FEND Journal / Streets
Changing Lanes: The Streets We Choose to Build
A new documentary reminds us that safer streets don't just happen. People make them happen.
This week, Christian and I had the opportunity to attend a screening of Changing Lanes in New York City. Around the same time, our FEND team member Jason McBriarty saw the film at a screening in Oakland.
We came away thinking about many of the same things: safety, community, and the choices we make about the streets we share.
Directed by Ben Wolf, Changing Lanes tells the story of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where the tragic hit-and-run death of a beloved teacher sparked a grassroots effort to make one of the neighborhood's most dangerous streets safer. What begins as a campaign to transform a four-lane boulevard into a two-lane street with protected bike lanes soon becomes something much bigger, a fight over who streets are for and who gets to decide.
The film follows neighbors and advocates as they confront political resistance and powerful interests while pushing for a simple idea: people should be able to move through their communities safely.
That idea resonates deeply with me, and with why we created FEND.
We make helmets because protecting riders matters. But I have always believed that individual safety is only one piece of a much larger picture. Truly safe cycling also requires streets designed for people. Protected bike lanes, safer intersections, thoughtful infrastructure, and transportation systems that make riding feel like a practical option for everyone.
And when streets feel safer, something else happens: more people use them.
More people bike to work. Parents ride with their kids. Someone chooses a bike for an errand instead of getting into a car. A person who never thought of themselves as a cyclist discovers that riding can be a convenient, joyful way to get around.
That is why Changing Lanes feels like much more than a documentary about a bike lane in Brooklyn. It is a story about community and democracy at the most tangible level imaginable: the street outside your front door.
Change rarely happens because everyone agrees from the start. It happens because people care enough about their communities to show up, speak out, and imagine something better.
I left Changing Lanes inspired by the people who did exactly that in Greenpoint. It was a poignant reminder that safer streets, stronger communities, and greater freedom to move are all connected. Those are streets worth fighting for. And cities worth building.
Ready. Set. Ride.