Over 20,000 bicyclists died in road crashes; one tiny fix could have saved them

Sweden's "Vision Zero" program has used a comprehensive approach to infrastructure and regulation to drastically reduce traffic-related deaths, making Swedish roads the safest in the world.

Conventional merchants are afraid to lose parking spaces to bike parking or bike lanes. New York and Portland are finding cyclists increase local economies, and spend more money too.

Paris is a city plagued by traffic jams and air pollution. In 2007, the local government created a public bicycle sharing program called Velib that has drastically reduced the number of cars on the roadways and parking lots. During five years, over a hundred million people have used the program and it has a quarter of a million subscribers.

In Pennsylvania, many cities face challenges in implementing Complete Street policies to improve street and transportation safety in urban cores. The cities and organizations that have done this successfully offer ideas to others about how they can use creative financing and piloting to overcome barriers and enforce the policy.

With the recent large influx of refugees, crumbling infrastructure, crowded streets, and struggling social services, bing disabled or homeless in Istanbul means facing serious challenges to carving out a dignified life. But one group is helping bring these communities together and create empowerment through cycling. Engelsiz Çorba partners disabled volunteers with cyclists to deliver food to the homeless and encourage them to share their stories.

More golf courses are closing than are opening, allowing the rare opportunity to have open space in an urban environment. Restorations are becoming popular to allow wildlife and humans to make use of the natural space through the encouragement of different animals and plants to inhabit the same area as well as the development of parks and bike paths to foster human use.

Istanbul is often congested with traffic, especially as the population grows and more people buy cars but the lack of bicycle infrastructure has prevented biking from being an alternative transportation. This is changing now that biking is being encouraged through social media, the Cyclists' Transport Platform organizing group bike rides, the creation of bike lanes and other initiatives.

Copenhagen is a highly livable city, thanks to policies that focus on making streets safe and convenient to walk. The bigger the city, the worse it is to design urban spaces only with cars in mind, says planner and architect Jan Gehl. His top advice is to gather data about people and their movements, making pedestrians as visible in city planning as automobile traffic.

The Ghost Bike Project installs stripped-down bikes at the scenes of fatal accidents to raise awareness about the work still needed to ensure safety for cyclists. Project staff also work to correct narratives about bike accidents which are often commonly blamed on the cyclist without cause.

New guidelines to help cities manage bike-share programs, based on feedback from 60 cities, could be the key to success for dockless vehicles. The guidelines include recommendations about permits and fines, ways to consider equity programs, and a reference guide to what cities are currently doing in this space. The idea is that, by planning ahead and being deliberate, cities can maximize the benefit that dockless vehicles bring to their cities while regulating any negatives.