Keeping with our core belief that the people who live in the communities we serve know best what those communities need to be safer, we partnered with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and Streetsplan to hold a workshop with community members from Washington, D.C.’s Wards 7 and 8. We asked them: how do they experience their streets? What are the improvements their community needs? And, how can we help make these plans happen? We continue to work with the community and DDOT to help build out the ideas they generated in the workshop.

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When Kansas City residents wanted to close their neighborhood streets to through traffic, the City responded with an expedited permitting promise, but didn’t have the materials on hand to help those residents put up the barriers and signage they needed to ensure motorists got the message.

So, Spin partnered with Better Block Foundation to provide residents who organized for these neighborhood open streets with materials, signage, stencils, and other fun ways of reclaiming their streets for physically-distanced recreation.

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High-profile — and fun — events are perfect opportunities for very visible safe streets demonstration projects. That’s why Spin partnered with the City of Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Bike Fed in December 2019 to do a quick-build protected mobility lane during the annual Santa Rampage bike ride. The temporary project allowed the hundreds of people on bikes and scooters to experience what riding in a protected bike lane feels like. It also allowed observers and passers-by to see a protected bike lane in action. With Milwaukee currently building out its bike infrastructure, that experience will hopefully help generate support for a more robust network of protected lanes.

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After the success of the Salt Lake City intersection redesign, we partnered again with BikeUtah for another quick-build demonstration project. This time, it was a temporary protected bike lane in St. George, UT.  

By partnering with officials and advocates to bring these projects to their communities, we hope to help show people another way to think about their streets is not only possible, but preferable.

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We worked with Salt Lake City and Team Better Block to temporarily transform a busy intersection into a fun, safe, and inviting space. With help from the City, Team Better Block, and volunteers from the neighborhood, we demonstrated how quickly and easily streets can be redesigned to put people first.

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In September 2019, during Park(ing) Day, Spin partnered with Walk Bike Nashville to create a temporary pop-up protected bike lane in Nashville’s downtown. The route chosen for the demonstration was the same route slated for a more permanent safe streets project called the Downtown Bikeway.

Spin worked with Walk Bike Nashville to install temporary wave delineators along the route to show how easy, and aesthetically pleasing, a barrier-protected bike lane could be to install in the city’s burgeoning downtown.

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