Saturday, June 20, 2026 - Creative Approaches to Open Streets

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1. From KPFK in Los Angeles, California, Valley Free Radio in Florence, Massachusetts, WNUC
2. in Detroit, and Biketalk.org worldwide, this is Biketalk.
3. Welcome to Biketalk.
4. I'm Taylor Nichols.
5. And I'm Nick Richard.
6. Hey, Nick.
7. Hey, how are you doing?
8. I'm good.
9. How are you?
10. Where are you?
11. I'm in Circle, Montana.
12. And I got to tell you, man, I did a century yesterday and I did a century today.
13. I knew I was going to start picking up some speed as I got out of the mountains, but it's been really exciting.
14. Although there are still ups and downs.
15. Today I did 3,000 climbing yesterday, about 5,000 feet of climbing.
16. It's a lot of climbing. It's climbing to Denver.
17. So it's not flat, but it's not like the mountains.
18. What I'm learning, and we talked about this last week, are the highs and the lows of a trip like this and a ride like this.
19. Today, this morning, I left a little town called Sand Springs.
20. There is nothing there but a little teeny store and some camping spots behind the store.
21. And there was a tailwind and it was slightly downhill and I was going 22, 24 miles an hour.
22. and I called my dad, you know, who I'm going to see.
23. I called him from the road while I was riding.
24. And it was like, Nick, it was like riding for free.
25. There was so much tailwind.
26. It was, I was giggling, you know, the high.
27. But then after about 60, 70 miles,
28. I got to a construction zone
29. and I had to wait for a pilot car
30. to lead me through and all that.
31. And then it started raining.
32. And then the last 13 miles of my century today
33. was a huge headwind and slightly uphill.
34. And so with the good comes the bad,
35. with the bad comes the good.
36. And that's really what I'm learning.
37. And that leads me into this first interview
38. that I wanna play.
39. When I left Missoula, Montana a couple of days ago,
40. I was riding about 50, 60 miles
41. and I didn't know where I was gonna sleep
42. and I didn't know where I was gonna eat.
43. and I went into this little town called Ovando, Montana.
44. And lo and behold, there was this beautiful restaurant
45. serving prime rib and they had space for me.
46. It was by reservation only, but they had space for me.
47. So I sat down after this 60 mile ride,
48. being kind of worried where I was gonna go,
49. having this beautiful dinner and a glass of wine.
50. So this is from the Stray Bullet in Ovando, Montana.
51. So this might be one of the most fun stories of my little trip.
52. I'm getting ready to do about 150 miles in an area over the Continental Divide,
53. which I've been told has no services.
54. So I packed up ramen noodles and peanut butter and all that,
55. and I left Missoula, Montana this morning in the rain
56. and rode about 60 miles to a little town called Ovando.
57. I was expecting nothing in Ovando, and at the end of the day, tired, hungry,
58. I pull into Ovando and there is a restaurant that is open and packed called The Stray Bullet.
59. And I'm talking with its owner and chef.
60. Leanne Vallotton.
61. Yeah. Hey, Leanne. Thank you so much for talking with me.
62. You know, this was really an oasis.
63. Can you tell me a little bit about both The Stray Bullet and the town of Ovando?
64. Because it really is a cycling mecca, I think.
65. It really is a cycling mecca.
66. I've owned it for five years.
67. I bought it for my best friend, Colleen, who was right over there.
68. She had it for 11 years.
69. I worked for her and this is right on the route of the Tour Divide ride And it also on the Lewis and Clark ride which is what I doing Yes Lewis and Clark And there one more too I can remember what it is
70. Adventure Cycling has several different tours.
71. And probably starting Sunday, we're going to get a lot of the riders from the Great Divide ride.
72. And it will be bicyclists all over the place.
73. And we do cater to them because we enjoy them.
74. Because we're hungry.
75. That.
76. And it's interesting because it's from all over the world.
77. Yeah.
78. You know, that's what's amazing, and we just love that.
79. I'm from Los Angeles, and again, I've been on this road for 50 miles, and there's been nothing on the road.
80. And to come into this little teeny town and see this restaurant full of people and have a beautiful, wonderful dinner was really a surprise, and a wonderful surprise at that.
81. Well, thank you very much.
82. Yeah, we have like what we call the Huskow, which is the old jail from way back in the 40s, that we have it set up for bicyclists to sleep in.
83. And then we have a teepee and the sheep wagon.
84. And then, of course, they can camp wherever they'd like.
85. And then we have a hotel across the way and a grocery store and a gas station and laundry and a shower, if that's all you want.
86. I think I'm going to hit all of those, actually.
87. Are most of the people that are here tonight from the area?
88. Some were from Seeley Lake, but all the rest were local.
89. But the population of Ovando is like 150 or something.
90. Ovando itself in the little town is about 40.
91. Wow.
92. And then the registered voters in this area are about 190.
93. Okay.
94. So that goes clear to Cooper's Lake.
95. I don't know if you're riding the road.
96. I'm going on the road to Great Falls, yeah.
97. Okay, okay.
98. So the Tour Divide goes over Huckleberry Pass, and Cooper's Lake is up that way.
99. It was just a wonderful surprise for me to get here at 7 p.m.
100. You know, at the end of my day when I was looking at ramen noodles, you know, for my dinner.
101. And to have a beautiful prime rib dinner that was just fantastic.
102. Yeah, that's a little different.
103. That's good. That's really good.
104. And you said that you do it by reservation usually.
105. But when I got here, you saw that I was hungry and you fed me.
106. Well, I put my menu on Facebook.
107. I do every Wednesday night through the summer.
108. because we have a lot of snowbirds as well.
109. If I have any extra, I will absolutely feed.
110. Stragglers.
111. Yes, bicycles, stragglers, yes, all of the above, because why not?
112. This has really been wonderful.
113. It's a great stop on the Lewis and Clark ride.
114. It's a great stop on the Great Divide ride.
115. And if you're going to ride your bike anywhere in western Montana,
116. you have to stop at the Stray Bullet in Ovendo, Montana.
117. That's exactly right.
118. And last weekend we had a 85-mile gravel race with women only.
119. Oh, thank you.
120. And now she's having a beer.
121. Yes, I am.
122. So there was 400 riders.
123. Wow.
124. How do you feed all those people?
125. They brought a caker in because we couldn't have done it.
126. Well, you deserve that beer.
127. Yeah.
128. Thank you so much for everything, and thanks for talking on Bike Talk.
129. Oh, you're welcome.
130. Thank you very much for stopping.
131. I appreciate it.
132. So after dinner, they told me that they have a teepee and a covered wagon and an old time jail, a huskow for cyclists to sleep in.
133. It was great. I posted the picture of the huskow on Instagram at Taylor Nichols dot bike life.
134. It's it was really great. I slept in this old time jail.
135. But going along with this high and lows of a trip like this my bike started to malfunction and just as I was getting to Great Falls my front shifters I got Shimano 105s they you know good shifters weren working And so I seeked out a bike shop in Great Falls
136. Montana. And I met this guy, Brandon, and he helped me out. Leaving Missoula, I was having
137. some trouble with my front shifter. I wasn't able to get in and out of the big chain ring.
138. And now I'm in Great Falls and I walk into a bike shop, Bighorn Bike Shop.
139. Big Horn Bike Shop, baby.
140. The first thing the guy says, oh, is you're out touring.
141. And then I told him what the problem was.
142. And none of this, it's going to be ready next Tuesday.
143. He took it right away.
144. He fixed it.
145. He changed my chain.
146. He said it was 150% stretch, which I totally believe.
147. What's your name?
148. And tell me a little bit about the shop.
149. And what kind of biking people are doing in Great Falls, Montana?
150. Yeah, my name's Brandon.
151. I've been here at Big Horn for seven years.
152. You're actually catching me on my very last day of my career here at Big Horn.
153. No.
154. Yeah, yeah.
155. Where are you going?
156. I'm going to go be an electrician.
157. is the idea at least you're giving up the bike world eh yeah i like wrenching on things but uh
158. i think we're gonna move from bikes unfortunately they're gonna miss you i gotta tell you you
159. handled me great i appreciate you yeah we always like to take care of the touring guys you guys are
160. you're doing the real work out there yeah so bighorn's been a bike shop we've actually been
161. in great falls since 1978 is when it started and it's been a bike shop the whole time we're the
162. oldest cannondale dealer in the state of montana too um most people around here are mountain biking
163. cross-country specific just because of the the way our trails are set up we've got access to a lot of
164. really good downhill stuff by Helena and then of course down by Big Skies super popular and do you
165. get a lot of cross-country tours or not we do yeah since we're on that the northern tier route we get
166. them a lot I had and the Lewis and Clark route also because oh yeah good because that's kind of
167. what I'm on is it okay cool yeah we had two tours in yesterday doing west to east and then last week
168. we had a couple guys from Philadelphia doing east to west it's fun to meet all sorts of different
169. folks and all different places around the world. And I've learned a lot from touring.
170. I bet. I bet. And they're really lucky to have you because I was kind of worried. I was really
171. having trouble. I had to stay in my small chain ring on the downhill. And sometimes, you know,
172. you lose a little bit of power, not being able to pedal through the wind and stuff.
173. So you were a big help. I really appreciate that. We always try to schedule out time for you touring
174. guys because technically I am out six weeks on tune ups, but you're not going to hang out great
175. balls for six weeks. Let's get you taken care of. Let's get you going. And you told me a good
176. coffee shop to go to also. So Brandon, thanks very much. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
177. And I can tell you that Bighorn's going to miss you. And I'm going to miss Bighorn a lot,
178. but there's still lots of great folks around here. If anyone's out there listening,
179. come down to Bighorn. We got you taken care of. Well, it was really great. Brandon fixed my bike,
180. except my front shifter, Brandon, if you're listening, still is not working. Sometimes I
181. have to use both hands, Nick, to shift from the small chain ring in the front to the big chain
182. ring. So something is still funky about that. I guess you got to go somewhere else.
183. Well, Brandon isn't working anymore, so I definitely have to go someplace else.
184. Now we have Gersh Kunzman, editor of Streets Blog NYC with the New York Minute.
185. Well, hello from New York, where the big story, okay, maybe it's not a street story, is the New York Championship Knicks.
186. The New York Knicks finally won a championship for the first time in 53 years.
187. and you may be saying, why is this a New York Minute?
188. Well, New Yorkers spilled out into the street,
189. not just for the celebration after last week's clincher in Game 5,
190. but also during the series.
191. New Yorkers were watching it outdoors.
192. People were using projectors to project the game onto the side of subway walls,
193. onto the backs of their neighbors houses They were using parking spaces and probably the only good way to use parking spaces to set up a TV so your neighbors can watch the game And now the best part is on Thursday we going to have a parade right up the Canyon of Heroes
194. to celebrate our beloved New York Knickerbockers,
195. and more important, to champion the use of public space in a way that celebrates the joy of being outdoors with your neighbors without cars.
196. There you go, that's it.
197. I'm Stacey with this week's news.
198. From the Dutch Review, the driver of a car struck a group of primary school children cycling on a bike path in rural Netherlands near the Belgian border, killing four people, including three children.
199. The group, from a school camp, was cycling along a rural highway when the motorist lost control and veered into the separated but unprotected bike path.
200. The 19-year-old driver remains in police custody during the investigation.
201. A college student from Japan, Yuro Sato, biked 1,200 miles from Pittsburgh's Southside to Arlington, Texas, over the course of a month to watch his home team compete in the World Cup.
202. He bought a new bike in Pittsburgh, loaded it with bags and a Japanese flag, and made it to the first match just in time on Sunday, where Japan tied the Netherlands 2-2.
203. And topping that, three friends spent nearly a year biking the 11,000 miles from Argentina to the U.S. to support their home team in the World Cup.
204. Vicente Congolini and his friends departed from Gualeguichu, a city in eastern Argentina, in August 2025.
205. For their efforts, the chair of Johnson County, Kansas, presented them with tickets to the Argentina-Algeria game.
206. That's right. These guys biked all the way without tickets.
207. And it was even sweeter since Argentina prevailed three nothing.
208. You know, Nick, we're kind of on the front lines of advocacy for safe streets.
209. Last week, Stacey in her news talked about Riley O'Neill, who was a leader in the safe streets movement who was killed.
210. Well, we have Chris Gentry with us today from Chicago Bike Grid.
211. Now, Chris, welcome to Bike Talk.
212. Thank you so much for having me.
213. It was really tragic what happened to Riley O'Neill. He was a critical member of the Chicago Department of Transit's Complete Streets team. He was in charge of the bike parking programs across the city, especially for schools. I quite literally have a Riley-created bike rack in front of my apartment right now. And yeah, he was killed, doored in a painted bike lane into a semi-truck on Halstead and Bridgeport last week.
214. Wow. It's ironic that here we are fighting for safe streets and then something like this happens.
215. It's really, I think, indicative of a citywide priority problem where we might have a Department of Transportation that talks about a want for complete streets, yet one of their own is a fatality of their lack of meaningful infrastructure, just like we have in a painted lane, you know?
216. He was doored and then pushed into a semi that was moving behind him.
217. And, of course, that's the problem with painted infrastructure.
218. It's not really infrastructure.
219. or, you know, you're in the door zone and a door opens and it knocks you into the moving traffic
220. lane. I've always been told that if you see a door opening, turn your bike into the door and run
221. right into the car. Because it's safer than the alternative. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We
222. know that like painted bike lanes have a negligible of any impact on actual safety and they don't
223. really make anyone more likely to ride their bikes in the first place. That was one of the
224. things we were basically trying to call out the Sunday after his death. So about three days later,
225. We organized a pretty huge memorial ride where we rode from the nearby park to the site where he died and we staged a die-in.
226. I think we had probably five or six hundred people in the ride, about three hundred participating in the die-in portion.
227. So we laid in the streets.
228. for five minutes where Riley was taken out, mostly trying to highlight the abysmal safety record.
229. Bike accidents are up 46% in the city. This is our sixth bike scooter death of the year,
230. third bike death of the year, and trying to find ways to highlight the lack of city priority given
231. to bike and pedestrian safety in Chicago. A couple of weeks ago, we had a couple of
232. advocates from Los Angeles, Damian Kevitt and Jonathan Hale, talking about the state of
233. emergency of our streets in Los Angeles. And I think this just proves that it's also in Chicago
234. and New York and Atlanta and Miami and New Orleans and Phoenix and whatever other city we want to
235. mention. We're so tied into car dependent development, especially as we're seeing gas
236. prices soar, the cost of owning a car soar. It really drives people into finding alternative
237. ways of transportation like cycling. We know this in the city of Chicago as well. Biking is up more
238. than 200% in the last five years, especially on the Northwest and Southwest sides.
239. We're seeing biking increase at a pretty rapid rate.
240. We're having more new cyclists on the road, more people trying to get on the road.
241. At the same time, you don't have the infrastructure that's needed to actually do that work.
242. And that's why, yeah, state of emergency is real.
243. And we had a follow-up ride to the Sunday ride.
244. Smaller crowd, about 70 or so folks.
245. And we biked to the Alderman's office and we called out all of the deaths that have
246. happened in her ward because since she took over office there's been 214 cyclist crashes um in her
247. ward alone out of 50 wards in the city and so we kind of call that out because for us the
248. organizational name is chicago bike grid now because i don't want to wait till i'm old to be
249. able to like have safe streets i want to be able to make it to the point where i'm old and have the
250. infrastructure in the first place that was the thing that was so scary about riley's death is
251. like that's an area that I and my friends bike on so often. And yeah, the forever fear that
252. what if we're the next one? Chris Gentry, thank you so much for coming on and keep Riley's spirit
253. alive. Will do. Appreciate y'all. Now we have a panel put together by Karen Douglas of Culprit
254. Media. And Karen wanted to talk about funding open streets events for people. Right. How to
255. keep them going, right? Here's a conversation with John Sirico, who's involved with the 31st Avenue
256. Open Street Collective in Queens, New York. Then we have Max Musicant, who does open streets events
257. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dr. Donya Lugo, the author of Bicycle Race, also a co-founder of
258. Ciclavia in LA, and a member of the California Transportation Commission. Tafari Bain,
259. friend of the show, frequent guest, co-founded Ciclavia and is the chief strategist for Ciclavia.
260. Great.
261. We have Darren Au-Wing, who's the executive director of Livable City in San Francisco,
262. which puts on their open street event, Sunday Streets. It's an annual event. And we have
263. Yulia Flynn, who is an entrepreneur who wants to find creative funding models for bike infrastructure
264. and open streets.
265. Wow, quite the panel.
266. Yeah. Karen is going to take it away. Here's Karen.
267. So simply put, open street events close a public street to cars for a day or a couple of hours.
268. And within that time, they really give the street a new purpose.
269. Open streets have become very popular over the past 15 years.
270. And yet, like so many popular community programs today, leaders are having to rethink how to keep them going as federal and state funding becomes more and more unreliable.
271. So that's why I brought you all here today.
272. I know there a lot we can learn from you about why open streets are important and how we can creatively approach funding them John let start with you What your experience been in New York City The Open Streets program in New York City started as an emergency response to the pandemic
273. The Open Street in Astoria, Queens, 31st Avenue Open Street,
274. that I have the pleasure and privilege to being a part of,
275. came during that time in April 2020.
276. And this was really just to create space in the neighborhood
277. where we don't have all huge access to parkland.
278. Our Open Street is fully closed to traffic and parking,
279. and it creates places for people to sit, enjoy programming, enjoy workshops,
280. while also bike safely through and to walk through in their own neighborhood.
281. Open streets were then made permanent by law a year later in New York City,
282. and they've now been going on for six or seven years since 2020.
283. And I would say they really exist to do two things.
284. The first is to calm the traffic network and create spaces for cycling and walking.
285. And the second, which is not to be overlooked, is to create places to be and to stay.
286. The secret sauce when it works really well is when the Open Streets program is seen as
287. an editor of design process where you try to see different ways that you can redesign a street.
288. Our Open Street was running for about five or six years before
289. the city fully redesigned the avenue.
290. So now the avenue looks totally different.
291. It's been turned into what's known as a bike boulevard where traffic has been rerouted.
292. Our Open Street, the two blocks we do the Open Street on,
293. has completely permanent pedestrian infrastructure.
294. and now there's a two-way bike lane that exists throughout.
295. That's that gradual process when we start to get into full capital reconstruction
296. and actually putting in the street redesign, showing people what it could be.
297. Max Musican, here in the Twin Cities, our first Open Street sprang from advocacy efforts
298. from the bike community, initiating the first one and then a series of them in Minneapolis
299. to demonstrate the power and the benefits of more pedestrianized, bike-centric infrastructure.
300. And so my group would be brought in to envision and produce a variety of open streets events
301. and urban environments like downtown St. Paul, our neighboring Twin City, as well as like
302. suburban and small town communities, supporting communities that are using it as a tool to
303. achieve some broader goals.
304. The secret sauce in making them successful is to really focus on shared benefits, shared
305. success, the human experience, demonstrating what's possible through a one day or larger
306. effort.
307. usually then align towards some commercial goals.
308. If it's about revitalization of a commercial district,
309. the public health benefits, traffic calming,
310. and then just inherent community building
311. and relationship work.
312. So I think one of the recipes is to make sure
313. you're linking your broader goals
314. into your sort of tactical implementation
315. of these open streets to increase your chances
316. of that broader success
317. and continual expansion of safe streets.
318. Thanks guys.
319. I love how you both approach open streets
320. as really a method for exploring what's possible in public spaces.
321. Let's hear from Adonia and Tafari next.
322. Adonia, you co-founded Ciclavia in Los Angeles.
323. What inspired you to start it?
324. I first learned about the open street concept through a street film that was making the rounds
325. in late 2007, early 2008.
326. I was a anthropology PhD student at UC Irvine.
327. I was starting to really wonder what made riding a bicycle feel so scary.
328. So I was kind of learning about that stuff in my PhD program.
329. And it all kind of clicked that I was like, well, I think I'm going to try and study this.
330. Like what's going on in our streets and see if we can do something about it.
331. Like I was wanting to do some engaged research where you not just studying but you actually a partner in trying to make changes as well And so the Ciclovia model which I learned about from that street film was something I got to go witness in person in Bogota
332. Colombia in the summer of 2008. I actually got to meet one of the original creators of the event,
333. which has its origins in the 1970s in Bogota, Jaime Ortiz Marino. So getting to meet him was
334. really impactful for me. I got to see how Ciclovia works in Bogota, where they close
335. over 70 miles of streets throughout the city every Sunday. I got to witness that and what
336. did it look like in a city where that had been in place in various forms for quite a long time.
337. So just it being a normal part of the landscape. And I got to speak with this really creative
338. thinker who helped me put it in the context of disruption and changing culture, using creative
339. interventions in streets to affect not just transportation behavior, but really how we
340. interact with each other in public space. To me, that's what open streets are about,
341. coming to these routine, regular, normal places of everyday movement and saying,
342. we can actually relate to each other differently. It is possible.
343. Yes, yes.
344. I love that perspective and that origin story.
345. Tafari, how'd you get involved with Ciclavia?
346. My involvement in Open Streets comes after Adonia was so inspired and worked with a group
347. of leaders in LA to sort of get that first event going right.
348. Prior to that, I had been doing community organizing in South Los Angeles.
349. I grew up in South LA and I'm born and very, very much diehard Angeleno here and was born
350. and raise in a community where issues of displacement, gentrification were starting to come to the
351. forefront.
352. And that was kind of the space of organizing I was working in.
353. And one thing that folks really were concerned about was the reality of just moving about
354. the community.
355. They were really scared to have their kids walk across streets and really get around
356. just to go to school, be outside even because of car traffic.
357. And so that was a constant conversation folks were having.
358. At that time, we started moving toward looking at bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure.
359. As organizers, we realized there was a lot of money going into that at that time, but they weren't being targeted in our community.
360. And so that not only pissed us off, but got us activated to get us in those rooms.
361. And so as we started advocating those rooms, we started really paying attention and doing a lot of bike riding and community engagement around bike lanes and really informing those plans.
362. At the exact same time, we're kind of looking for bigger interventions we can do.
363. And I remember having a day at home and looking in LA Weekly and coming across an ad in LA Weekly for this thing called Sicklavia.
364. I saw it and immediately thought about it as an intervention or an organizing tool.
365. I thought about what it means to transform streets, to transform a street into basically a park for a day.
366. I really immediately recognized what that could do for our communities.
367. So I attended the first event. I was really blown away.
368. I mean, it's like drinking a Kool-Aid immediately when you see like a street that you grew up on, Melrose through to downtown.
369. These are streets I've been on my whole life, doing it as an open street event, doing it on my bike, cars being gone, the air smelling different.
370. the sound being viscerally different.
371. It's just mind blowing when you see it in a city like LA.
372. And so I immediately was looking for the organizers
373. and started hounding them.
374. And I actually tracked down this guy, Joe Linton,
375. who was one of the organizers
376. and sort of staff people at the time.
377. I was like, hey, I want to talk to you about Ciclavia.
378. I want to bring it to South LA.
379. That's how it all started.
380. 15 years ago, I hit them up at a party,
381. their group meeting.
382. I remember first meeting Adonia in those rooms.
383. And I basically joined that effort to help establish it.
384. Thanks, Tafari. I love how you view these events as turning streets into parks for a day.
385. These kinds of interventions are really valuable for communities Now Darren you run an open streets program out of San Francisco What your experience been Sunday Streets is a series of six roughly one events
386. The funny thing is when I volunteered my first Sunday Streets about 2019 or 2018,
387. I wasn't totally impressed by it. My background in youth development, we would work with a thousand
388. kids every day or at least every week for years. So I was actually a little bit skeptical. Like,
389. I appreciated the one-day party thing, but I was like, okay, I'm hearing all these amazing things
390. that happened because of one, not even one day, four hours. You know, four hours doesn't mean
391. anything in youth development. You know, I've spent a lot of time talking to people on Sunday
392. streets like, so what are you doing here? Why do you come here? I'm now a convert and probably the
393. most beautiful thing I've seen is talking to some younger parents, let's say in their 30s,
394. and they'll have a little kid or two or three or whatever. And they'll say, oh, I've been coming
395. to Sunday Street since it started back in 2008. And now look, my kids are growing up in it. And
396. the importance of traditions, even if they're only four hours once a year, the importance of
397. a neighborhood tradition. And so going back to my sort of more sort of developmental mindset,
398. I've been looking at how does this one day event, how does the process of creating it, who creates it and what happens afterwards, how does that impact the community?
399. How does that help with issues of gentrification, stabilization, wealth building?
400. I've been looking mostly toward how these events empower the local community and make the conditions of life in the local community better, which does include the safe streets aspects and how it leads to that.
401. Thanks, Darren. I appreciate the youth development perspective on this and how it frames the overall impact Sunday Streets is having in your communities. I'm going to hand it to Yulia out of Washington, D.C. next. And Yulia, feel free to open up the conversation a bit afterwards.
402. So you're approaching this as an entrepreneur who's currently launching a cycling race event inspired by the Open Streets model. Can you tell us more about that?
403. It started all for me when I started cycling during the pandemic and spending more time on the streets and realizing the benefits of open and safe streets.
404. And from there, it kind of progressed from my entrepreneurial adventures to see open streets more as an opportunity than just a public space.
405. I see open space or open streets as an asset that every town has, and they just don't always know how to utilize it properly.
406. As an entrepreneur, I started thinking, well, how can we tackle this problem without expanding or spending, actually, government resources?
407. Can we look at this more from a private perspective?
408. What can private sponsors or businesses do?
409. There was an event in 2025.
410. It was a national championship race in Charleston, West Virginia.
411. And the economic impact from that event was estimated to be about $6 million for the local community, which is amazing.
412. I think they reported it doubled from the year before.
413. So the small seed collaboration that we can put in at the launch of that event can translate into a huge impact on the community.
414. So I'm currently kind of developing a proof of concept model for small towns to work with the private investors or sponsors who are willing to put initial capital, perhaps backed by the governments, but not using the government's capital.
415. And I'm curious, in your opinion, what is the biggest challenge?
416. Is it the budget or are there other hurdles that are even more important?
417. I'm happy to answer that question.
418. I think you're 100% spot on that open streets are an economic development tool in many ways.
419. We think it's going to be crucial for small businesses to survive, to enhance the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.
420. We know that when you add these things to streets, it boosts foot traffic.
421. And especially when often these businesses' biggest competitor is the Internet, it's really good to encourage local buying and local shopping.
422. So we definitely see it as that.
423. open street groups or organizations that want to start this shouldn't rely on one source of
424. revenue. The biggest hurdle for government is that it takes forever to get paid back for them,
425. to be honest. We're pretty intentional from the get-go because of that long lag time,
426. especially as an all-volunteer group, to try to figure out where we get revenue elsewhere.
427. Yes, we will still take that money from the government, but we don't want to rely on it
428. entirely. Government could lower the barriers for these local organizations to raise their
429. own revenue. We raise revenue primarily through markets, some sponsorships, some discretionary
430. grants, all these things. To be honest, a lot of those private grants and private foundations,
431. it's tons of paperwork to get discretionary dollars from elected officials and from
432. philanthropic sources. And that's just a lot of work, especially if it's volunteers doing this
433. work. Markets, on the other hand, and other kind of like immediate capital, not only can you lower
434. the barrier for entrepreneurs to be able to sell their wares and be able to do these things,
435. you can like add not a nominal amount of revenue and be able to operate a street,
436. which I think is really important. So we try to get a revenue from diverse sources. I think it
437. really helps to not rely on one. We've increasingly looked elsewhere instead of public dollars while
438. still keeping up the pressure for the city to be funding this. But I think it's just healthy to
439. build resiliency into your budget and look elsewhere. That comes from like, yes, applying
440. to other sources, but also figuring out how your street itself can generate revenue and what else
441. can you be doing that could attract sponsorships, activations, markets, and things like that?
442. There's two avenues that John also touched on. It's like one is raising revenue and then two
443. is like lowering cost. In larger cities, you can viably, as John was mentioning, raise revenue
444. from the activations of the event itself. In the Midwest and in other more sprawling cities,
445. you're starting from a lower base. The opportunity to generate revenue from market and vendor fees
446. and participant fees is lower initially, especially as you're building up the momentum there. So
447. initial seed funding from foundations or the government or public health, sometimes insurance
448. companies have a good arm to reach out to in terms of if they've got a public health effort.
449. On the reducing cost side, the two biggest barriers I've found is the amount of time it
450. takes to fill out the permits to close a street. So if cities can reduce the variance on what that
451. means. Have a standardized process, not to treat open streets like a gigantic, well-funded festival,
452. but a grassroots operation. And then the requirements around the robustness of street
453. closure. How are you closing those streets? Are you required to do cement jade barriers
454. that need like a forklift to put in there? Or can you use just basic bollards? And then
455. security requirements that the cities have and insurance requirements can be a huge driver.
456. where if you need to hire off-duty police officers versus just stationing your own volunteers at certain areas,
457. that can be an enormous cost driver that can be hard to overcome on the front end.
458. So I think cities can do a lot by not necessarily providing money, not even providing staff,
459. but just by making it easier and more affordable for community organizations and other entrepreneurs to produce these events themselves.
460. Julia I curious as an attorney have you organized deals with private money for events like this That an excellent question I actually worked on a project a public event I think it was a concert
461. And the private investor decided to invest in the project,
462. but not in exchange for any equity or specific profit.
463. The key things that were important to him, of course,
464. is to get the money back.
465. But it was also about accountability,
466. making sure that the event was benefiting the public
467. and there were meaningful outcomes from it.
468. It was not just driven purely by money, but in fact, it was driven by an underlying purpose, which was to better the community, to improve the community and perception of events like this.
469. It really goes back to, I think, the underlying discussion we're having.
470. It's about collaboration.
471. It definitely involves the organizers who have to present the data.
472. But it also requires the government support, maybe lowering the barriers for entry.
473. And then, of course, investors who become more interested because it becomes more enticing to have less barriers and more participation.
474. From my private perspective, I do invest in different projects and I get extremely excited by events that are for social good that may produce results for future generations.
475. And John, in your experience working with New York City officials, what's important for stakeholders to know?
476. And what else can cities do?
477. For me, providing the user experience to policymakers and to folks doing this work is really, really important.
478. Great example, literally happening this morning.
479. We're doing a lot of World Cup programming coming up, which is really exciting.
480. We as OpenStreet groups have been handed down this programming from the DOT, which we're happy to see.
481. But we're now in charge of coordinating this massive event, which is kind of crazy.
482. And telling the city that, hey, this is a lot for a group to put on.
483. The DOT should be helping out with this.
484. So they can hear that perspective.
485. They often don't hear that user experience. They need to hear that like, this is a lot and like, how is it going on the other side of the equation, right? They're often legislating or funding or putting programs into being, but how did those actually go into effect and kind of are felt on the ground?
486. And the permitting is such a good example of that, where means, well, there's a reason
487. why we have permits, but the actual user experience of going to the permitting is terrible and
488. kind of prevents people from even doing this in the first place and wanting to do this
489. and has the kind of inadvertent effect of closing opportunities to permit streets.
490. So providing that perspective is real.
491. I honestly think the city probably has access to better data than we could provide for cycling
492. rates, for example, for walking rates.
493. And they should be doing that work.
494. Also like foot traffic counts or credit card sales or things like that, any sort of city or town, that should be kind of on them because it's hard as a volunteer or citizen group to do that work.
495. Getting all this in front of folks and making sure all these perspectives are heard is incredibly important to be able to justify the project's funding going forward and also expand it to other neighborhoods.
496. I love how you and Max both brought up ways cities can support these programs, even if directly funding them isn't possible.
497. I agree that reducing this kind of government friction would definitely attract more opportunities.
498. And I think it also support a city's broader economic development goals, too.
499. Tafari, you've been organizing events in L.A. for 15 years.
500. What's your take on this?
501. I always wonder how these things are funded in other countries.
502. And our American system of dealing with these things means we're dealing with a public-private situation, right?
503. where if we were to do this purely as a private endeavor,
504. cost of permits and the cost of public services
505. and then the cost of staffing and stuff
506. starts to get pretty high.
507. And even in a public-private partnership,
508. there's still the expectation
509. that there's some cost recovery happening.
510. But I think there's something to be said
511. about the need for public ownership of these events to some degree because of the intense costs and the fact that this is a free event for the public right I like the park framing for a number of reasons also because of
512. the public responsibility around parks. We see it as a public need and therefore public dollars go
513. to it. And I think that that has to be a frame for our open street events. If we talk about
514. completely paying for these through private dollars, it doesn't feel sustainable to me.
515. And I think that's something we discuss here in L.A. about these events and trying to ensure that they happen with the kind of frequency that provides the kind of impact that they need to have and they should have.
516. Right. And so I just think that we have to keep in mind that we have to wrangle on what these things cost, try to make them more cost efficient.
517. But as this public good, there has to be a factor that there's a reality that the public and our government need to take responsibility for these events and put money towards them as a public good.
518. You know, it's a pre-event.
519. You know, it's not Coachella here we're talking about where you can go for sponsored dollars and they expect a certain kind of return.
520. It's something we have to wrangle with.
521. We don't talk about it enough in terms of the sustainability of these events.
522. I think you brought up several good points here about how funding sources really influence a program's long-term feasibility.
523. Like if a city wants to make this an institution, they should invest in it.
524. And so I think this is a good segue to hear from Adonia and her experience serving on the California Transportation Commission.
525. Adonia, what kind of projects is California funding right now?
526. Something that really stood out to me was within our state transportation funding landscape, we have a number of programs that can include active transportation infrastructure, right?
527. So Caltrans districts and regional transportation planning agencies are really moving toward including more multimodal infrastructure in their planning.
528. However, what gets called non-infrastructure, which is what open streets would fall under, is not eligible for funding in any program except for the active transportation program, ATP.
529. So ATP is a very popular state funding program.
530. It gets way more applications from cities and agencies than can be funded.
531. And it is the only funding program where you can get funding for something like an open
532. street event directly.
533. Within ATP, the breakdown of what's going to active transportation infrastructure versus
534. non-infrastructure, the programming, the education and encouragement stuff, it's pretty stark.
535. The vast majority of the funding is going to infrastructure.
536. So in terms of where our priorities are, the state has taken a very infrastructure-oriented
537. approach.
538. We really expect our transportation dollars to be infrastructure investments, largely
539. because we associate infrastructure investment with jobs.
540. And so unfortunately, the active transportation label in some ways has helped to obscure the need for this kind of activation work because it's seen as not being as important as building highways, you know, getting those union workers out there.
541. So I'm actually working on a research project right now through my role at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies to try and understand the active transportation workforce and what kind of job quality considerations there are.
542. We have a lot of unexplored work to do thinking about active transportation jobs What are the jobs that get produced by something like an open street event Are they you know the beginning of career pathways for people who historically have not gone into urban
543. planning or design or engineering? What is the value that we get out of investment in these
544. roles? You know, we have this kind of imagined formula like, oh yes, these kinds of activations
545. are going to lead to infrastructure investment. Well, for one thing, do they, there's some
546. evaluation needed there. For another thing, why are we treating them like the desired outcome is
547. infrastructure change? Actually, the desired outcome is having residents who feel like they
548. can use many modes of transportation. And in some cases, the infrastructure is already there.
549. It just hasn't been activated in a way that's culturally relevant. So I'm very interested in
550. thinking about how we can shift from calling this kind of work in a funding landscape,
551. education and encouragement or non-infrastructure and looking at it more in terms of what are the
552. jobs that are necessary and how are we missing out on opportunities to further invest in activating
553. our multimodal transportation infrastructure that we've been investing in for quite some time in
554. California and not necessarily seeing the results from that we've expected. So unless we actually
555. create these opportunities to literally give people a place to kind of mess around and be silly
556. and try to build an embodied relationship with these ways of traveling, what makes us think
557. that the presence of a bike lane is going to somehow magically bring people out? We have a
558. ways to go to really start to talk about the value of this work in the same vocabulary that moves
559. transportation dollars in the state. Darren, what's your experience been with this in San Francisco?
560. We did get completely defunded by the city of San Francisco.
561. I shouldn't say completely.
562. We have a partnership with SFMTA where they do bus rerouting and actually help to pay for some of the insurance.
563. Our main city support from the Department of Public Health completely disappeared about four months ago.
564. We're only here by the skin of our teeth that Livable City donors stepped up.
565. And we raised $300,000 from individuals in the last two months and have saved the program.
566. Open Streets, or at least Sunday Streets, I'll say our specific program, has health impacts.
567. We don't save lives.
568. We help small businesses.
569. But you know what?
570. We're not a small business support organization.
571. We improve mental health.
572. I'm not a psychologist.
573. just. Money that has saved us has come from a really deep place of community and personal love
574. for something that is not describable on a funding application. This cannot be put in a proposal.
575. You cannot say, give us money because people love this. Maybe a little bit better than a
576. snowflake's chance in hell to get some city money. It's going to be from the economic
577. and workforce development side. We're just barely beginning to explore a job creation aspect,
578. but it's more about the small businesses and the pop-ups and the opportunities we give to
579. brick and mortar, but also micro, micro and micro, micro entrepreneurs. The merchants where we do
580. Sunday streets, they've been telling us that Sunday streets is much more effective for them
581. than the night markets. Even though the night markets were pointedly created for economic
582. development, the merchants say that we create more long-term relationships. This is the first
583. time in my experience of having a program that when it was threatened, people just came out of
584. the woodwork to help it. Darren, I love hearing about building community trust.
585. your Sunday Streets program.
586. And I'm also liking this transition
587. in our conversation towards relationship building.
588. Taffer, I'd like to hear from you about this next.
589. Ciclavia organizes some of the largest
590. open street events in the country.
591. How do you pull that off
592. while making it still feel like a community event?
593. Huh, that's a good question.
594. There are so many stakeholders.
595. At any one event,
596. and no matter what neighborhood we're in,
597. we have representation from practically
598. every zip code in the county.
599. This feeling of ownership,
600. I think it's really important
601. to the success of these events.
602. we really disrupt neighborhood, right?
603. Like we disrupt physical space.
604. We do a mass amount of mitigation at our events, right?
605. Like if we take somebody's parking lot,
606. we're looking for an alternate parking lot.
607. If we are blocking a drive where we're double checking
608. to make sure they don't have an alternate out,
609. if they don't, we're providing some way for them
610. to have access to the space
611. or giving them alternate parking spaces, you know?
612. I think it's really about ensuring that these events
613. are as much a win-win for community members as possible, right?
614. And an opportunity for culture to be reflected, right?
615. I think one thing I really talk about, we talk about here is it isn't about just these neighborhoods we're in.
616. It's about the people and the culture in these communities that we're getting to touch.
617. Like, how do we make sure folks feel like this is their space, right?
618. This is their front yard that's being opened up for folks to come out to their front lawn and throw a barbecue if they want to, to have a pickup basketball game in the street if they want to, or pickup soccer game in the street.
619. Like, our team door knocks every door along every route, like two to three times.
620. We're flying every car.
621. We're doing blocks outreach as well. We're hitting the schools in the community. We're hitting libraries in the community. We're going to business improvement district meetings. We're going to neighborhood council meetings. Our outreach is really intensive. And I think that's a big part of ensuring that stakeholders feel engaged.
622. Even when we do these engagements
623. and we have a little bit of blowback
624. from certain stakeholders,
625. we kind of like small business,
626. certain businesses,
627. historic businesses and neighborhoods
628. be very pissed at us at first
629. about the possibility of us coming
630. and disrupting their Sunday, right?
631. And some churches are really have,
632. you know, given us heat about those Sundays.
633. But I'm always really proud of my team
634. because they have the hard conversations.
635. Like they take those hard calls
636. and then they follow up
637. and they follow up after the event
638. to see if things are good.
639. And if folks have an issue,
640. that let us know.
641. But oftentimes that feedback is now,
642. you know, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
643. That was actually pretty good for us.
644. Darren, how do you approach this with Sunday streets?
645. I think we all know that we should engage the community.
646. We're experimenting with trying another level of that,
647. which is giving other people ownership
648. or putting Sunday streets at the service
649. of what other groups want to do.
650. So just real quickly in Excelsior,
651. we met a group, mostly Salvadorans,
652. And they said, we've been wanting to do a festival for years.
653. And I said, well, just do it inside Sunday Streets.
654. So they had their own festival, their own branding, their own posters, and it made that
655. Sunday Streets probably the best ever.
656. You couldn't believe the merchants that came out and all the activities.
657. And now it's leading to this deeper discussion about wealth building.
658. What I believe is that there'll be a virtuous circle, that as we work on wealth building,
659. whether it working class homeowners or to small business people that will create this really deep trust that will circle back to safe streets And that love that trust that what coming back to us to help us stay alive
660. What I've been telling people now is Sunday streets is not the end.
661. It's the beginning.
662. And an open street is a wonderful, neutral space.
663. And creating an open street is a wonderful, neutral goal.
664. I just learned at one of our events, some of my friends were saying, Darren, we saw people out at the same time in our whole lives, 40 years.
665. We've never seen them out in the same space at the same time.
666. That one floored me.
667. I was not ready for that.
668. Our police partners in LA have told us that crime literally goes down in the neighborhoods we do our Open Street event in.
669. Wow, that's really powerful.
670. And Darren, that really connects to what you were saying about how open streets are just the beginning of seeing these kinds of community changes.
671. Tafari, what would you recommend to someone who wants to bring in an open street event to their town?
672. If you want to get this started in your own community, it's about involving as many different kinds of perspectives and the planning and engagement of it as possible.
673. I think that speaks to Adonia's experience in terms of that first group in L.A. that got together the various different kinds of skills and perspectives that came together as a founding committee and sort of leveraged all that to get it started.
674. Bringing all that to bear is how you get these kind of complicated events started and stuff.
675. Adonia, anything you'd like to add?
676. Just how important Tafare's work has been to building Ciclovia as an institution in L.A.
677. I think that it has given Ciclovia a shape that it wouldn't have had otherwise.
678. And it really connects with what Darren's saying in terms of we need to be thinking
679. about the economic development aspect of what these events are doing.
680. We need more hard facts about the effects of these investments and totally agree that
681. looking at the economic side of it could help with that.
682. Yeah, I love how we landed on economic development too.
683. Max, do you have any advice for groups getting started?
684. A great frame that I like to use is just like a minimally viable action.
685. What's the minimally viable real thing that we can do collectively, whether it's like
686. a group of volunteers or an organization or a business effort to start the snowball?
687. And so what's the thing to get something real to happen and seeing opportunities when they
688. arise?
689. Are there construction projects happening that they're already going to be closing the
690. street and you can do something on the front or back end to leverage that. In some communities,
691. National Night Out is a big thing where they sanction the street closures. Can you work off
692. of a festival, but turn that festival into an open streets event? Look for those places where
693. there's already natural synergies and that can be a great place to have a minimally viable product
694. and get the open streets work started. Julia, any legal or business tips for our listeners?
695. I always tell all my clients and everyone in the business I can get involved in is know your risks.
696. If you know them, you can navigate around them. If you don't know, you'll get trapped.
697. Good advice. Thanks, Yulia.
698. John, you've been able to build some impressive momentum over the past six years.
699. How can other groups do the same We had the benefit of when we decided to do something on 31st Avenue the kind of heat of the pandemic in 2020 neighbors put forward a couple of different avenues that we thought could be good
700. that were kind of mixed use, not fully commercial, not fully residential,
701. and had like a nice mix and that crazy amounts of car traffic.
702. The one they ended up choosing was an avenue that they had their eyes on for a long time
703. and wanted to do something with.
704. So the city had intentionality for wanting to do the open street there
705. or permitting neighbors to go forward with it.
706. What's important to keep in mind,
707. I think like I'm such a believer of tactical urbanism
708. and just doing the thing over and over and over and over again.
709. You know, and again, that takes a lot of sweat equity,
710. no doubt to do this for four or five years as an all volunteer group.
711. That's why I think just as much attention has to like
712. be put on the city government to be lowering barriers
713. so you don't have burnout from volunteers or whatever groups
714. that you make it easy to go for a couple of years.
715. There is this message of like doing the damn thing,
716. but then doing it with frequency and repetition that I think allows this inertia to be able to
717. build up political support, political will, investment. As we did it more and more seasons,
718. the city gave us more and more things because we showed that we really cared about this and
719. the community really liked it. That's an important kind of relationship to build and to foster in
720. any town and city that you should be wanting to support your neighbors trying to do this work
721. and make it easier for them to do it. Wonderful. Thanks, John. And big thanks to Max, Yulia,
722. Adonia Tafari and Darren as well for joining us. For our listeners out there, you can follow John
723. on his Street Beat Substack newsletter and find his research on urban policy at nycfuture.org.
724. You can follow Max's work on LinkedIn and his Practice of Place Substack channel.
725. You can follow Adonia's work at urbanadonia.com and follow her research on the UCLA Institute
726. of Transportation Studies website at its.ucla.edu.
727. You can follow Tafari's work
728. and future Ciclavia events at ciclavia.org.
729. You can follow Darren's work
730. and future Livable City events at livablecity.org
731. or sundaystreets.sf.
732. And you can follow Yulia's work
733. and her bike race project on LinkedIn
734. and her website, yuliaflinn.com.
735. That's Y-U-L-I-Y-A-F-L-Y-N-N.com.
736. Thanks for tuning in today and remember to support your local open streets.
737. The takeaway for me is that open streets can have all kinds of funding sources.
738. Should Ciclavia be funded publicly or is it okay if there's ads?
739. If the UFC fighting at the White House can have ads, open streets can have ads.
740. All right.
741. You know, Nick, I want to go back to one more person that I met.
742. I was in this little town called Fort Benton, Montana.
743. This guy on a bike rode up to me like he knew me.
744. He was like, hey.
745. And he wanted to know where I was coming from and where I was going.
746. And we talked for a little while about the road that I was going to go on and where I was going to go.
747. And he told me where to go to have a beer.
748. He told me where to have dinner and where to camp.
749. So I'm in a beautiful little town called Fort Benton, Montana.
750. I got about 50 miles in.
751. It 3 in the afternoon and a biker pulls up to me and says hey man where are you going Where are you coming from And this is Tim Hey Tim Hey how it going You know he was really helpful in giving me information because sometimes you don get a lot of information Tell me a little bit about the biking in Fort
752. Benton and what kind of biking you're doing because you got a beautiful bike. I do mostly
753. long distance bike packing. Unfortunately, I don't get enough time to do a lot of it, but I
754. They do mostly gravel roads and the divide and things like that.
755. Fort Benton is a pretty cool little place.
756. It's off the map a little bit, but it is one of the trail towns in the Montana Trail 406.
757. That's a brand new trail.
758. We're just trying to get some recognition on.
759. It goes all the way across Montana and west to east and actually north to south all at the same time.
760. Well, I got to tell you, I think my next trip is going to be gravel because what you and I were just talking about is traffic.
761. It's a bummer sometimes in gravel.
762. You don't have that.
763. Yeah.
764. Gravel, you can really get away with a lot of stuff.
765. You can ride about wherever you want most of the time and jam to some tunes while you're doing it.
766. I've been doing that.
767. Kicking ass.
768. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
769. Well, Tim, what else do I need to know about Fort Benton or Geraldine where I'm going or what?
770. Geraldine, there's a parking camp.
771. There's a store.
772. there's a bar there's a bed and breakfast if they have a room one other thing about geraldine if you
773. find the school there you're welcome to go pitch a tent back behind the school and if anybody says
774. anything to you tell them the maintenance man said it's great to be there uh that's great because
775. you told me that you work there yes okay that's huge because sometimes just knowing that someone
776. said it you know it's probably okay or whatever makes you feel a lot better when you're doing
777. that kind of stealth camping.
778. Yeah, there's a place between the school
779. and the swimming pool in town
780. and there's a lot of grass there.
781. If anybody says anything to you,
782. just tell them that the maintenance guy
783. said you could hang out for a night.
784. Tim, thanks, man.
785. That's really, really helpful.
786. Good to meet you.
787. Absolutely.
788. Good to meet you.
789. Take care, man.
790. Thanks for sharing, Taylor.
791. Yeah, yeah.
792. Thanks, Tim.
793. And thanks for everybody that I met along the way.
794. Good show.
795. We want to thank a lot of people.
796. So Chris Gentry, all the people from the Open Streets event, the Stray Bullet.
797. And we want to thank Tim Brandon at the bike shop in Great Falls, Montana.
798. And we want to thank our regulars, Julie Richard, Josh Hagelin, Kevin Burton, Lindsay Sturman,
799. Stacey Randekker and Amy Ziering.
800. Thanks to you and also to Marga for like picking up the slack in my life while I'm on the road,
801. because I know this is a lot of work.
802. These are the best episodes we've had in a while.
803. Anyway, thanks, Taylor.
804. Ride safe.
805. And that was Bike Talk.
806. If you have a story, a tip, or a topic, head over to biketalk.org and send us a message.
807. Talk again next week.
808. I got your supply