The Week in Short Videos
The embeds below are from TikTok, but if you’re not a fan of the platform, here’s all the links to find Streetsblog videos:
Streetsblog California: Instagram, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok.
Streetsblog L.A.: TikTok, YouTube, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook.
And if you can’t get enough Streetsblog videos, Streetsblog NYC has a TikTok Channel and Streetfilms is archived on YouTube.
Wednesday – Continuing its series on some of the best infrastructure in Southern California – found in L.A. County’s beach cities, Streetsblog L.A. posted its third recent video in Santa Monica. This video gives a tour of the Michigan Avenue Neighborhood Greenway (MANGo). Learn more about MANGo at earlier Streetsblog coverage or at the city’s project page.
If you missed them, here are other videos in this series: Protected intersection in Santa Monica, curb protected bikeways in Santa Monica, Mark Bixby bike-ped path in Long Beach, how to improve infrastructure “for free” in Long Beach, and bike boulevards in Long Beach. And, if you missed it, Streetsblog L.A. highlighted Santa Monica Bergamot Station first/last mile improvements way back in October.
Friday – Yesterday, Streetsblog reported on the proposed FY 2026-2027 budget for the City of San Diego and the shocking cuts to the safety programs at their Department of Transportation. Here’s the short-video version.
All Week – Given the high watch rate for the short videos on California High-Speed Rail, Streetsblog posted a video critiquing Elon Musk’s boast that he could have built Hyperloop from Los Angeles to the Bay Area cheaper and faster than CAHSRA. Then the video got no push from TikTok and sat with an embarrassing 24 views. Given that the same thing happened to a video on a UCLA study the week before, there was concern the account might be shadowbanned.
After doing some research, the advice Streetsblog received was to post a video so neutral it could trigger no alarms from the TikTok bots that decide how to push videos, so we produced the middle video below…literally a talking head asking if people watch our videos with the sound off. It received over 700 views.
The TikTok doctors’ next suggestion was to post a new video with a similar topic as the first one, but to remove any content that could be controversial and avoid naming Musk. That video went up again yesterday. No push. Eight views.
So lesson learned…no more videos about hyperloop. Also, both of the hyperloop videos earned over 100 views on YouTube Shorts.
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