they can ride their bikes to the places that they want to go.
00:02:07:16 - 00:02:35:02
Avi Stopper
That they are liberated from parental dependency to transport themselves from one place to another. I want my kids to be able to go to their friends houses and to be able to go to parks and rec centers and not be completely dependent on their parents. And I want people of all stripes from across the city, of all ages, all abilities, all backgrounds, to be able to go to the places that they want to go today.
00:02:35:02 - 00:03:07:26
Avi Stopper
And so what we have really busied ourselves with, with Bike streets is trying to figure out, both from the perspective of the technology that we create, that builds these maps or allows community groups to build these maps to figure out how is it that a community group can make it possible for folks to navigate to the places that they want to go today, as opposed to the conventional approach, which is of planning enterprise that is a multi-decade or generational type of thing.
00:03:07:27 - 00:03:35:06
Avi Stopper
In other words, how can we have a complete network now as opposed to a complete network? Theoretically, in 30 years, when I'm a grandpa, I want my kids to be able to ride today, not just my grandkids. And the work that we do with Bike streets is trying to make it possible for community groups, for advocacy groups across the country to make their cities more accessible today.
00:03:35:06 - 00:03:57:10
Avi Stopper
And the advocacy work that we do is about getting cities to codify that and formalize it and think about how they themselves, how cities can enact bike networks in a much more accelerated fashion than what we have come to believe through the status quo approach is how this happens.
00:03:57:13 - 00:04:22:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. I want to share a comment that Troy Saltillo has just put out on the chat here, and have you take a look at this. And and it's a great story. I mean, basically he's saying that, you know, had a parent with a kid scared to victor out. They did the download of the Bike Streets app to find out where to go.
00:04:22:07 - 00:04:51:19
John Simmerman
And now he's out there on his own. I mean, what a great testimonial. So that gets to the app. And kind of the nuance of what started out is this idea and this premise of, wait a minute, one street over from these busy arterials where there might be a painted bike lane or maybe even a quasi protected bike lane, there are is in most cities.
00:04:51:19 - 00:05:19:19
John Simmerman
In many cities, a whole network of quiet, low stress chill, as you like to call them, streets. That might be quite delightful if if only it was low, low volumes and low speed environments in that area. And and you, you know, over the last what, eight years bringing these to life, sharing them with the communities, doing community rides to ice cream shops.
00:05:19:26 - 00:05:39:22
John Simmerman
And then it manifests itself into an app. And now people are giving you testimonials and saying, yeah, we in Salt Lake City or wherever, you know, we are using the Bike Streets app now and starting to bring these streets to life. You've got to be pinching yourself. This is so cool.
00:05:39:25 - 00:06:06:20
Avi Stopper
Well, it's come together piece by piece. It's a bit of an odyssey, to borrow a Vogue term at the moment. I'll just tell you a quick story on how I came across this, or how this started to become interesting to me when I was leading that tech company a decade ago, I, I've been I've been riding my bike in cities for a long, long time, and I'm very confident and comfortable.
00:06:06:20 - 00:06:28:00
Avi Stopper
I lived in Chicago for a decade, and this was before there was really other than the path along the lake, any formal infrastructure, and I would just ride on the city streets. And it was, you know, aggressive and and the sort of thing that is not really possible for most folks and probably a little reckless and unsafe in some cases.
00:06:28:00 - 00:06:50:01
Avi Stopper
And I did the same when we moved to Denver. I just kind of road and where there was formal bike infrastructure, I would follow that, and that was how I got to work. And then one day I had just gotten kind of sick of riding on this one very narrow street that nominally has a a bike lane on a conventional painted door zone bike lane.
00:06:50:01 - 00:07:11:21
Avi Stopper
You've got parked cars on one side, you've got a conventional narrow three foot bike lane, and then you have a very narrow driving lane. And I was just getting past and past and past very closely, and I just decided that I was sort of sick of that. And so I started writing on the street that was adjacent, like literally one street over.
00:07:11:21 - 00:07:40:02
Avi Stopper
That's kind of become something of a mantra with bike streets, one street over. Follow the basketball hoops, we often say where their basketball hoop on streets. There are often very chill, quiet streets where parents are going to let their kids out to play in the street. And it was such a qualitatively different experience that one day riding on that street, and I became fascinated by this idea of whether that was number one, something that other people were doing.
00:07:40:02 - 00:08:05:04
Avi Stopper
And number two, could you actually create a connected network? And so bit by bit, as I needed to navigate to various places in Denver, to meetings, to kids events, etc., I would just spend some time doing some reconnaissance on Google Maps beforehand to see if I could chart a route that had similar characteristics to that route that I was now using on a daily basis to go to and from work.
00:08:05:04 - 00:08:34:06
Avi Stopper
And I was, much to my delight, astonished to find that indeed it was quite possible. And I remember this, this moment. That was kind of a catalytic moment. There was a great bike shop, sadly departed now in Denver called Turin, and I was in Turin getting my bike fixed or, you know, chatting with the mechanic. And this this guy had been a commuter in Denver for decades, and I was telling him about what I was doing and telling him about some of these routes that I was cobbling together.
00:08:34:06 - 00:09:02:26
Avi Stopper
And much to my surprise, he described his own route and we kind of looked at it on a map, and his route had totally coincidental characteristics to what I was doing. And this was a dude who was as grizzled a bike guy as they come. And I just found it astonishing that he to there's a bike lane on an arterial called Martin Luther King in North Denver.
00:09:03:00 - 00:09:35:01
Avi Stopper
It's awful. And no one is ever out there for good reason. I mean, I've ridden it just to see how bad it is. And that would have been the obvious conventional bike facility for him to use. And he wasn't using it. Instead, he was cobbling together this route that used a bunch of quiet neighborhood streets, some clever cut thrus, and bit by bit, as I talked to more folks around the city who were riding bikes, I came to realize that this was a pretty standard thing.
00:09:35:02 - 00:10:04:10
Avi Stopper
And it's fascinating when with Bike Streets, we're talking to advocacy groups and new communities, the number of people who this story resonates with because they too themselves have been bouncing off the various surfaces for decades, finding the little clever cut through, finding the ways to safely cross arterials, etc. and this is a fairly standard thing, and I've come to think of it as identifying with local knowledge.
00:10:04:12 - 00:10:34:04
Avi Stopper
It's folk knowledge really, where the the network exists that is hiding in plain sight. And I think that this is a really important logical breakthrough, and one that we really try to promote and elevate with Bike streets is that there is, in most cities a plain, a complete ish, imperfect but complete high comfort bike network that is hiding in plain sight, right?
00:10:34:06 - 00:11:11:25
John Simmerman
Yeah. Those those little taglines, the mantras of one street over one block over the network, hiding in plain sight. I think that that's one of the great things about what we're talking about here, this vision that in many of these more traditional land use pattern cities where there is a gridded network of streets, as opposed to like the more modern suburban context, where it's a whole bunch of cul de sacs, and it's a lot more difficult to to have these quieter, off street network hidden in plain sight.
00:11:11:25 - 00:11:37:18
John Simmerman
So that gives us that opportunity. It's not to say that the cul de sac neighborhoods can't work, but it's a little bit more challenging. It requires some sort of a penetration of said cul de sac via a multi-use path, a multiple filter, so to speak, so active mobility can get through that cul de sac to maybe an open space beyond, or maybe the next cul de sac one one block over.
00:11:37:18 - 00:12:06:07
John Simmerman
So yeah, that's that's a huge thing. I pulled up the website here, and I want to give some folks the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the Bike Streets website. Again, this is Bike Streets. Com and it's a wonderful landing page to all of the activities that you're doing. You're writing a book, you're running a podcast. The great thing about your podcast is you are also seriously serializing the chapters.
00:12:06:07 - 00:12:24:12
John Simmerman
As you're writing the chapters out and you're interviewing, you know, some of my best friends and colleagues from over the years on your podcast, talk a little bit about this, this process of writing a book and turning it into a podcast.
00:12:24:14 - 00:13:08:07
Avi Stopper
There are three dimensions to our bike streets work. One is creating the technology and sharing it with community groups around the country who are making these low stress maps and publishing them, activating them, and using that data to advance advocacy. That's I like to think of that as the technology leg of the bike street stool. Then the second leg is what I think of as sort of like ideas, and we're really trying to poke some holes into the conventional wisdom, not just to be countercultural, but to really evaluate what is working and what's not.
00:13:08:14 - 00:13:35:19
Avi Stopper
It seems to me that it's a relatively objective fact that in most cities across the country, biking is impossible for people of all ages and abilities. And what we're trying to do with the ideas of this tool is advance the conversation and be self-reflective. One of my key kind of insights or lessons from my life as a as a technology entrepreneur is just that.
00:13:35:21 - 00:14:04:27
Avi Stopper
Candor with oneself is of the utmost importance, and I think it's really important for us to be honest with ourselves about the lack of results that our work has historically produced, in terms of the ways in which, you know, we have advocates have been working for, you know, 50 years at this point. And yet we have not created this reality that we all think is going to be so awesome and amazing.
00:14:04:27 - 00:14:28:01
Avi Stopper
And so with that idea is leg of the stool. What we're trying to do is really evaluate some of the orthodoxy and push the narrative and discussion forward. And there are clearly, to borrow a term from what you just said, cul de sacs in that idea generation. But I think that it's important for us to be really self-critical and say what's working and what's not.
00:14:28:01 - 00:15:02:16
Avi Stopper
So that's the ideas leg of the stool. And that includes podcast, where we're having these deep conversations with folks who are leaders in biking and adjacent fields and then writing a book. And the book is really, I call it bike networks. Now. It's really a an amalgamation of three, what I consider to be three really interesting threads intersecting one is the kinds of work that has been done with Naktong Work, and they're their bikeway design guide.
00:15:02:18 - 00:15:32:20
Avi Stopper
The fact that that has been codified, I think, is a quantum leap forward. I think that that does really well when it gets married with entrepreneurial tomes and ideas, like a book called The Lean Startup, which is about how to use a scientific and empirically based process to innovate. And fundamentally, when we're talking about getting people to change, one of the foundational behaviors and how Americans act on a daily basis, which is to say, how we transport ourselves.
00:15:32:22 - 00:16:02:21
Avi Stopper
I think we need to approach it from the lens of innovation. And then the third is, to borrow a phrase from Ezra Klein, abundance. I think it's really important for us to evaluate why we have not produced we being sort of advocates cities, you know, governmental entities at large. Why is Bike Trans? It's 2026. Why is biking not possible in most cities today?
00:16:02:22 - 00:16:26:24
Avi Stopper
I think that this is an example of of an abundance opportunity, which is to say as recline questions. Why is it that we haven't built enough housing? Why is it that we haven't built high speed rail in California? Why is it that all of these things that we want, we have not been able to actually produce? And I think that biking is in cities a type case for this?
00:16:26:24 - 00:16:53:20
Avi Stopper
The bicycle is this incredibly weird, anachronistic invention that is from the 1880s and perfectly suited for modern American cities in so many ways. And yet we have we have failed to make that a reality. Why? So that is really how we're trying to advance a lot of the thinking around what is going on in this bike transportation conversation.
00:16:53:21 - 00:17:16:01
Avi Stopper
And then the third leg of the stool. So we've got the first one, which is the technology, the second is ideas, and the third is advocacy. And the advocacy work that we're doing is really trying to put the ideas that we are generating into a crucible to see if they can work. And I would describe that as most cogently, as a network first approach.
00:17:16:02 - 00:17:42:01
Avi Stopper
The idea of network first, kind of like housing first is that the first thing that cities need to do is have a complete network. This outdated approach to bikeway creation, which is to say, one bikeway piecemeal, one at a time, a mile here, a mile, they're creating this disconnected archipelago with the future promise, theoretically, that someday it's going to all connect.
00:17:42:04 - 00:18:04:20
Avi Stopper
We need to get beyond that. And one of the ways in which the idea generation advances our advocacy is through this network first idea, which is to say that cities need to start first and foremost by creating complete networks. They're not going to be perfect on day one, but the map that we're creating in each city demonstrates that there is a network to be had.
00:18:04:21 - 00:18:29:09
Avi Stopper
That network can be codified inexpensively and quickly formalized. And then, rather than trying to fill in gaps, what we're instead trying to do time because we have a complete we're starting with a complete network is we're just upgrading point locations. And that is to say that you start with a complete network rather than an individual bikeway here, an individual bikeway there.
00:18:29:09 - 00:18:59:01
Avi Stopper
And bit by bit, over time, you're activating. It's simultaneous to your, your your, your your improvement and iteration on the designs and point locations. You're learning from people writing about things that need to be improved and optimized. So it's not just being done in the ivory tower, but there is this tremendous feedback loop empirically observed in terms of actual activation, and you are improving based on that feedback.
00:18:59:08 - 00:19:29:08
John Simmerman
It's it's clear that you have tapped into something where you have the opportunity to, to sort of anger both city officials and advocates at the same time, because you're sort of agitating that the way that we have been going about trying to build these bike networks is just not fundamentally working, which is something I love about you, is that you're coming at this, as you mentioned, from a tech background and going and you mentioned the book Lean Startup.
00:19:29:08 - 00:19:50:25
John Simmerman
You're looking at this from a different perspective of, hey, how can we approach this more scientifically and how can we move much faster? We don't have to just settle for things moving at a super slow pace. We can accelerate this. And so some of the guests that you have had on your your podcast, you know, some of them are advocacy folks.
00:19:50:27 - 00:20:21:01
John Simmerman
Martina Hagerty is with the people for Bikes Foundation. Some of them are our city folks. You've got the director of transportation for the city of Richmond, Virginia, Andy Beno on here. And so you're you're getting into, I think, the the crux of the problem, which is if we just focus on trying to build out a all ages and abilities network piece by piece.
00:20:21:07 - 00:20:45:10
John Simmerman
Again, as you mentioned, it's going to take 30 years to do that. And that's one of the frustrations that you had there in Denver, is that you look at the build out plan of the high comfort network on the more major streets where, yes, if if speeds are in excess of 25mph, then you should have protected and separated infrastructure on that corridor.
00:20:45:10 - 00:21:20:14
John Simmerman
But if you look at the timeline, it's going to take forever for that to get built out. And so a bike networks first a bike networks now approach says, let's roll this back to what we were talking about earlier, is there's an entire potential hidden network on these quiet, chill, low stress streets. And with a little bit of tweaking, we can make them even more chill and make them even more appealing, safe, and inviting for parents to feel like they can let their kiddos go and wander in their neighborhood.
00:21:20:18 - 00:21:22:13
John Simmerman
Respond to that a little bit.
00:21:22:15 - 00:21:52:19
Avi Stopper
Well, there's a lot there. So we're so where to begin? I think the foundational piece is in the local knowledge that informs the creation of the bike map of a low stress bike map, and with the technology platform that we have created with bike streets, what we're doing, fundamentally is making it possible for people to crowdsource and elevate that knowledge so that they can share that knowledge so that other people can ride today.
00:21:52:19 - 00:22:33:20
Avi Stopper
And fundamentally, it's planting a flag in the ground. And that flag is, is, is basically in and in effect, a sign saying this city already has a complete ish low stress network. What we need to do. And because the primary locations of those facilities are on streets that are already chill, where people like that Griswold bike mechanic are already riding, where families are riding to go get ice cream, because those streets that make up that constitute this complete bike network that is hiding in plain sight are themselves already pretty chill.
00:22:33:21 - 00:23:00:18
Avi Stopper
The interventions and the cost of the interventions that the cities can take to formalize those are inexpensive. And one of the things that we have to acknowledge, we have to be self-reflective. When you're running a a tech company or a business, if you're not, if it's not producing the results that you want, you can either go down the path that you're on, which is not working on.
00:23:00:22 - 00:23:30:27
Avi Stopper
You can stop and say, why isn't this working? And when we look at the ways in which city budgets are so dramatically constrained, let's say you have $5 million and you have $5 million, and you can put that $5 million to either a single protected facility on an arterial street that's going to be super like a marquee type of feature that is going to get a lot of attention that our people are going to get really amped up about, good and bad.
00:23:30:27 - 00:24:06:10
Avi Stopper
It will inevitably create a lot of conflict. So it's going to be expensive. It's going to take us a long time to build, and it's going to create a lot of conflict. Or you could take that $5 million and you could say, we have this existing network of interconnecting streets already in this city. We can apply that $5, $5 million to formalize that network, create a completely interconnected network of quiet chill routes, and have within 2 or 3 years, a set so time money, conflict have a complete network within 2 to 3 years.
00:24:06:10 - 00:24:38:28
Avi Stopper
It's not perfect, but we then iterate. We're starting with a complete network. And on the third point that typically just completely derails these projects. The conflict, which is actually as, if not more significant than the budget and time issues that these projects have, is that if we are talking about if we were talking about chill neighborhood streets, what is the one thing that neighbors who live on those streets hate most?
00:24:39:01 - 00:25:12:14
Avi Stopper
It is almost assuredly high speed, cut through traffic and rat running, as it's often called. And what is so compelling about this is that by simply building lightweight interventions that prevent high speed cut through traffic, you can align interests and solve one of those neighbors main that set of neighbors main concerns, while also making what are already chill routes even better.
00:25:12:21 - 00:25:34:12
Avi Stopper
And that align that reduction of conflict, I think, is a really important thing for us to be thinking about. We assume, typically as advocates, that the creation of any new facility implicit in it is going to be going to war, going to war with neighbors, going to war with business owners. And I've just observed that that we lose too often.
00:25:34:13 - 00:26:09:09
Avi Stopper
Even if the facility gets built, it's often substantially watered down. And why is that? Because the business owners in an area represented by a city council person, they have a lot of political power. Neighbors, they're going to be loud. They have a lot of political power. So if we can instead align our interests with those folks and create streets that are better for the neighbors themselves, and not just like so that people who want to ride bikes can ride bikes, but so that the neighbors are activated and excited about becoming people who ride bikes.
00:26:09:12 - 00:26:38:00
Avi Stopper
Then we have a path that reduces cost, reduces time to market and reduces conflict. And I think that that is a really compelling way to to take a systems thinking approach to how do we not just create at that cost, $5 million? How do we create a complete network version 1.0 that costs $5 million?
00:26:38:02 - 00:27:05:14
John Simmerman
I love that to version 1.0, because you're leaning into the fact that we may be using some materials that are just lighter, quicker, cheaper to make this happen. And I've pulled up Bury Street there in Brooklyn, one of your favorite streets, because one of the things that you talked about just there was what are the things, what are the strategies that we can do to tweak the existing network to reinforce the the chill aspect of it?
00:27:05:14 - 00:27:15:09
John Simmerman
In other words, low traffic, you know, low volumes and low speed. And so why is Barry Street one of your favorite streets?
00:27:15:12 - 00:27:45:16
Avi Stopper
Oh, I'm so glad you brought this picture up. It just it brings it brings joy. Just to see this Barry Street is a what was previously a collector near the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. And in the early days of the pandemic, we dedicated, by the way, on our podcast on bike networks now, a complete episode to a discussion with one of the women who really led the charge on this particular facility.
00:27:45:19 - 00:27:48:21
John Simmerman
And I believe she was a she was a city official, correct?
00:27:48:22 - 00:27:55:07
Avi Stopper
She was a staffer for the city councilman who was here, and now she works for Transportation Alternatives.
00:27:55:08 - 00:27:56:22
John Simmerman
Okay. Now she's for to. Okay.
00:27:56:24 - 00:28:24:10
Avi Stopper
Got it. Yeah. The way that this came to pass was that in the early days of the pandemic, as with in many places, New York City created a Slow Streets program. And one of the things that NYC Dot did that was really powerful was they empowered neighbors to make gentle changes to improve and optimize the design. And these were originally this street was basically reduced to, so there was no cut through traffic.
00:28:24:10 - 00:28:52:03
Avi Stopper
It was people walking, biking, pushing strollers. And if you lived on this, on this corridor, you could still drive to your house and park in front of it and the way that they created it. So the main conditional change is just that they reduce the through traffic, they preclude they create interventions divert that preclude through traffic. And those original dividers were with little more than saw horses, those blue New York City police barricade blue sawhorse things.
00:28:52:03 - 00:29:33:24
Avi Stopper
And Dot gave this community group a fair amount of leeway to continue to refine and improve the design. And what's so compelling about this is you reference the version 1.0 thing that I just mentioned. There are countless iterations implicit in this design, not just based on some engineer in an ivory tower somewhere, but based on actual observation on the ground in the way that tactical urbanism allows us to observe real human behavior, how people interact with actual facilities that we create, and then make slight little tweaks and refinements based on those behaviors.
00:29:33:24 - 00:30:03:06
Avi Stopper
And so I don't know what version they got to, but they were making tons of little tweaks and improvements bit by bit. And this street, Berry Street, just got better and better and better. The most significant thing that New York City did with Barry, although they didn't do it everywhere. So they get a passing grade, but not an A+, is that unlike Denver, other unlike other cities that had these pandemic era slow streets, they turned this into a permanent facility.
00:30:03:06 - 00:30:35:14
Avi Stopper
And so they used that discovery, that learning. In startups, we talk about learning as this incredibly valuable asset, that if we just create something and it works really well, we have to embrace that rather than discarding it. And at least on very New York City did just that. And the ultimate design of this street is absolutely genius. It is a series of alternating one ways every 2 or 3 blocks the street.
00:30:35:16 - 00:30:53:04
Avi Stopper
The street is one way. Every 2 or 3 blocks, the direction of the one way changes. In other words, you might be going in this direction and you go to blocks, and then you get to this next intersection and it's one way in the opposite direction.
00:30:53:07 - 00:30:57:21
John Simmerman
So you're diverted. You're forced to turn to get off the driver.
00:30:57:22 - 00:31:19:03
Avi Stopper
You're forced as a driver, you're forced to divert. But here, as you can see in this image, there's so there's contraflow bicycling, which is to say that people who are walking, pushing strollers, riding bikes are able to traverse the entire corridor in whatever direction they're so inclined. And those who are driving, if you live on this corridor, you can still drive to your house.
00:31:19:04 - 00:31:43:00
Avi Stopper
You can still park in front of it. If you have a business on on this street, you can still take deliveries. You can still have your customers park, but the volumes on this street of vehicular traffic are absurd for a New York City street are absurdly low, and the way that they achieve this outcome is with an incredibly inexpensive set of interventions.
00:31:43:00 - 00:32:06:04
Avi Stopper
And when I think about. So in the early days of a startup, you want to do things that don't scale. You want to try to create designs and develop ways of producing outcomes and human behaviors that you seek. And sometimes those are going to be very laborious. But you're also thinking about what is the proof of concept that we can use to go to massive scale.
00:32:06:04 - 00:32:29:02
Avi Stopper
And John Orcutt, who took me on this for the first time, he was one of Jeannette City Kahn's key lieutenants that was very involved in all of her work. He and I wrote this corridor for the first time, and he told me that he thinks New York City can and should be creating 20 to 30 berries per year.
00:32:29:04 - 00:32:54:18
Avi Stopper
And what we have here, and what's so glorious about this, is that it is a massively scalable design. You can do it inexpensively, you can do it quickly, and you can do it with very little conflict, because you're fundamentally making this street better for neighbors, because what did you get rid of? You got rid of high speed cut through traffic, right?
00:32:54:19 - 00:33:19:14
John Simmerman
Right. I'm going to pull up a comment that a jump James from Germany has made. He made the observation that the the speed limit of five miles per hour, it's actually not a speed limit. The yellow the use of the yellow advisory sign is it's an advisory speed. Do you know what the actual speed limit is on this street?
00:33:19:14 - 00:33:54:07
John Simmerman
Is it 20 or 25? It's ten is the actual speed limit. And then that yellow sign where it says five miles per hour is an indication that if a pedestrian or a person riding a bike is present, then you must bring your speed down to to five miles per hour. And again, that's what we're talking about when we're talking about creating an environment that is alter low speed, high comfort, and it brings families out.
00:33:54:08 - 00:34:18:27
John Simmerman
I remember when you made your journey to to to Brooklyn and, and did this, you came back just beaming and you talk about it on your on your podcast. A lot of just you were just like, this was mind blowing for you. And this happened kind of late in the game. I mean, you've been noodling on this stuff for a while, and then you discovered Barry Street.
00:34:19:03 - 00:34:52:25
John Simmerman
And I think that it's I it is very. I think educational and illustrative in the sense that, you know, even in Denver, you guys had the pandemic area, slow streets, programs, healthy streets that, you know, that really quickly mobilized and then most, if not all completely went away. Other cities went through the same thing. I love how you keep bringing back your your origins in startups and saying, you know, hey, this this is how we do things.
00:34:52:25 - 00:35:23:09
John Simmerman
This is how we approach a startup as we do lighter, quicker, cheaper pilots and tests. See what we can fail on and learn from and not be a not be afraid of a failure here because that gives you something to learn from and tweak and change. And so I think it's just really, really cool to to have seen your evolution and your journey because you share with us as you go along and you discover some of these things.
00:35:23:09 - 00:35:50:16
John Simmerman
And then as you're interviewing folks on the podcast, you're constantly getting different perspectives. Other than Barry Street, what are some of the other real ha moments that you have run across since launching into the book and and doing all these interviews and doing the podcast because you're you're talking with folks sometimes that you may not even completely agree with at all times.
00:35:50:16 - 00:35:57:21
John Simmerman
So I'm sure there's been some really neat, interesting. Moments that you've had.
00:35:57:24 - 00:36:18:25
Avi Stopper
There's a lot of I think robust discussion and debate is important. I think that perhaps one of the issues that plagues this work is that we have gotten in a rut of this is, quote unquote, how you do this sort of thing. And this is the way that bikeways are built. This is the way that you design them.
00:36:18:25 - 00:36:47:01
Avi Stopper
This is this is the this is the process. And one of the things that running a startup, as I did for 12 years, forces you to do is constantly be challenging that orthodoxy, to constantly be looking at whether the results that you are producing at the end of the process. R indeed what you seek, and if not, you've got to reevaluate the process.
00:36:47:03 - 00:37:16:06
Avi Stopper
Interesting or key insights that I've learned through conversations. Well, one of and you referenced this earlier, I think that one of the central debates, what we're fundamentally talking about in any of this work is the use of public space. And one of the I think, most interesting debates and discussions is about this, this sort of schism that I see between should it be the arterials or should it be the quiet side streets?
00:37:16:06 - 00:37:54:20
Avi Stopper
And because the bike streets work is fundamentally about creating complete networks now that anyone can ride today, we are fundamentally limited. You can't just go ride your bike or expect that a family is going to ride their bikes down an arterial street with no infrastructure on it, so we are fundamentally limited. We have a design constraint, and constraints are great things in innovation because they they force you to come up with some clever solution that that that conforms with those constraints, that notwithstanding, there's this big and I think, fair discussion about the use of public space.
00:37:54:21 - 00:38:31:21
Avi Stopper
And one of the critiques that we often get in an assumption that people make is that fundamentally, what we are talking about is that we need to give up the fight on arterials. I don't think that that is at all the case. In fact, I think that a long term vision of this is that when you have a massively activated population already out riding bikes, you have a lot more to stand on in terms of making the case that space on an arterial should be repurposed in not just a flex post kind of thing, but in a really fantastic protected environment.
00:38:31:21 - 00:39:00:28
Avi Stopper
I think that is a version 5 or 6.0 kind of thing, instead of a version 1.0 thing. And so to directly answer your question, I think that some of the more interesting insights that I have gleaned from the conversations that I have have to do with folks in communities that we are talking about. So a number of the podcast conversations on bike networks now are with people who are actually on the ground doing advocacy work in their communities.
00:39:00:28 - 00:39:28:04
Avi Stopper
And I'm struck candidly by the frequency with which I hear people making the argument that we need to create a complete network now, irrespective of whether those facilities conform with or comply with this principle that bicyclists deserve space on the biggest, gnarliest arterials. People just want to go places. People want to get to the places that they want to go.
00:39:28:04 - 00:39:58:26
Avi Stopper
And I think that there is an incredible amount of a growing consensus, a growing chorus of voices around every in every conversation. There is this consensus around frustration with the gaps, quote unquote. In fact, Martina Haggerty from people for bikes, her entire work is oriented around evaluating the connectedness of networks, the practical possibility for people to go by bike to the places that they want to go.
00:39:58:26 - 00:40:27:20
Avi Stopper
And the picture ain't good. And we're we referenced 30 year timelines to build bike networks that a lot of the plans that that emerge from city departments of planning and transportation show are these 30 year timelines. And yet we're like 30 or 50 years into those timelines as well. Or are we talking about networks not being possible within 100 years, like a century long project to create a bike network is?
00:40:27:22 - 00:40:52:20
Avi Stopper
I hope that most of us can agree that that is not an acceptable timeline. And and so I think that it forces us to think more creatively around how can we reduce cost. We all want big budgets, but we don't. None of us have them. How can we reduce time? I want to do this before I'm a grandpa, and and kids should be able to do this today while they're still kids.
00:40:52:20 - 00:40:59:10
Avi Stopper
And how can we do this in a way that reduces conflict? So things don't don't just grind to a halt as they tend to.
00:40:59:13 - 00:41:22:18
John Simmerman
So you mentioned flex posts. So the 800 pound gorilla in the room of course is always flex posts because they have created so much controversy in city after city, including in Denver. Yeah, we acknowledge their freaking ugly, but they're effective in the sense that they, you know, they're easily deployed, they're cheap, and you can get it out there.
00:41:22:18 - 00:41:27:25
John Simmerman
And again, we're looking for lighter, quicker, cheaper mechanisms going out there. You and I have had this discussion before.
00:41:27:26 - 00:41:54:20
Avi Stopper
Yeah. Let me if I may, if I may just jump in there. John, you asked about my own evolution. I would say that part of that evolution is I no longer worship at the Church of Plastic Flex posts. In fact, I have based I'm. What I'm always trying to do in an entrepreneurial role is observe what the heck is going on and adjust and adapt accordingly.
00:41:54:20 - 00:42:25:21
Avi Stopper
And I think from a just a space delineation perspective, flex posts are awesome because they can help you delineate space much as you can see here, as does that gigantic rock as does that planter. What I have observed, however, is just that there they are, so volatile. It is bizarre. But the reality that this plastic post in a street creates such outrage and conflict.
00:42:25:21 - 00:42:53:07
Avi Stopper
But I think we need to be listeners. As innovators. We need to listen to the feedback the world around us is is giving. And the feedback is quite clear that people don't want those things. And I think an interesting convergence is that neighbors don't want them because they make their neighborhoods ugly. And let's be honest, like those things get pretty gnarly pretty quick.
00:42:53:08 - 00:43:22:25
Avi Stopper
They get chewed up, they get knocked over. It just is detritus on streets so neighbors don't like them. Advocates, surprisingly, in many cases, don't like them because advocates were promise hardened infrastructure. And this was presented to us as a temporary interim iterative solution that would lead to hardening. And yet what we see everywhere is that this is actually the permanent solution, right?
00:43:22:26 - 00:43:48:26
Avi Stopper
This, this, this cheap plastic stuff. And so I talked to a lot of advocates who are themselves very frustrating. So again like where are points of alignment, points of alignment with constituencies. We often disagree with neighbors don't like them, advocates don't like them. And then the kicker on this is that city transportation officials don't like them either, because they are a massive operational maintenance headache.
00:43:48:27 - 00:44:16:01
Avi Stopper
If you had to deal with the entire inventory of these things, and where is one knock down in your massive city? Good luck. So I think that this is a really important illustration of of how my own thinking has evolved and how I hope others thinking will evolve. And by contrast, what we see is that there are proxy materials that can still delineate space most significantly.
00:44:16:01 - 00:44:49:20
Avi Stopper
Denver uses this a lot and it does not create problems. Other cities use it increasingly, which is preformed concrete, and it's not the perfect solution of tearing up the streets and having some sculptural elements, concrete elements that are that are in situ. But it allows you to delineate space in a way that does not create conflict, is rated for 30 years and creates the kind of temporary or longer term hardening that we have been, as advocates promised.
00:44:49:25 - 00:45:21:03
Avi Stopper
I think that that is the kind. It is the kind of listening and the kind of evolutionary thinking that we have to be applying to this. It seems like a fool's errand to be like, we're going to go build this bikeway in a neighborhood, and we're going to use 500 plastic flex posts and expect that we're going to get some different result, which is to say that the neighbors are just going to be in mass as one really excited about the, the, the forest of plastic that sprung up.
00:45:21:10 - 00:45:58:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love that. The florist of plastic that has sprung up. Yeah. I mean, it's I think it's one of those things when you know that there's a hot button issue, try to avoid that. You know, you're going to inflame a lot of resistance. Yeah, maybe we don't do that. Maybe we we go to a different material. But if you do have to use them, use them sparingly and only use them very temporarily, make sure that it's it's used in the spirit of just like in the rollout of the Covid streets.
00:45:58:27 - 00:46:23:26
John Simmerman
We were doing this very temporary. We started out with orange cones that we could literally move totally. And then, you know, some some duct tape on the street so that we can literally move it. So same concept with the the flex post. You use it as a proxy for. Okay. Let's see if we if we do hardness a little bit whether we've got the dimensions right.
00:46:23:27 - 00:46:41:04
John Simmerman
That test goes for a month maybe two months. And then you're like, okay, let's bring in that planter. Let's bring in that granite rock, and then let's get these flex posts out of there, because we don't need to be distracted by the hatred that's out there.
00:46:41:07 - 00:47:25:27
Avi Stopper
And and what I'll just add to that is that this is what cities have promised people and lost trust over, because it's not the process that has been run. And moreover, at least in a lot of the theory, there is a great people for bikes public publication where they detail quick build. And I think a very interesting mangling of the term quick build is that people have come to assume that this sort of plastic flex post forest thing is the end state, but that document is very clear that what your what you just described this iterative sequence of cones first to flex post for a month or two, you know, for a couple of months
00:47:25:27 - 00:47:51:02
Avi Stopper
to sort of longer term but not totally baked in hardening. Right. And then finally, when budgets permit, really actually like tearing up the street and architecting or engineering in poured in place concrete features, that is the that is the sequence, that sequence. I think from an entrepreneurial standpoint that people for bikes articulates is brilliant. That is that is the way to do innovation.
00:47:51:02 - 00:48:08:02
Avi Stopper
But unfortunately, quick build has become synonymous not with this iterative learning process, but instead with a process by which it's like, you know, this is okay, we're going to build this, leave these plastic flex posts in place, and then that's it forever.
00:48:08:04 - 00:48:32:29
John Simmerman
Right? Right. Which is inappropriate, I think. And here's another great visual of this. And if I were to to put this into, you know, if the, if the cones was 1.0, maybe this is 2.0 or 3.0, you know, maybe an ultimate state of, of this is where we're like, you know, yeah, we're getting rid of the flex posts.
00:48:33:00 - 00:49:06:28
John Simmerman
Don't need to be here anymore. We've got plenty of hardening. We've maybe put some cast in concrete here. The ultimate state of Barry Street and other streets like this might be. Do we have an opportunity to pave now you're getting into a level of where, hey, if we've got surplus money or we've got funds specifically for this neighborhood, that maybe it's parking revenue that they want to actually deploy to make it even more attractive and more welcoming and more resilient for stormwater runoff.
00:49:07:00 - 00:49:29:07
John Simmerman
Let's do some deep paving. Let's get a rain garden here. Let's put some permanent trees in here. There's opportunities to do this. And I am seeing cities that are making those steps, making those going from the orange cone to the flex posts to the D paving, putting in permanent infrastructure. Tucson, Arizona is one example that is doing wonderful jobs of paving.
00:49:29:10 - 00:49:56:04
John Simmerman
Austin, Texas is a great example of going from the various stages of very, very temporary materials interim materials to permanent materials. Two blocks over from my house in Austin. They did a great job of, you know, leveraging some necessary Americans with Disabilities Act money where they needed to do some bulb outs, they needed to do some shortening of of crossings.
00:49:56:07 - 00:50:23:01
John Simmerman
They needed to improve the ramps and or do continuous level sidewalks and continuous level bikeways. They leverage that serious money to go from the interim material of the flex post to concrete in place and you know, and planters to in that environment. And again, if a city has the ability to do some deep paving, please do it. It's a great way to.
00:50:23:02 - 00:50:24:04
Avi Stopper
Let me let me just.
00:50:24:07 - 00:50:27:06
John Simmerman
The heat island effect. Yeah, totally.
00:50:27:08 - 00:50:57:01
Avi Stopper
Of course, I love that kind of urban tableau. And I love bias wills. I spend a lot of time in a garden planting native plants. That is my jam. What I would say is again, think about opportunity cost, which is to say you got 5 million bucks and you can either build something that is incredibly well designed, engineered in a way that is going to produce that kind of point location solution.
00:50:57:04 - 00:51:23:09
Avi Stopper
But if you take a network first approach, you have a network, right? You are starting with a complete network, and then it is from that foundational bit of having a complete network that you are able to actually hone in on and dial in on improving these point locations. But the key thing is that that elusive network of the future is not elusive because it already exists.
00:51:23:09 - 00:51:51:08
Avi Stopper
And what you're doing is making informed choices about where investment money is best spent, probably first on some critical crossings, as well as improving some multi-use paths that are important connection points. It allows you to have this systems thinking approach where it's not just like total scattershot, total piecemeal. Go here, there, pinging off the walls. You're doing it in a strategic fashion.
00:51:51:10 - 00:52:21:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I was very intentional talking about the where the funding came from for that improvement to the permanent infrastructure of saying that perhaps the community, the neighborhood that is very incentivized to make sure that we make this more attractive and deal with it, it comes directly from revenues that they are able to to, to generate Allah. You know, the great Professor Donald Shoup, parking revenue in that neighborhood.
00:52:21:04 - 00:52:50:15
John Simmerman
In other words, that's one of the key premises to his high cost of free parking. You know, tome is that, you know, you're able to invest the parking revenue money in the neighborhood, in on the streets that is collecting it so that you can make sure that you are reinvesting those funds right back onto the street. I want to transition over to the the map and the app, and I asked the audience for any feedback on what it's like to use the app.
00:52:50:15 - 00:53:27:06
John Simmerman
So not surprisingly, Gary Hardy is is chiming in talking about how he and his wife are able to, you know, get around their city of Lakewood and into Denver, you know, by using the app. And they're really enjoying this. And I'm, I'm, I'm imagining that you're getting more and more feedback as people are using the app and many, many cities across the country of this sort that people are starting to realize, oh, wow, this is much more comfortable, much more attractive.
00:53:27:10 - 00:53:36:25
John Simmerman
Any other success stories that you'd like to share from? Maybe a city that we wouldn't necessarily think is is doing this right now?
00:53:36:27 - 00:54:04:14
Avi Stopper
Well, I really enjoy traveling. I now like you, John, have a Brompton. And what is very self-indulgent, it feels, is being able to visit cities across the country where we're doing these projects on the ground with local advocates. And, and one recent trip that I took was to the East Coast, and I rode with our mapping crews, mapping teams in New Haven, Connecticut, and Stamford, Connecticut.
00:54:04:14 - 00:54:34:16
Avi Stopper
And Stamford in particular is a non grid based city, very car centric. And it's pretty remarkable. We went on a large group ride together and it's pretty remarkable how much more easily folks are able to navigate that community. Another example that I love is in New Orleans, where the team there has built an incredibly expansive network that also takes into account talk about local knowledge published for everyone to consume.
00:54:34:16 - 00:54:58:01
Avi Stopper
It takes into account street conditions, road, road surface conditions. In New Orleans, a lot of the the streets are in infamously bad condition with with potholes that you could plant a tree in. And so as the team has built that map and as they have written around New Orleans, the map is kind of a little bit less direct than we might like in some cases.
00:54:58:02 - 00:55:26:21
Avi Stopper
But it is that way so that people get a really good route. And what's neat about the creation of these low stress maps is that they are evolutionary in nature. And it's not just like a printed. In the early days of the Bike Streets project, we made a printed map, and the thing that became very clear is that the moment that you printed that map is out of date, and what we're able to do with our bike streets maps is tap into the local, the current zeitgeist and understand what are the conditions.
00:55:26:21 - 00:55:53:18
Avi Stopper
Where is there construction today? Where is there long term construction? Where is there new development that we new bikeways that have been created that we can add to the to the map? In addition to what are new routes that people have identified and think are really worthwhile? If you'd like, I can show you on the Denver map kind of how the map itself evolves from really day to day.
00:55:53:20 - 00:55:58:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Let's pull. We'll have you share your screen and we'll go to that.
00:55:58:12 - 00:56:25:26
Avi Stopper
Cool. So so here we are. This is the Denver low stress Denver bike map. Just zooming out. We kind of started in central Denver and bit by bit groups of folks around the city. Here's Lakewood out here. Arvada here Littleton. We're getting more and more in Aurora. But you can see that there's really just comprehensive coverage. And if we just drop a pin in one random spot to another random spot, we're able to create routes that really cover the entire city.
00:56:25:26 - 00:56:51:21
Avi Stopper
And the key thing in creating a low stress route is you need to have a chill connection into a low stress network. Then you need to be on the network for the entire time, i.e. no gaps. And then the final point needs to be a chill last mile connection. Which is to say you need to be your route is only going to be as comfortable as your weakest point.
00:56:51:21 - 00:57:17:12
Avi Stopper
And so we need to have chill first mile chill on network segment and then chill last mile connection. So what we see here as well as the map itself is there are comments in the forms of points. So here's some construction right now on the South Platte River trail. This is information knowledge that was made available to us by community members sharing the latest updates.
00:57:17:12 - 00:57:38:08
Avi Stopper
And then we turn this route orange. So the low stress routes are in blue. This is the detour. We can immediately publish that detour there. And then. What is in orange and currently under construction is not routable. We're able to really pull in this information on an ongoing basis. In pink we have new route suggestions. So this is an interesting one.
00:57:38:08 - 00:57:56:25
Avi Stopper
You can see we've got some kind of indirect routes in this neighborhood. And so for quite some time we have been discussing as a community whether this is indeed a route that should replace some of the other adjacent routes. There's a neighborhood bikeway that the city of Denver built that's right over here. And yet this route is direct.
00:57:56:25 - 00:58:15:14
Avi Stopper
It cuts through a park, so it has some natural diversion and is super chill otherwise. And so bit by bit, we are building these maps across the country and are able to really make it possible for people to take the kinds of trips that they want to take. Today, I'll just zoom out real quick and take you over to Stamford, Connecticut.
00:58:15:14 - 00:58:38:16
Avi Stopper
So here's Stamford. And so you can see Stamford is not especially a grid based city. And yet this is the network that the team put together. And so in I'm going to have to just clear out that route. So in similar fashion, if we want to get a route from one point to another in Stamford, you can be confident that is going to follow this local knowledge.
00:58:38:16 - 00:58:47:14
Avi Stopper
You can see it cuts through the park here and makes this kind of interesting connection across the big street and then into your final destination.
00:58:47:16 - 00:59:25:19
John Simmerman
Fantastic. And what's interesting to is your process of really engaging with the local people, the people who have the knowledge of these cut thrus and of these preferred low stress, high chill routes. You gave me the opportunity to sort of sit in with one of the sessions with your map creators from all over the country. Thank you very much for letting me sit in and and listen to that and observe that process.
00:59:25:20 - 00:59:57:04
John Simmerman
You have some you have this group of people who are very passionate about maps and mapping and bringing this to life. Again, these are the hidden potential bike networks hiding in plain sight. Talk a little bit about that crew, that team that you're building, of people who are passionate about this. And then we'll head back over to your website, and I'll point people to how they can get involved with making a map in their community.
00:59:57:04 - 01:00:26:28
John Simmerman
And we'll take a look at the maps that are currently in the works in the process. I won't say done because they're never done. And then we'll also talk a little bit about what I perceive is one of the biggest challenges with this type of process, and specifically with the people for Bikes by Bike network analysis tool, and what they miss, how they miss the mark on evaluating communities.
01:00:27:00 - 01:00:34:22
John Simmerman
Let's start with you responding to this group of amazing, passionate individuals that you have.
01:00:34:25 - 01:00:58:18
Avi Stopper
There are in every community across the country, people who care about safe streets, who care about biking, who want to make their cities more navigable. In some cases, they are strong towns groups. In other cases, they're formal advocacy groups. And there are incredible nuances to every community. We've just looked at three really spanning the country Denver, Stamford, Connecticut, and where we just were was in New Orleans.
01:00:58:18 - 01:01:27:16
Avi Stopper
And there are incredible nuances from one community to another. But there are also a striking number of universality. And one of those universality that I think is is is essential and binds us all together is a desire to make cities more accessible, to make it possible for the other people. In most cases, that cohort of folks who are core to making these maps are already confident using their bikes to go places.
01:01:27:16 - 01:01:52:28
Avi Stopper
And yet, what we are passionate about, I think what unites us is this view that cities need to be navigable today by bike, and to a large degree they are imperfect, yes, but they are navigable. And why is that? Why is it that we know that? It's because it's what we've been doing for decades ourselves, as people who are passionate about this, who are front running the infrastructure, we are trying to find these things.
01:01:53:00 - 01:02:17:06
Avi Stopper
And so the universality is that we find one of the key ones is just that there are always people. There are always people in a city who want to make their city more accessible so that the other people in their lives, who are less confident writing today, are able to do that. And there is an interesting convergence between that, between passion and enthusiasm for maps.
01:02:17:08 - 01:02:40:14
Avi Stopper
Often there are some technical chops that folks bring to these types of projects, but I think at its essence, it's a group of people who want to make cities more accessible today who are extremely frustrated, as I was when I started Bike Streets. With the rate at which cities were rolling out their complete networks. And we want to take matters in our own hands.
01:02:40:14 - 01:03:08:18
Avi Stopper
And as advocates, there is a way this gives us a sense of agent. You know, we spend a lot of time bashing our heads against the the doors of City Hall, trying to get cities to make choices and what bike streets, at its essence does is give advocates agency and the ability to improve access immediately, irrespective of the machinations of the city.
01:03:08:20 - 01:03:38:16
John Simmerman
Right, right. I want to point out to that you and I have had the opportunity to record videos in person, out on the streets, while running the The Bike Streets app, as well as Gary Hardy, who is in the chat right now. This this video off in the center to the left, the Stratton in the USA. Pete Stratton, of course, is the plural name for feet, street or bike street in Dutch.
01:03:38:19 - 01:04:15:07
John Simmerman
That's one. And then the bike streets tour, which again is in the middle section there to the far right. That's when you and I and, and Gary went out last fall and recorded a wonderful video, starting in Denver and then making our way into Lakewood. And one of the things that is the clear reality of an imperfect network is that, yes, you have these high comfort, chill streets within the neighborhoods, but then you get to the strokes, then you get to these massive crossings that have to take place.
01:04:15:07 - 01:04:51:15
John Simmerman
So I'll point people to those videos to see what it really looks and feels like. Because we don't hide it, we talk about it and you give, you know, strategies of how people, families can navigate them now because they are imperfect and will kind of leave it at that. I want to navigate over to the website again and talk a little bit about how best people can engage with the Bike Streets app, the bike streets movement, and we let's get us started.
01:04:51:15 - 01:05:30:16
John Simmerman
Let's talk a little bit about the cities that are currently in the process. So we've got everything from Albuquerque, New Mexico, all the way down to Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Obviously this is alphabetical. Congratulations. This is great. Now, I'm assuming in some of these cases this is just passionate advocates. But I'm also assuming that some of these cases is you've connected formally with the cities and you've got the approval and or support or the green light working with the actual cities to be able to to map this out and bring this to life.
01:05:30:18 - 01:05:31:13
John Simmerman
Is that the case?
01:05:31:14 - 01:06:04:21
Avi Stopper
It's more the former, it's more advocates. There are some isolated cases where city officials are either involved themselves in the mapping projects in their private lives, or the city has taken some formal ownership or adoption of of the map. What I would say is that there are a handful of ways for folks to get involved. First off, you can ride with the Bike Streets app in any city, even if we haven't yet made a map there, and just help us start to build the data in your community.
01:06:04:22 - 01:06:38:13
Avi Stopper
You can start making a map in your city by filling out this form. And and typically we'll work with an advocacy group. So if you're connected to an advocacy group, that's really helpful. If we are already making a map in your city, you can contribute your favorite routes, you can ride with the app and or draw your favorite routes in the app and share those, and start to build energy and momentum about adding those routes to to the map.
01:06:38:13 - 01:07:18:18
Avi Stopper
So that's pretty much it. You can ride with it wherever you are. You can start a new mapping project if we don't have one yet in your community, or you can contribute in a significant way to, to to those maps that are already under development. And like you said, John, there is an assumption baked into this, and this harkens back to a lot of that entrepreneurial learning that, that, that, that I've had throughout my career, which is that we make no assumptions that the network today is the network tomorrow, or nor do we make pretenses that the network as it is currently presented is the perfect network.
01:07:18:18 - 01:07:42:19
Avi Stopper
It evolves constantly and that's why we use this term often. Best available network. It is the best available network as we know it today, and anyone contributing to any project can help uplift that knowledge by sharing some insights that they have that make the map better. And those can run the gamut from construction to hazards to notes to new route suggestions.
01:07:42:26 - 01:08:39:20
John Simmerman
I promised that I would be a little critical of the people for Bikes Bicycle Network analysis tool, because one of the biggest limitations that it has is similar to the limitations that cities have self-imposed upon themselves, is that they really only take into consideration the formal infrastructure that the city has codified. Unless somebody has engaged in the open streets mapping process within their band tool to be able to to highlight the blues here, the bike streets, routes that you have have done, you and I have had this conversation before is that if an area like this, this little area right here, you know, if pretty much every one of these streets is, is a high
01:08:39:21 - 01:09:11:27
John Simmerman
comfort chill route, then it should be highlighted in blue. And it is interesting to see all of the north south streets in this particular visual here near this park have that highlighted as blue. When we look at the east west streets, I'm going, gee, shouldn't those be blue too, if those are also chill? And that's one of the criticisms that I have over that bicycle network analysis tool that that people for bikes has, and they know that this is my been my position.
01:09:11:27 - 01:09:34:13
John Simmerman
I've had this position ever since they came out with it five years ago, is that I lived on an absolutely delightful, chill street, but my neighborhood was was identified as hazardous and terrible because the only bike lane in in the neighborhood was on a strode and it was just a painted bike lane. And I agreed. I never wrote on that.
01:09:34:14 - 01:10:05:26
John Simmerman
I always wrote on the high comfort chill streets in the neighborhood, but that was completely invisible to the tool. So I always tried to take lists and and best of stuff like the, the, the balance tool and and who what city wins the award for the most bike city kind of stuff with a grain of salt, because I know that there's so much missed, so much nuances missed in the data collection.
01:10:05:28 - 01:10:29:28
John Simmerman
Talk a little bit about how the spirit of what you all are trying to do is to illuminate the fact that, yeah. Many of these, you know, parallel streets going east to west from this park. Yeah, those might actually be good blue streets to it could be an entire network of or a region of saying, yeah, this entire neighborhood, you take your pick.
01:10:30:00 - 01:10:37:26
John Simmerman
There might be beautiful tulips on one street over again, using that one street over mantra that we were talking about earlier.
01:10:37:28 - 01:11:15:20
Avi Stopper
The key thing is back to the point about a well architected bike route is a combination of a good chill first mile connection, a connected on network segment, and then a chill final mile connection in the way that we algorithmically present these these turn by turn routes. We are fixated on that, which is to say that it's really important that those first and last mile components are as comfortable as the on network segment.
01:11:15:20 - 01:11:40:20
Avi Stopper
And that is, at its essence, what you're saying, I think, which is basically that there are all of these infinite permutations and those need to be taken into account, and those are valid considerations. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is create some noise or some signal out of the noise, and that signal is what a complete network could be.
01:11:40:21 - 01:12:12:03
Avi Stopper
Were a city to formalize and codify that. In other words, it's not really possible or practical for a city to do every single street. You don't really want that. It makes wayfinding challenging, etc. you want for the network to be something that is a subset of the entire world as it exists. You want those chill streets that exist on the periphery to be routable, but those don't necessarily make it onto your kind of like network or subway style map.
01:12:12:04 - 01:12:28:08
Avi Stopper
And what we are trying to do with these advocacy groups across the country is create an argument that a city can create and formalize a complete network, and that's why certain routes are illuminated as dark blue, low stress bike streets.
01:12:28:08 - 01:12:35:10
John Simmerman
Routes address the fact that right now, anything with the word bike is hot charged.
01:12:35:13 - 01:12:41:13
John Simmerman
Political Kryptonite.
01:12:41:15 - 01:12:45:07
Avi Stopper
I don't know what to say about that. I mean.
01:12:45:07 - 01:12:52:26
John Simmerman
You just stay focused on getting getting the work done and and, you know, not. Yeah. I mean, why organization.
01:12:52:27 - 01:13:20:03
Avi Stopper
What's my organization is, is, is called bike streets. The maps that we create are low stress bike maps. We're not trying to couch it. We're not trying to hide it. I think the fundamental reality is that people love riding bikes, even people who don't ride bikes regularly. If given the opportunity to ride a bike with some family members to get ice cream, they love riding bikes and I think we need to stop running away from that.
01:13:20:03 - 01:13:34:24
Avi Stopper
Is that a naive political strategy? Maybe, but the bicycle is an amazing device. I don't know, maybe it's naive, but I don't, I don't.
01:13:34:25 - 01:14:00:20
John Simmerman
I don't. Here's my take on here's my take on it. You know, is I think we we can bend ourselves into, you know, into pretzels and knots if we try to, you know, make everybody happy. The key thing that I like to point out with active towns is this is not about the fearless and brave, you know, competent cyclists, the cyclist.
01:14:00:20 - 01:14:35:09
John Simmerman
This is about getting more people riding bikes more often. It's about people, not the bike. It's not about the bike, it's about the people. And what is a bike? Well, a cycle is it could be anything. It'd be an adaptive cycle. I mean, one of the great things about a street like Berry Street is that this is an environment where it's going to feel comfortable for anybody to be on, whether you're on a racing bike or if you're on, you know, a bike with your golf clubs.
01:14:35:12 - 01:14:37:08
John Simmerman
Okay. It can be something.
01:14:37:08 - 01:14:37:19
Avi Stopper
You saw.
01:14:37:19 - 01:15:08:00
John Simmerman
That it could be somebody in a wheelchair. And that's exactly what we see in the Netherlands when we look at high comfort bike networks, is that it is used by people with disabilities on adaptive cycles. It's used by people in wheelchairs. The bike network is, oh, by the way, in the Netherlands 60 to 70% is shared streets just like this, and they tend to be traffic calmed.
01:15:08:01 - 01:15:40:07
John Simmerman
They tend to be environments where it's expected that as a driver, you have the ability to be there. You are the guest in that environment though, and you are expected to behave accordingly. In other words, it's a 30km/h speed limit and you will be patient and stay back and let those little kiddos let that let that grandmother who's in the wheelchair with their grandchild on a little bike, you know, be able to progress at the speed that they need to progress at.
01:15:40:07 - 01:15:56:18
John Simmerman
And I think that this is all possible in the United States. And I am absolutely delighted to see that bike streets as a movement, as a project, as an app continues to flourish. Last word. Avi, what would you like to say?
01:15:56:19 - 01:16:25:06
Avi Stopper
I mean, I think Bikes Southwest might have trademarked this, but bicycles r a symbol of freedom. And what we're talking about fundamentally is a child being able to move freely through their community. If folks have beef with the idea of a kid being able to go places without being dependent on their parents, I think that that is a fight that we should be willing to have.
01:16:25:07 - 01:17:00:12
Avi Stopper
It is such an uplifting opportunity for communities from the perspective of economic development, from the perspective of health, from the perspective of air quality, heck, from the perspective of driving to reduce congestion and what we as a movement. I think need and what we're trying to do. And some agree, some disagree. And that's cool, is to be self-reflective and evaluate from an entrepreneurial perspective, an innovation perspective.
01:17:00:14 - 01:17:31:00
Avi Stopper
We're talking again about one of the fundamental behaviors. And it's really important for us if that that reality that I just described, that quasi utopian reality that so many of us believe to be possible, is indeed going to happen. I think we need to really evaluate some of the foundational assumptions and try to push forward with an empirical way of figuring out like, what works?
01:17:31:00 - 01:17:34:06
Avi Stopper
How do we make this happen? And that's what we're trying to do.
01:17:34:08 - 01:18:00:06
John Simmerman
Fantastic, fantastic. I we did get a question in. It's from Richard here. And boom, we've got that right here. Let's pull it up. Richard is asking what is the decision process for determining what is a chill route. How do you what does that process. How do you decide what a chill route is?
01:18:00:09 - 01:18:24:25
Avi Stopper
It's crowdsourced knowledge. We're trying to tap into the wisdom of crowds. There's underlying data that is available to us through OpenStreetMap. That's kind of a leading indicator. And then there is that local knowledge which we are trying to fundamentally exalt. If someone makes a suggestion, there are these leading indicators, there is their own nomination of that route. And then there's the the wisdom of the crowd.
01:18:24:25 - 01:18:57:16
Avi Stopper
Basically. Do people support that? Do they upvote it? Do they comment favorably on it? Do they go out and ride it and come back and say, yeah, this is this is awesome. I don't I don't think that it is. It is it is possible to have a constantly complete sense of what every single street is like. And even cities, in their analysis of how streets work, you know, tend to average vehicular volumes over a 24 hour period.
01:18:57:18 - 01:19:25:00
Avi Stopper
So you don't really get a sense of what it's like. And so what we really try to do is say, look, the people in communities know their streets the best. If people feel like this is the street for them to ride, that is a street that we are going to put on the map. And until we learn something new again, the maps are constantly evolving until we learn something new that disabuse us of that idea that that was indeed the best route.
01:19:25:00 - 01:19:33:08
Avi Stopper
And maybe we moved the the route to the next street over for reasons X, Y, and Z that that is the that is the route that we're going to tap into.
01:19:33:10 - 01:19:59:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. We're seeing you know, obviously there's a lot of conversations, a lot of talk about carb load and the fact that motor vehicles are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I could totally see a situation where you might have a street that's identified as a chill route, but then as time emerges, it's like, oh, yeah, but apparently this street has some very aggressive, very large truck drivers or SUV drivers.
01:19:59:04 - 01:20:03:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, maybe we want to be one street over again. That concept of one street over.
01:20:03:14 - 01:20:25:28
Avi Stopper
And I would I would say in the in the early days of the project, before we had routing in the way that we do enabled by mobile devices, I would right turn by turn directions for folks. Folks would email and they would say, how do I get here? And that is the way that throughout human history, I think until the Arab GPS, a lot of routing and navigation was done.
01:20:25:28 - 01:20:40:14
Avi Stopper
You ask people, how do I go to the place that I want to go? And you would get direction and guidance from them? And what we're trying to do is writ large, make that local knowledge available so that you can get that sort of route to any destination.
01:20:40:21 - 01:20:49:21
John Simmerman
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, obviously offer bike streets. Com everybody go over to the website. Check it out. Thank you so much for joining me once.
01:20:49:24 - 01:20:50:12
Avi Stopper
Thanks, John.
01:20:50:13 - 01:21:14:07
John Simmerman
A this conversation and a live stream. And thank you so much to everybody out there in the live audience for joining us here today. I really do appreciate it. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you a two activity health and happiness. Cheers and aloha. And I just want to also say thank you all so much to all my Active Towns ambassadors supporting the channel financially via YouTube super thanks to YouTube memberships.
01:21:14:07 - 01:21:24:28
John Simmerman
Buy me a coffee, Patreon and making donations to the nonprofit again. I simply could not produce this content without your support. Thank you all so very much.