Livable Streets Member Bicycles Only has broken down Intro 780 of NYC’s Bicycle Access to Buildings law into plain English in Bicycle Access to Garages Law. The entry explains the types of garages included (private and institutional as well as commercial) and how to file complaints about garages not complying. Excellent links to supporting laws and codes can be found in throughout and under ‘References.’  Thanks to Bicycles Only, you’ve got everything you need to advocate for you garage-parking rights come November 11th!

Check out this great new entry on the Cycle Chic trend from San Diego based Livable Streets Community member Christa Clarke-Jones. Streetsblog readers are have had plenty to comment as always, but we’re challenging you to add your two cents to the article itself. How can we adjust clothes and bikes to make everyday cycling more feasible? How does this vary in different cities and climates? Share your knowledge and experience in the Cycle Chic entry.

June brings us urban history lessons from coast to coast!  Joe Bencharsky penned a neighborhood profile of Potrero Hill, San Francisco, while Susan Donovan contributed a fascinating entry on the history of NYC’s Madison Avenue Bus Lanes — a rare remnant of the Koch administration’s largely unrealized 1980 congestion reduction plan. Susan also linked her entry into an overiew of NYC bus lanes –an excellent place to compare different instances of this complete streets strategy, where it works, and where it might not!

As the date scheduled for reauthorization of the federal transportation bill draws closer,  Livable Streets Community members are strategizing and collecting their thoughts for this process on StreetsWiki. Diana DeRubertis has updated the Barbara Boxer entry with concerns about the Senator’s position and Christine Berthet has kicked off a general entry for the Federal Transportation Bill. Add to these and let us know what kinds of resources would be most useful to your federal-level advocacy work here.

Livable Streets member Andrew Nash has contributed two excellent articles on Zurich, Switzerland and Traffic Signals: Public Transportation Priority. Nash is a consultant specializing in helping clients develop creative and innovative solutions for transport and planning projects. He served as Executive Director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and spent five years in Switzerland at the ETH Zurich’s Institute for Transportation Planning and Systems. In both articles, Nash has generously attached previous work he’s done to the FURTHER READING sections–this is a great way to share work you’ve already done with others it may be useful to! Please contact us if you need help with attachments or any other technical issues.

John Boyle has also started a nice entry on the CLEAN TEA bill, so please add any thoughts or knowledge you may have.

With the Stimulus snafu finally drawing to a close, the 2009 Stimulus Bill article is shaping up to offer a nice account of the process and major players (thanks mainly to Diana DeRubertis’s contributions). The next step? Pages profiling politicians–their voting records on livable streets issues, affiliations, and contact information–seem to be increasingly useful in these policy campaigns. Let’s capture what we’ve learned and start gathering more information on people like Ray LaHood and Barbara Boxer so we’ll be better prepared for action when the next big battle comes up. Any name (or other term) you see in blue followed by a + sign will automatically create a new page when you click on it. This article on David Gantt is a good example of the information articles like these can entail.

Been seeking the right traffic-calming solution for your street and just not able to find it? Check out the Streetfilms Traffic-Calming Tool Box on this week’s featured article–part of a new format to better connect you with the information you need that you’ll see popping up on many articles.  

In other news, we want to hear how we can make StreetsWiki and the other tools provided on Livable Streets work better for you. If you’re trying to organize for change (particularly via the internet), we’d love to pick your brain. Please give us your input in this form, and let us know if a follow-up conversation would be useful.

LSN member Adina Levin started this nice page on the 2009 Stimulus Bill as a place to track political support and opinions on the role of transit in the Obama administration’s bill. She’s gotten it off to a great start with information on various politicians’ stances, but this directory has the potential to become really useful if we all pool our knowledge. Do you know your mayor or representative’s position on public transit and the Stimulus? Add it, or find out! And many of these politicians could use a full article of their own as well (hint hint). (For the less technically inclined: to make it easy, a term that appears in blue followed by a + sign will create a new page by that name if you click on it.)

Lastly, Adina Levin is wondering if anyone has been lobbying at the Conference of Mayors meeting on the Livable Streets agenda. We’d love to hear if anyone has been and you can easily let us know by sending a message to Adina or me.

Happy Holidays, StreetsWikians! We’ve got a present for you: the pictures from Wikis Take Manhattan (nearly 3,000 of them!) are finally all available. Livable-streets-themed photos can be accessed by category on the StreetsWiki Writers Group, and you can get the whole slew of photos from the hunt on the Wikimedia Commons. The lovely unicycler photo featured on the Muscle-Powered Transport article below is just one of thousands. Use them to illustrate StreetsWiki articles and in your other livable streets work. They’re all freely licensed under Creative Commons, so just remember to attribute the authors!

Been wondering what exactly belongs here? Check out our new About page for some guidelines, sample articles, and background.