The hierarchy of speed | Keven Bloomfield | TEDxUKY
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0:05 - 0:08I like to drive. I like cars.
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0:08 - 0:10I'm sure all of you in this room do too.
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0:11 - 0:13But I'd like to ask you a question,
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0:14 - 0:18that is, what happens
when you don't have any more; -
0:18 - 0:21that is the same situation
that I found myself in. -
0:21 - 0:23I didn't have any, I lost my car.
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0:24 - 0:26So I realized at that point
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0:26 - 0:28that I was going to have
to do something else. -
0:28 - 0:31I was gonna have to walk or use the bus
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0:31 - 0:33or dare I say it, use my bike.
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0:34 - 0:37It's pretty much when I started to realize
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0:37 - 0:39that Lexington, the community I live in,
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0:39 - 0:42has a wonderful array of facilities.
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0:42 - 0:44When I say facilities, I mean bike paths.
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0:44 - 0:47It can also mean some other things,
but we're talking about paths. -
0:47 - 0:51And I realized that we have a lot of
really good infrastructure in Lexington. -
0:52 - 0:56But we also sometimes
don't really succeed very well. -
0:57 - 1:00I found myself in many situations
where I thought -
1:00 - 1:02wow, this is really dangerous.
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1:02 - 1:04This is not, this is not cool.
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1:05 - 1:07So let me think,
why do people ride their bikes, -
1:07 - 1:11why do people choose
other forms of transportation? -
1:12 - 1:14And I realized that,
for me, it was because I had to. -
1:15 - 1:18I found myself in situations
where it was the only choice I had. -
1:18 - 1:20But then I also found
how much I enjoyed it, -
1:20 - 1:22how healthy it was and all other benefits
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1:22 - 1:24that come along with riding a bike,
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1:24 - 1:26especially like getting
everywhere pretty quickly. -
1:26 - 1:29Did you know that on average in Lexington,
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1:29 - 1:31it takes you to drive 25 miles per hour,
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1:31 - 1:34it doesn't matter if you go 80
to make that green light -
1:34 - 1:37you will still gonna get there
in the same time: -
1:37 - 1:39from Hamburg to downtown,
you can get there in 30 minutes. -
1:39 - 1:42That's about the same as with a car.
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1:42 - 1:45So I decided that
I needed to start to rethink the order. -
1:45 - 1:49the hierarchy of speed,
as I call it, of transportation. -
1:50 - 1:54It doesn't mean that we value the car
or the bus or the bike or walking, -
1:54 - 1:56as any of them being higher.
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1:56 - 1:59I needed to rethink how I thought
about my transportation. -
2:00 - 2:04Because right now,
we kind of value the car the most -
2:04 - 2:07and everything else
just seems kind of ancillary. -
2:07 - 2:09So 90% of people,
they drive their cars to work -
2:09 - 2:12and only 0.6% ride their bikes.
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2:13 - 2:18But yet, 70% car rides and car trips
are less than 2 miles. -
2:19 - 2:21You can travel 25 mph
on average on the bike -
2:21 - 2:23just the same as you can in a car.
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2:23 - 2:24There's no reason to,
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2:24 - 2:28the bike suddenly becomes just
as important or just viable as a vehicle. -
2:28 - 2:31So when we start to balance
our decision-making process -
2:31 - 2:38for how we decide what vehicles to use,
bike, walking or cars, specifically bikes, -
2:38 - 2:41then you start to think more critically
about how you're getting somewhere -
2:41 - 2:44and choosing the right form
of transportation. -
2:44 - 2:47It's about, not riding because we have to
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2:47 - 2:50but it's about riding because you want to.
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2:50 - 2:52And that made me think also,
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2:52 - 2:54what kind of people
are riding their bikes, -
2:54 - 2:56because that's kind of important.
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2:56 - 3:00If you have people who ride all the time
and then you have people who don't, -
3:00 - 3:01how do you get better infrastructure?
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3:01 - 3:05What takes lots of people riding,
more people riding? -
3:05 - 3:08And so I thought, who is this audience,
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3:08 - 3:10who are the people who are not riding?
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3:10 - 3:13It made me think about basically
everyone, who is riding or not? -
3:13 - 3:16So first you have this person.
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3:16 - 3:17This person is just everyone:
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3:17 - 3:21a college student, a co-worker,
just everyday life. -
3:22 - 3:26And then you have, of course,
the hipsters who ride to anything. -
3:26 - 3:28They ride on the snow,
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3:28 - 3:29they ride on the highway,
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3:29 - 3:32they probably ride in front of you,
making you pretty angry sometimes. -
3:32 - 3:35And then of course
you have the professionals, -
3:35 - 3:39they do it for fitness,
they do it for triathlons, -
3:40 - 3:43they do it for their living,
as bike messengers and pros, -
3:43 - 3:46Lance Armstrong, Tour de France,
all that stuff. -
3:47 - 3:50But then you also have
people who just do for recreation. -
3:52 - 3:54Here we see somebody who's retired.
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3:56 - 3:59They may decide suddenly
to pull their bike out of the garage. -
4:00 - 4:03But it doesn't have to be
any of these particular cases. -
4:04 - 4:08It seems that if we talk to the audience
of people who put their bikes away, -
4:09 - 4:13mainly those who graduate college
and start to start their families, -
4:13 - 4:15grow their lives
and start their first job. -
4:15 - 4:17They do, they put their bike
in that garage, -
4:17 - 4:20and they don't pull it back out again
until retirement. -
4:21 - 4:23So we started taking these groups:
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4:23 - 4:26retirees, people who use it
just for recreation, -
4:26 - 4:28people who just do it
on weekends for fun, -
4:28 - 4:32and as well as the regular people
who just travel. -
4:32 - 4:34They got to work.
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4:34 - 4:35They are starting their lives off.
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4:35 - 4:37And those people need to ride.
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4:38 - 4:41When we start to do that, start to choose
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4:41 - 4:44and think of our
complete transportation system -
4:44 - 4:46as a series of viable options,
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4:46 - 4:48depending on what you are doing,
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4:48 - 4:50where you are going, why you are doing
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4:50 - 4:52how far is it,
how fast you need to get there. -
4:52 - 4:53Then you can start to figure out
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4:53 - 4:57how you're going to actually get from
one place to another with just your bike -
4:57 - 5:00and how you might choose your bike
to get to those places -
5:00 - 5:04instead of the normal car
or other forms of transportation. -
5:04 - 5:05And by doing that,
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5:05 - 5:09we will start to actually see an increase
in ridership in our communities. -
5:09 - 5:12And thus we will get better
infrastructures. So it's not so dangerous. -
5:13 - 5:15I'd like to challenge
everyone in this room -
5:15 - 5:18to think before you get in your cars
or even on a bus -
5:18 - 5:20and try to consider
how you might choose a bike instead -
5:20 - 5:25so that you'll improve the lives
of all cyclists in your community. -
5:25 - 5:26Thank you.
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5:26 - 5:28(Applause)
- Title:
- The hierarchy of speed | Keven Bloomfield | TEDxUKY
- Description:
-
Speaker discusses the bicycle infrastructure for Lexington, KY.
Kevin Bloomfield is a fourth year architecture student and Gaines Fellow at the University of Kentucky, from Las Vegas Nevada. As a Gaines Fellow, he has worked on bicycle issues over the last year and a half, investigating various aspects of bike culture and urban infrastructure.
His senior Gaines Fellowship thesis project involves local case studies (Virginia Avenue, and Martin Luther King Blvd) in Lexington, and both the University of Kentucky and the city of Lexington's master plans for urban renewal in which he applies design thinking to develop a series of typology proposals for bicycle infrastructure.
The end goal is to propose a rubric of types (separated bike paths, sharrowed streets, bike boxes, etcetera) which depend on site specific variables (street width, population, traffic volume, etcetera), opposed to any individual condition.This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 05:33
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Hiroko Kawano
While the title of the speaker's name is spelled as Keven, the name in the description of the talk is spelled as Kevin. One of the two should be corrected.