| Founder(s) | Mark Gorton |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Location | New York and elsewhere[1] |
| Area served | Global |
| Focus | Sustainable transport |
| Method | Advocacy |
| Members | 50[1] |
| Website | OpenPlans |
OpenPlans is a non-profit technology based advocacy organization which aims to help to open up government and improve transportation systems. OpenPlans currently has a staff of 50 people. The organization was founded in 1999 by Mark Gorton[2], the creator of LimeWire.[3]
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The organisation has received funding from Google, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, Knight Foundation, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), SURDNA Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank and others.[4]
OpenPlans organises its activities into a number of divisions or projects.
OpenGeo is the geospatial division of OpenPlans which supports the development of a number of open-source software packages for the Geospatial analysis, management and publication of geo-spatial information; these include PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, GeoExt, and OpenLayers.[5][6] The organization also supports OpenTripPlanner[7] which is an open source multi-modal trip planner[8] which is being used by TriMet in Portland, Oregon.[9]
The Streetfilms project produces and publishes short films advocating transportation design and public policy. About 400 videos have been produced which have been watched over 4 million times.[10] These films are normally published using a creative commons license. Their most popular videos including a piece about the Ciclovia in Bogota where streets are made into carfree facilities every Sunday. Such events now take place in many places around the world (180,000 views)[11] and on Physically Separated Bike Lanes (111,000 views).[12] In 2010 at a time when New York city was planning to implement 20mph speed limits Streetfilms produced a short video of the experience of 20 mph speed limits in the UK where 3 million people already live in 20 mph speed limit areas.[13][14]
Streetfilms was started by Clarence Eckerson[15] in 2004[16] with support from Mark Gorton.[17]
Streetsblog is a project run by OpenPlans providing a daily news source connecting people to information about sustainable transportation and livable communities. StreetsBlog started in 2006 and has 'hundreds of thousands' of regular readers.[18]