J Aaron Hipp: aaron_hipp@ncsu.edu Alyssa Bird: abird@880cities.org

1. Evidence from 130 US Open Streets
Aaron Hipp and Alyssa Bird
Open Streets Summit, August 18, 2016

2. • 1968 – Seattle, WA – Bicycle Sundays
• 1974 – Westchester Co., NY – Bicycle Sundays
• 1983 – Wayne Co., MI – Saturdays in the Park
• 1999 – Phoenix, AZ – Silent Sundays
In 2012, there were 50 Open Streets programs in
the US
As of the end of 2015, there have been 121 Open
Streets programs
Now 133 US Cities have hosted Open Streets
From Bogota to Boone

3. 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
1967-2005 2006-2007 2008-2009 2010-2011 2012-2013 2014-2015
NumberofNewPrograms
Year of Initiation
Year of US Open Streets Initiation

4. US Programs

6. • 2 – 14 hours per date
• 0.2 – 51 miles
• Occur 1x per summer to 52x per year

7. 0
20
40
60
80
1 2 3 4 5-10 12+
NumberofPrograms
Event Dates per Year
US Open Streets Event Dates per Year
0
5
10
15
20
25
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10+
NumberofPrograms
Length in Kilometers
Length of US Open Streets Programs (km)

8. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
1% 20% 79%

9. 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9+
NumberofPrograms
Duration in Hours
Duration of US Open Streets Programs
0
5
10
15
20
NumberofPrograms
Participants per Program Date
Partipants per US Open Streets Program Date

10. 42%
45%
13%
Interested / Problem-Solving
Hesitant / Unconvinced
Unlikely / Impossible
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
12+ events per Year?

11. Evidence and Evaluation
• 75% of programs are evaluating
• 56% are evaluating more than
attendance and social media
likes / retweets
• Five (21%) working with local
university

12. Evaluation
• Attendance
• Enthusiasm / engagement
• Social media impressions
• Surveys
– Volunteers
– Academic partners
• Physical activity, businesses,
activity hubs, distance traveled,
perceptions, etc.
• Timing of evaluation

13. Attendance
• “We estimate the number of attendees
and we do that using a process that's
been used at Ciclovias across the world,
where people take tallies at certain
intervals as how many participants are
going by and then we plug that into an
Excel Spreadsheet to make us an
estimate of how many people were there,
for the whole day, based on how fast the
average speed of a walker and a biker
and a skater is.”

14. Enthusiasm and Social Media
• “We gauged it on participants and reactions that
we received from people coming to our table. It
was very, very positive. People are very excited.
As well as feedback from the merchants that
have been the donors and other people along
the route that participated, and as well as from
our Commissioner and the Mayor who receive
very positive feedback in general and that they
want it versus being upset with it.”

15. Survey
• “We do a lot of surveying, too. We
do like SurveyMonkey or fill form
survey to our participants that are
on social media afterward or
people that we’ve collected the
day of and their information. So
we kind of do it in a couple of
different ways, but we do it
internally.”

16. Academic Evaluation

17. Academic Evaluation

18. Academic Evaluation

21. Opportunities

22. Thank You!
• Thanks to Amy Eyler, Elizabeth Yarnall, Margaret van Bakergem, and Nathan
Miller
• 50+ organizers we have spoken with over the past four years
• Active Living Research, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and 8 80 Cities
• @drhipp jahipp@ncsu.edu