Seville's "Overnight" Bike Network Success w/ Manuel Calvo

In this episode, I reconnect with Manu Calvo of Seville, Spain for a discussion about the extraordinary feat the city achieved in dropping down a nearly complete safe, and inviting cycle network in just 18 months.

While it's true that they don't garner the attention of Copenhagen or Amsterdam, the historic city of Seville, Spain, was poised to react when the economic downturn of 2007 hit, so they mobilized and built a nearly complete "All Ages & Abilities" cycle network in just 18 months. In this episode, one of the "architects" and chief cheerleaders of this effort, Manu Calvo reflects on that experience and gives us an update on the current status and future plans.

This is story is particularly relevant to North American cities because cycling simply wasn't part of their culture prior to this initiative with incredibly low rates of people riding, mostly just a few recreational enthusiasts, however after the network was in place they saw a massive increase to approximately a 7% modal share, which then grew to 10%+ after additional expansions to the network were later built out. Now they are constrained by their capacity and need to widen many of the most popular routes especially immediately outside the city's ancient wall that protects is historic core.

Additional & Helpful Links:

• Places For Bike Conference - Indianapolis, IN 
• article about Manu’s presentation in Indy 
• Velo City Conference 
• SRAM Cycling Fund - Randy Neufeld 
• PeopleForBikes
• Tactical Urbanism - Mike Lydon’s Active Towns Podcast episode
• New York Transformation of Broadway Times Square
• Streetfilms Seville Video
• Bloomberg City Lab Video
• EstudioMC
• Chris Bruntlett w/ Dutch Cycling Embassy

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Credits:

All video and audio production by John Simmerman

Music:

A Spanish Affair, Magic Hour, Spanish Fiesta by Neil Cross via Storyblocks.com

Resources used during the production of this episode:

- My awesome recording platform is Ecamm

- Adobe Creative Cloud Suite

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Background:

Hi Everyone, my name is John Simmerman.

I’m a health promotion professional with over 30 years of experience and my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization of how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.

In 2012 I launched the non-profit Advocates for Healthy Communities as an effort to help promote and create healthy, active places.

Since that time, I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be, in order to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."

My Active Towns suite of channels feature my original video and audio content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.

Thanks for tuning in; I hope you have found this content helpful.

Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2020

Advocates for Healthy Communities, Inc. is a nonprofit 501c3 organization (EIN 45-3802508) dedicated to helping communities create a Culture of Activity. To donate, click here.