 I'm Lauren Rushing, I'm an Urban Mobility Planner here in New York City, but I actually moved to New York earlier this year from the Netherlands where I was working as a consultant with a focus on active modes planning and particularly cycling. So I want to talk to you guys today about what's going on in New York in terms of mobility during the pandemic, but I also want to touch a little bit on the Netherlands since my mindset is still very much embedded in this Dutch context and I'll talk about why we should be drawing hope for our future from their past. So if you look on the screen here, you can see on the right this is a picture of New York during the pandemic. This was taken in March just after the lockdown went into effect. Not a lot of cars on the road at that time, but unfortunately that space is still being reserved for vehicles. And then on the left you can see the Netherlands during a similar crisis situation back in the 1970s and in this case that street space has been opened up to people. So we'll talk a little bit about that, but first, what's going on in New York City right now? I'm sure as many of you have seen, we are the global epicenter of this pandemic. We have about 200,000 cases right now and that's just in New York. So that doesn't include the closely surrounding areas of New Jersey where a lot of people also live and commute into New York for work. We're also on a stay at home order still that's been extended until June 13th. So non-essential businesses are still closed and most people are working virtually, those that can. But the governor has recognized this need for New Yorkers to get out of their homes for the purposes of maintaining their mental and physical health during this time. New Yorkers are not used to staying inside. A lot of us have small apartments with no balconies or gardens. And we're really used to using the city as our living room. And for now that ability to move throughout the city has been significantly reduced. We're struggling with limited space on sidewalks. If you go to sidewalkwits.nyc, you'll see that especially outside the denser areas of Manhattan, the sidewalks are not wide enough most of the time to properly social distance. So that's been a problem. Our parks have also been very busy the past few weeks. The weather is finally starting to warm up and we've been doing this for two and a half months now. People are getting antsy. People have cabin fever. It's definitely getting more and more difficult to be motivated to stay inside and we're seeing a lot more people outside in the last weeks. New York's been a really interesting place the last couple months though during all of this. We've actually seen some really interesting statistics come out of New York as a result of the lockdown. So we saw a 60% decrease in congestion on city streets. We also saw a 67% increase in city bike ridership. The bike share system here in New York. We saw a 52% increase in cycling across the river on the bridges into Manhattan and a 68% decrease in cyclists injuries citywide. And I think we're also at something like around 60 days without a pedestrian death, which is really unique for New York and that's definitely a record. So in terms of mobility, we've actually seen a lot of positive results from the lockdown. And what we're seeing is this sort of transition into what was a car dominated environment, even though it was New York, into this new environment where the car is no longer dominant. And these statistics are from the peak of the pandemic, so late March, early April. We're now starting to see some of that traffic coming back. We're nowhere near pre-pandemic levels, but it has risen by 58% since the end of March. So we are seeing a lot more people on the roads these days. But having lived in the Netherlands myself and learning a little bit about their history, what's really interesting to me right now is we're able to draw some striking similarities between what's going on in New York City during the pandemic and what went down in the Netherlands back in the 1970s, which was when the Dutch sort of jump-started this bicycle culture that they're so famous for today. If you follow UCI, I don't need to tell you what it's like in the Netherlands, but what's funny is that many people who visit the Netherlands, and this includes actually some Dutch people themselves, often assume that it's just kind of always been this way, that it's always been this amazing bike-friendly culture. But that's actually not true, and if you really dig into the history behind what went into creating this people-friendly, bike-friendly society, you'll see that that wasn't always the case, and that there was this sort of recipe that came together and led to the permanent policy and and infrastructure changes that we see there today. And you know, of course this is always evolving and changing and being improved upon, but the 70s was really when we saw these more purposeful and concentrated efforts to creating this culture. So it began in the Netherlands, it began with local activism. If you actually, if you look to the left of the screen here, you can see what I like to think of as sort of the three ingredients that went into this. And in the Netherlands, it started with local activism. So back in the 70s, the Netherlands was very much following in the footsteps of the U.S. in creating these more car-dominated environments. They were tearing down buildings to widen roads, there were more cars in the city, driving at faster speeds. Even in Amsterdam, they were talking about filling in the historic canals to build more roads and about building highways into and through the city center of Amsterdam. And what happened is that as a result of this new approach to development, a lot of people in the city were getting killed. They weren't used to there being so many cars, they were used to having a right to the streets, and unfortunately a lot of these people were children. And so this was the birth of the Stoke to Kinder Mord or Stop the Child Murder Movement, along with a number of other citizen-led collectives at the time. So demonstrations were held, people laid in the streets with their bikes to occupy places where people had been killed. We saw people setting up their own, what we now know as play streets, where they closed off the residents, closed off the streets themselves to let their children play, to have dinner outside. And this is really just a part of the story, but the point that I want to make here is that this whole process in the Netherlands really started with this fierce local activism. And similarly, in New York last summer, we saw advocates organize a die-in to protest the the spike in cyclists deaths seen in the city in 2019. I believe inspired by the Netherlands, people laid down in the streets with their bikes to bring awareness to the unsafe conditions for cyclists in New York, and this being a part of a larger livable streets movement that's been going on in the city for years. Next, we have the crisis. In the Netherlands, it was the oil embargo of 1973 that led to gasoline shortages. And now, of course, in New York City we know it's the coronavirus pandemic that is preventing people from using transit. And while both of these crises were very different and they affected different modes of transit, modes of transportation, they both resulted in this same need to think differently about mobility, and to reduce the dependency that we have on the mode that we're used to most, and to also think about improving resiliency in our cities. And in the Netherlands, this led to very quick temporary policy and infrastructure changes that addressed the immediate urgency of the crisis. So most famous is the car free Sundays. So every Sunday for three months, people had to leave their cars at home, and people really took to the streets. You know, we saw more people cycling. There were people using pedestrians using the full width of the streets. We saw more play streets. And now, of course, in New York, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, we're seeing more pop-up bike lanes. We're seeing more cases of now what we call DIY tactical urbanism, where people are bringing their own cones or chairs from their house, so close off the streets so that they have room and space to play. And then, of course, we've seen the open streets plan from Merida Blasio. And going back to the Netherlands, these temporary changes eventually led to permanent change, and these are the changes that make up the bicycle culture that we see today. So this includes this use of shared street space that is so central in the transportation strategy of the Netherlands. This includes the famous separated bicycle lanes, the extensive network throughout the country that everyone loves so much, and then also just a general prioritization of cycling in city plans and policies. And of course, in New York, we have yet to see what will, what permanent changes will result from the pandemic. And one thing that I didn't mention here yet, which I like to sort of think of as the secret ingredient to the recipe, and what I think is the most important, is this idea of having the political will to get this done. And in the Netherlands, what we saw was that this combination of the local activism and the urgency of the crisis really came together to push this, to push first the temporary and then permanent changes. And this is what we've been struggling with the most with, this is what we've been struggling the most with in New York in the past months, especially when it comes to the open streets plan. We saw activists act very quickly in recognizing the opportunity here and making suggestions for streets that could be used as open streets. But the mayor has been very slow to act. So I'll talk a little bit about that. It started first with an open streets pilot, and that started as a call to action from Governor Cuomo, who was concerned about the parks being so crowded. So he tasked Mayor de Blasio with coming up with ways of getting creative on how to open street space for people so that they could get outside and be properly socially distanced. And de Blasio responded to that with his open streets pilot, which was at four locations in the city, one street in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. And this totaled 1.6 miles of open streets. And just for reference, the city has about 6,000 miles of streets. So we could definitely do better. And this unfortunately was canceled after just 11 days. So there were a number of challenges cited for why this pilot couldn't continue, the number one reason being the need for policing. Advised by the NYPD, the mayor felt that we needed at least a couple of police officers per intersection or per block to direct traffic and to manage proper social distancing. And at the time, this was the beginning of April, at the time 20% of the NYPD was out sick with the coronavirus. So the mayor really felt that this was an unnecessary strain to the police force and that those that were healthy, their efforts could be better applied elsewhere. The DOT was also concerned about overcrowding. New York is obviously a dense city and we didn't want to create a situation where people would be congregating. Access to emergency vehicles was also cited as a challenge. I mean, that's especially important in a time when so many people in the city are getting sick. And what was kind of most interesting to me being new to New York is that there seems to be this attitude of, you know, New York is different, we're unique, we have unique challenges. What works in other places isn't going to work here. And that seems kind of silly, but in attending city council meetings, it really does seem to be quite a barrier to implementing this open streets program and pushing this forward. So I think this really all circles back around to this idea of having the political will to get this done though, because we have seen cities like Oakland do this without policing while maintaining access for emergency vehicles. Paris is on the forefront of this movement and they're a very dense city. And, you know, while New York is unique, I think that there are certainly lessons to be learned from other cities. And as I wrote recently in a streets blog article, you know, whether it's a long-term transit closure in Vienna or the transit strikes that Paris experienced last year, you know, we can be learning from cities who not only are acting fast during the pandemic, but have experienced similar situations in the past. So while it's true that we've never been through this before, there are plenty of cities who have had similar situations where transit or normal travel behaviors have been disrupted and they've used cycling as a solution. So yes, New York is unique and that's why a lot of people love it, but there certainly are things to be learned from other cities. And so we actually have seen some really positive change in New York in the last few weeks. So just as we saw in the Netherlands, this combined pressure from the local activism together with the crisis has actually led to political change in New York. So Mayor de Blasio was not enthusiastic about the open streets pilot, but after he canceled it, the advocacy community here really spoke out about how they were unhappy about how this had been handled, how this had been implemented. And then there were also two members of the city council who have been sort of spearheading the slivable streets movements in New York and together with the community, they really put pressure on the mayor until finally at the end of April, they came to the mayor came to an agreement with the city council to open up 40 miles of streets. And that's in the month of May with a possible extension to 100 miles. So we're at 30 miles right now. That's 21 miles of open streets and nine miles of new protected temporary bicycle lanes. And at the request of the council, this is also some of these streets are managed by local partners to deal with the need for the policing. So this is a huge win for the livable streets movement in New York. Everyone is very excited. This is a great first step, but that's exactly what it is. It's the first step. And we're still dealing with a number of challenges. While some of these are managed by local partners, that's only about three miles of streets right now out of the 30 miles. So we definitely could be leveraging that resource better. And in general, it's just not enough right now, or yet. We've really kind of picked the hanging fruit. A lot of these are in or adjacent to parks or in sort of quieter residential areas. So and they're kind of spread sporadically throughout the city and what seems to be the least disruptive areas. And there's really no system, right? And we know that for this to work, we really need a connected system so that people can not only get outside and enjoy fresh air, but that essential workers can use this system to get to where they need to go. And as we also open back up, this can be used as a way to keep the city moving while also staying properly social distanced. There's also been some equity issues with the current set of streets. So for example, Staten Island has the second highest number of cases in New York City, but they only have two open streets right now. That total 1.5 miles and 0.7 of that is inside a park, right? And we're seeing a similar story in some of the outer borough areas like southeast Queens or the Bronx. So I think if the main purpose of open streets is to help eradicate the virus and helping people stay socially distanced, then we definitely need to see more of a pairing between the areas that need it most and where the open streets are located. So what's next? Moving forward, as everybody is saying right now, this is really a critical moment in our history. Actions taken in the next months are going to set the stage for mobility for the years and probably decades to come. So this is really an important moment for us where we have a big decision to make. And this could go really one of two ways, right? We can make the necessary changes, provide mobility options for people. And in that case, I think we'll see the an open streets movement come out of the pandemic similarly to how we saw tactical urbanism come out of the Great Recession. Or we could go the other way, we could do nothing, in which case I think we'll see this sort of regression back into a Seinfeld era in New York City where there's more traffic, more pollution, more noise, as people retract back into their vehicles for fear of using transit for the next year. Also, as we're thinking now about what is life going to look like after the pandemic, how do we open back up? Local businesses are really starting to speak up. Again, we've been doing this for two and a half months. And local businesses are starting to speak up about needing to reopen and are wanting to use open streets as outdoor dining zones. So there's really, we're seeing this need to think about open streets not only as a way to maintain our mental and physical health, but also looking at it as a form of economic development in a way to kind of re-jumpstart the economy during the pandemic and as we open back up. So I think we'll see this transition into sort of a more alfresco economy where our lives are really being pulled out onto the streets. New York already has a street seats program where partners can apply to use underutilized sidewalk or street space for outdoor dining or for streets for leisure and recreation. So I hope that in the next weeks at the very least we'll see an expansion of that program in New York. So in conclusion, I just want to say that I think this is a really awesome and exciting time for the livable streets movement and for both existing and new cyclists. We're seeing a lot of people pick up cycling for the first time during the pandemic. And I think there's really an opportunity here to learn from the Dutch and from Dutch history and learn how they leverage their crisis to lead to permanent change in their culture.