In May 2021, Matthew Jensen, a 58-year old elementary school teacher, was hit by a car and left for dead while crossing McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn. The perpetrator, a city EMT (!) with a history of dangerous driving, was eventually located, tried, and received a six-month sentence, leaving Jensen’s family and friends understandably furious.
You can follow the links if you want to know the name of Jensen’s killer, but that’s not really the point. A more important question is why a four-lane boulevard and designated truck route that had already been the site of many collisions and deaths over the years (hence the nickname “Bloody McGuinness”) was running through a densely populated residential area in the first place.
Bill de Blasio, then mayor of New York City, promised reform, and plans were drawn up for a redesign aimed at increasing safety. Two mayors later, construction is finally underway. What took so long? That question is at the heart of Ben Wolf’s documentary Changing Lanes, along with another question: How did we get here in the first place?
That second question is particularly dear to my heart, since I grew up walking and cycling everywhere (reaching the third grade, when we were allowed to bike to school, was an important milestone in a kid’s life). I had a classic free-range childhood, in other words, and I wouldn’t trade the fun I had and the independence I enjoyed them for all the smartphones and streaming services in the world.
Unfortunately, few American children enjoy that kind of childhood today, and the reason is not so much stranger danger as the threat of being injured or killed by a motor vehicle. This is not true everywhere, as Americans often discover to their surprise when traveling abroad (or when watching this film, which contrasts America with bike- and pedestrian-friendly environments in other countries). But suggest we could also change and you will find yourself fighting 100 years of automobile industry propaganda and billions of dollars of economic interests profiting from American’s car dependency.
The fight to remove the “bloody” descriptor from McGuinness Blvd provides the through-line of Changing Lanes and it’s not much of a spoiler to say that in American politics the determined, well-financed opposition of a few can override the interests of the many. While exploring the McGuinness story, Wolf also provides an excellent overview of the insanity of our current car dependency and the history behind it while putting a human face on the issues at play.
Changing Lanes packs a lot of information into its 74-minute runtime, but the pace always feels natural and interest never flags, thanks to the expert work of editor Kristine Bye. You’ll meet major players like Robert Moses through archival footage and present-day activists and scholars like Jannette Sadik-Khan (who created some of NYC’s first bike lanes) and Henry Grabar (author of, among other things, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World) in contemporary interviews. You’ll also experience some of the contentiousness of public meetings discussing the proposed reforms on McGuinness, where those opposed state many of the arguments refuted elsewhere in the film (like “it will kill businesses in the area” and “the traffic will just flood local streets”).
The joy of cycling gets its due, with David Byrne sharing how his band travels with folding bikes so they can explore the cities where they perform. Criminal mischief in the service of humanity also gets its moment as we see longtime journalist and activist Gersh Kuntzman Gersh Kuntzman helpfully improving license plates of parked cars whose drivers have obscured them to avoid paying tolls or being detected while speeding—because if you can’t keep your sense of humor while fighting the good fight, what hope is there for any of us? | Sarah Boslaugh
Changing Lanes is distributed by First Run Features and is available on VOD from Amazon and Kanopy. You can read more about the film and view the trailer here.
