The Streetsblog Files Part I of ?
Uncovering the web of money, influence, and power behind the propaganda publication Streetsblog
Through hard-hitting reporting and insightful commentary, we make complex conversations about transportation reform accessible, emotional, and urgent. Our goal is to empower our readers with the perspective, inspiration, and resources they need to dismantle the structural forces that result in car dominance, both at the level of policy and in our culture more broadly.
Just over a month ago in Just Stop Killing Us! Or how to spot a Cluster B(ike) Activist, we highlighted an incident where a bicyclist went into a bout of hysteria over an parked ambulance blocking her way in a so-called protected bike lane and argued that her behavior, along with many others in the bicycling advocacy community overlap well with apocalyptic climate change activists such as those with Just Stop Oil.
We mentioned they were a part of the platitude-driven ideology of cycling advocacy and covered the likely fact such types suffer from a Cluster B personality disorder as documented well in today’s political atmosphere by
. These behavior patterns also map on well to so-called Progressive ideology or at least the particular flavor as argued in his book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities1, have taken many cities by storm ruining the quality of life for the majority of citizens.The website Streetsblog SF recently “covered” this incident in the San Francisco bikeway.
This post was originally created as an attempt to refute the brazenly poor reporting. For one, they neglected to report on the bicyclist’s own car-based crimes - that of filming on her mobile phone while driving her car, a major issue that Streetsblog’s ideologues criticize in general around their sites.
Not only have people made their opinion on the matter either way anyway, have taken it to the comments section of the story itself (where the authors often engage in the combat), the story of Streetsblog themselves is a far more interesting one.
Streetsblog are the Pravda of the bicycling Platitude-Driven Vision Elect, and to a greater extent of the anti-automobile, pro-transit, and pro-bicycling (but only per their narrow view) activist circles. They have several sub-sites - one for the US as a whole and several for cities and states including NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Massachusetts, and California. In the past, they had a page dedicated to geographical areas such as Denver, St. Louis, Texas, and the Southeastern US but have since closed down.
Who is this Streetsblog?
Streetsblog and its sister site Streetfilms can be traced back to venture capitalist Mark Gordon. In the early 2000s, after seeing video from NYC bicycling and environmental activist Clarence Eckerson Jr, Gordon reached out for his aide. At the same time a consortium of area activism groups The New York City Streets Renaissance formed and began to influence the city’s transportation department, NYDOT, in trying to “change” some of the cities streets to be less focused on motor traffic and more focused on alternative transportation. (John Allen details some of this early advocacy work in his 2011 blogpost “Manufacturing traffic jams on Grand Street, Manhattan”.) Eventually Gorton and Eckerson Jr needed a “journalistic” outlet and teamed up with writer Aaron Naparstek. Of that, Streetsblog was born to cover the writing and journalism part while Streetsfilm was created to edit and distribute activism-laden video.
While each Streetsblog site maintains the same layout and the same editorial and (being charitable) reporting goals, most of the different geographical areas are run by different staff members, which they call reporters. This creates somewhat of a web where the common threads are both the ideologies they wish to push and the appearance of the web interface.
Many of their articles are also sponsored.
The sites also host a jobs board for “the industry” consisting of positions in organizations such as NACTO, ideologically aligned non-profits, cushy government positions, more cushy government positions, and even the CA High Speed Rail grift/thieves.
In
's piece last summer Battling the Bike Bros, where SF resident Erica Sandberg interviews another cyclist summarizes the perspective of the greater movement (pushed in our view by Streetsblog) as:Many are progressive to the point of being socialists. Their religion is urbanism. They use the word “normies” to describe people unlike them. Their job is to make normies uncomfortable. If you want space, they want you to suffer. The happiness regular people get from being able to bring their kids on vacation or go to the store in a car is evil to them. They will lie and cheat to get what they want without any care. If you show them the litany of ways that they are wrong or aren’t telling the truth, they shrug. Facts don’t matter. Getting what they want matters.
The Streetsblog websites, like many on the internet are free to read which begs the question - how do these websites generate revenue to pay these bills?
Donations. (often by those who sponsor their articles)
Follow the Money
It’s complicated and depends on which Streetsblog.
Streetsblog USA and Streetsblog NYC
Streetsblog USA and Streetsblog NYC are owned and operated by a NY-based 501c3 non-profit called OpenPlans. OpenPlans was founded by Mark Gorton. Gorton is likely known for creating the P2P application Limewire. He’s also is the founder of Tower Research Capital LLC, a high frequency equity trading firm. Among Gorton’s philanthropic interests is alternative transportation hence his founding of Streetsblog, its sister site Streetfilms, and OpenPlans.
OpenPlans is the true center of the Streetsblog USA and Streetsblog NYC show.
Their Wikipedia page reads as if it was crafted by a public relations firm. It begins, “Open Streets is a non-profit that advocates for making the streets of New York City livable for all residents. Open Plans uses tactical urbanism, grassroots advocacy, policy and targeted journalism to promote structural reforms within city government that support livable streets, neighborhoods and the city-at-large.”
Under their current About Us page, they drone:
Open Plans uses tactical urbanism, grassroots advocacy, policy and targeted journalism to promote structural reforms within city government that support livable streets, neighborhoods and the city-at-large.
The Wikipedia page follows with a list of some of the funders behind Open Streets. Among them are so-called "Big Tech" firm Google, The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, The Knight Foundation, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), The SURDNA Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and even the World Bank.
The citation for this particular tidbit of information leads to a dead link2 on OpenStreets’ website.
We were unable to find any information on their donors on their current website!
Each and every one of these organizations are likely due a deep dive alone but OpenPlans and the more direct funders of Streetsblog itself are interesting enough.
Aside from Gorton’s own OpenPlans, Streetsblog USA and Streetsblog NYC have a group of additional major funders. These include The Summit Foundation, Transit Center, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The Summit Foundation describe themselves as an organization whose role is to “seek to promote the health and well-being of the planet – its people and its natural environment – by focusing on three program areas: Equality for Women and Girls, Conserving the Mesoamerican Reef, Sustainable Cities.” Under their Sustainable Cities program, they seek to, “radically increase the sustainability of cities through transformative climate action.” Among their goals to achieve this utopian vision are to increase the mode share of commuters to 50% transit, walking, or bicycling; eliminate the use of fossil fuels in buildings by 2030; and for an electricity grid free from carbon dioxide emitting sources by 2035.
Transit Center are a 501(c)3 organization also based in NYC but with an office on K-Street - the location where numerous lobbyist organizations and other funders of The Swamp leech themselves. Their main focus is on public transportation, particularly what they coin as Transit Justice which they believe if implemented in their vision results in more sustainable, just, and equitable public transportation network. Transit Center even brag that their influential tentacles stretch into local neighborhood groups on the opposite side of the country. They state a $65,000 grant to activist group Circulate San Diego was “to influence the makeup, philosophy and governance of local Community Planning Groups – one of the most influential forces affecting land use and transportation policy in San Diego.”3
Bloomberg Philantropies likely needs no introduction. BH are the arm of billionaire and former NYC Mayor Nanny Statist Michael Bloomberg. He uses this organization to spread propaganda for the anti-gun lobby and believes he has the authority to essentially turn Mountain West states such as Colorado into colonies of New York City. Robert Bryce recently noted the connections between Bloomberg's organization and other billionaire influenced groups in the climate sector too.
The Sierra Club has been a prime beneficiary of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has pledged $500 million to the Beyond Carbon project. In 2019, the pledge was considered the largest ever “philanthropic donation to combat climate change.” The Sierra Club has been a primary beneficiary of Bloomberg’s giving. About two years ago, a Sierra Club employee told me that it is getting about $30 million per year from Bloomberg. On its website, the group touts its role in the Beyond Carbon initiative, calling it “the largest climate campaign in the U.S., with the goal of closing all domestic coal plants by 2030 and stopping the use of gas as a transition fuel.”
Needless to say these organizations packed and funded with billionaire and coastal “progressive” elite money are heavily influential on the rest of the country, even in areas which are supposed to be headed by local in the community. Bicyclists (who this blog was originally intended for) often face infrastructure “designed” by proponents of this ideology which actually place them in greater danger of crashes, while the grift among the activists and bureaucrats goes on.
For Streetsblog USA and NY to claim they write with any level of objectivity is absurd.
In the next piece we’ll dive into Streetsblog’s West Coast presence, which is likely just as interesting.
Stay tuned.
Shellenberger also covered the climate change hysterics in his book Apocalypse Never.
A peak into Archive.org indeed does confirm the Wikipedia Citation existed back in 2012 with one donor missing from the list, Bikes Belong, the predecessor organization to People for Bikes, a bicycle industry advocacy organization.
Twitter user DriveBikeWalk is a critic of much of the bicycle Platitude Vision, alternative transportation, and climate action policy including that of the affairs of Circulate San Diego. DriveBikeWalk argues that their influence has been stripped of those of the community and replaced by the interests of others. A few recent tweets of theirs gets directly to his point with organization Circulate San Diego deleting tweets about mixers for “Members” (as opposed to actual city residents).
When discussing Streetsblog in New York, it is important to highlight the connections between Streetsblog NYC, Transportation Alternatives, Riders Alliance, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, etc. I'm the VP of Passengers United, real grassroots advocates for safe, equitable, and accessibility transit who actually listen to and speak up on behalf of everyday commuters.
Doesn't this literally just mean that Streetsblog is a pretty standard nonprofit? Most organizations I know of get funding from larger organizations, often in the form of grants. I certainly don't agree with everything Streetsblog says (and they've had a few pretty bad pieces), but their own writers often have differing opinions. Just like news outlets like CNN and Washington Post, there are a wide variety of columnists who comment on different things. Some of the articles are purely technical (ex. talking about different subway construction techniques, analyzing data on roadway designs, etc.), while others are more political in nature, but there's such a wide range of articles that you can pick and choose which ones to read. As for the bike infrastructure that purportedly makes cyclists more unsafe (aka door zone bike lanes) - pretty much every cycling advocate would actually agree with you that those types of bike lanes aren't optimal. Modern painted bike lanes often include a 3' buffer where the door zone is (this buffer exists whether the bike lane is between the road and the parked cars, or between the parked cars and sidewalks). I've been involved with getting traffic calming & bike infrastructure installed in my city, and I can tell you that everyone working on installing new bike lanes agrees that the door zone bike lanes are a bad idea, and that a buffer is needed (and PBLs are ideally the best choice).