Skip to content

Friday, December 5, 2008

Boulder Goes Bike Platinum

by Clarence Eckerson, Jr. on December 5, 2008

Time: 9:35 Plays: 13,489 Embed:

Add Boulder, Colorado to the League of American Bicyclists' cities to achieve Platinum Bike Status. This Fall, they were bestowed the nation's highest rank for U.S. cities and joined Portland, Oregon and Davis, California as the only three cities to have that honor.

I spent five days on a bike in Boulder in October and can testify it is close to bicycling nirvana. The resulting Streetfilm is only a taste of what is going on in the bike culture universe. You'll get to sample what its like to ride some of their amazing bike amenities including its wonderful greenway system with its emphasis on continuity and an uninterrupted commute.

Having produced Streetfilms on all three Platinum bike cities, one thing that is beginning to emerge as a sure tell tale sign you got a healthy biking city: the numbers of youngsters riding bicycles. Boulder has numerous programs to encourage kids to walk and bike and we were lucky enough to include two of them here. Don't miss our Boulder Streetfilms series as well as our long-form pieces on Davis and Portland.

16 Comments

Last comment by Err404 Leave a comment »
  1. Post Thumbnail  

    Fritz

    Living in Bordeaux, France now with pretty nice (far from perfect) biking facilities I haven't felt too envious of U.S. facilities for a while (although bike coops are a different manner... they just don't exist in the same way here). This video makes me wish our bike networks here didn't have tons of patches in it where you're thrown into traffic or where cars day-in-and-day-out park halfway in the bike lane. Congrats Boulder.

    Great video... I really like the longer ones :)

    December 5, 2008 at 8:39 pm Link # 1
  2. Post Thumbnail  

    Ed Pino

    Love the full length feature! Lets go New York we have a long way to go.
    Thanks
    Ed

    December 5, 2008 at 9:36 pm Link # 2
  3. Post Thumbnail  

    bklyn74

    Totally awesome though I would have liked to have seen some footage from January or February w/ some significant snow on the ground.

    December 8, 2008 at 8:41 pm Link # 3
  4. Post Thumbnail  

    Jarrett Mullen

    I'm really jealous.

    December 8, 2008 at 11:47 pm Link # 4
  5. Post Thumbnail  

    Zane Selvans

    Thank GOD I'm moving back to Boulder. LA can stew in its cesspool of asphalt and exhaust without me.

    December 9, 2008 at 3:09 pm Link # 5
  6. Post Thumbnail  

    Chris in Sacremento

    Clarence, that was one of your best videos-- comprehensive, upbeat...just the right amount of looniness ;-) .

    Impressions: 1) For a city of that size, that's a whole bunch of people doing green transportation planning and promotion; 2) The thoroughness with which they have minimized at-grade intersections of paths and roadways is stunning (and strikes the curmudgeon within as not easily replicated in less wealthy or progressive communities); 3) I wonder how helpful cultural homogeneity is in making change such as this.

    December 9, 2008 at 4:30 pm Link # 6
  7. Post Thumbnail  

    let the sunshine in

    Love, love this! I hope NYC DOT can implement continuous bike paths where possible. I know it is a tough thing to put in everywhere, but it looks like it really pays dividends down the road.

    December 9, 2008 at 9:40 pm Link # 7
  8. Post Thumbnail  

    Paula Roberts

    Beautiful film, and wonderful subject. I would love to leave Atlanta for Boulder!

    December 16, 2008 at 8:06 am Link # 8
  9. Post Thumbnail  

    Steven

    This is great to see. Never been to Boulder, just Davis, which was absolutely amazing on a bike.

    I live in "Bike Friendly Silver" Cary, NC. I've ridden in a dozen cities, and rode from Mass. to San Fran this summer, and I've got to say, to designate Cary as "Bike Friendly" is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. It's easily one of the least bike-friendly places I've ever ridden in.

    It makes me sick.

    As someone without a car, who commutes an average of 40 miles a week, I think The League needs to RAISE THEIR STANDARDS. I could go on forever, but I won't. Maybe I'll just move to Boulder instead.

    Or Amsterdam.

    January 8, 2009 at 12:34 am Link # 9
  10. Post Thumbnail  

    Todd A

    Great video. Thanks for highlighting our great city! Most of the buses around town have bike racks that can greatly extend your biking range and the boulder creek path system is brilliant. The video shows a typical weekend or "rush hour". often times it can even more crowded than that.

    bklyn74: because of the low humidity and sunshine, snow typically doesn't stay on the ground for more than a day or two. and yes they do plow the bike lanes first here.

    Props to Clarence. However you missed the Thursday Night Cruiser ride.

    January 10, 2009 at 1:18 pm Link # 10
  11. Post Thumbnail  

    bradkevans

    why doesn't it surprise me that you totally left out of your film the Boulder Cruzers? what a major flub up... oh, yea, biking is only supposed to be serious... totally forgot... last summer they had 1800+ riders on a thursday night... this tradition is more than 10 years in the running and you totally skipped it... dumb

    February 9, 2009 at 2:38 am Link # 11
  12. Post Thumbnail  

    Clarence Eckerson Jr.

    Since we have had two comments in a row on the Cruiser Ride, I was dying to cover it having seen videos of it before I came out, but the timeframe I had in Boulder only allowed me to A) come Fri AM thru Wed PM, and B) the week I was there was the start of what I was told was the off season for the ride anyway. But alas, that is what is good, can't cover all the great bicycling stuff in one city in just one visit as a one person crew.

    February 9, 2009 at 2:56 am Link # 12
  13. Post Thumbnail  

    Tim Burford

    Great job, Boulder! But there's an awful lot of people wearing helmets on offroad trails - what's that about?
    What's it like in the winter? The trails remind me a lot of Anchorage - but of course those are only cycleable half the year.

    February 19, 2009 at 2:22 pm Link # 13
  14. Post Thumbnail  

    Brett Conrad

    I left Boulder after 18 years there of bicycling, and now live in Santa Monica (the beach town surrounded by LA). I am going to make sure Santa Monica planners get to see this, as we have a better climate here for cycling, but have few bicycle friendly features (the beach path is nice, but not practical for most commuting).

    Great short feature here, also for anyone reading this, go see the movie FUEL.

    Integrated transportation is key to our future.

    March 7, 2009 at 11:04 pm Link # 14
  15. Post Thumbnail  

    Err404

    Flash version 9,0 or greater is required

    Why Flash ?
    really need?

    Why not any another documented and standard file format? like Ogg ?

    March 22, 2009 at 5:30 pm Link # 15
  16. Post Thumbnail  

    Err404

    it's easy to take data from here:

    http://www.streetfilms.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/?C=S;O=D

    March 22, 2009 at 5:37 pm Link # 16