A CityLabs article on Cambridge, England and how it became the U.K.'s model city for bicycling includes a short video from Streetfilms, which shows some of the policies and actions that the City of Cambridge has undertaken over the last 10-15 years in order to make itself a place where people choose bikes over other modes. Data indicate that 29 percent of Cambridge commuters bicycle to work, and it is estimated that up to half of all trips in the city center are made on bicycles.
Among the policies and actions that Cambridge has implemented and which the film highlights are:
- A significant amount of car-free area in the city's historic center, which is protected with a system of retracting bollards that automatically raise and lower to admit buses, emergency vehicles, and some commercial traffic.
- City-wide, Cambridge has implemented an approach called "filtered permeability," which consists of putting up gates, bollards and other barriers to block out cars from certain streets while allowing bike and pedestrian access. (These gates can be manually, but quickly, be opened to admit emergency response vehicles).
- Half the streets in Cambridge have a 20-mile per hour speed limit, which is enforced with speed cameras.
- Parking in the central, core area is severely limited and expensive.
Cambridge: Britain's Cycling Capital from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.