OpenPlans is a non-profit technology based advocacy

Advocacy

Advocacy is a political process by an individual or a large group which normally aims to influence public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions; it may be motivated from moral, ethical or faith principles or simply to protect an...

 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

Mark Gorton

Mark Howard Gorton is the creator of LimeWire, a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Java Platform, and chief executive of the Lime Group...

, the creator of LimeWire

LimeWire

LimeWire is a free peer-to-peer file sharing client program that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems supported by the Java software platform. LimeWire uses the gnutella network as well as the BitTorrent protocol. A free software version and a purchasable "enhanced"...

.

Funders

OpenPlans has received funding from Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy

Institute for Transportation and Development Policy

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy is a US-based non-governmental non-profit organization providing technical assistance to cities and local advocacy groups on sustainable transportation development throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas...

, Knight Foundation, the National Association of City Transportation Officials

National Association of City Transportation Officials

The National Association of City Transportation Officials is a coalition of fifteen of the largest cities in the United States, and one affiliate member city...

 (NACTO), SURDNA Foundation

SURDNA Foundation

The SURDNA Foundation was established as a charitable foundation in 1917 by John Emory Andrus to pursue a range of philanthropic purposes.-History:...

, Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

, the World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

 and others.

OpenGeo

OpenGeo is the geospatial division of OpenPlans and develops open source OpenGeo Suite which includes PostGIS

PostGIS

PostGIS is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium .-Features:...

, GeoServer

GeoServer

In computing, GeoServer - an open-source server written in Java - allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards...

, GeoWebCache, GeoExt, and OpenLayers

OpenLayers

OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications similar to Google Maps and Bing Maps...

 for the publication and Geospatial analysis of geographic data. The organization also supports OpenTripPlanner which is an open source multi-modal trip planner

Public transport route planner

A public transport route planner is a type of journey planner designed to provide information about available public transport journeys, nowadays often made available as a Web application...

 which is being used by TriMet

TriMet

TriMet, more formally known as the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, is a public agency that operates mass transit in a region that spans most of the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon...

 in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

.

Streetfilms

Streetfilms is a project run by OpenPlans which publishes short films advocating transportation design and public policy. About 400 videos have been produced which have been watched over 4 million times. These films are normally published using a creative commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

 license. Their most popular videos including a piece about the Ciclovia

Ciclovía

Ciclovía is term which translates from Spanish into English as "bike path" and now used worldwide to describe either a permanently designated bicycle route or a temporary event, the closing of the street to automobiles for use by others.-Origins in Colombia:Each Sunday and holiday certain main...

 in Bogota

Bogotá

Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...

 where streets are made into carfree facilities every Sunday. Such events now take place in many places around the world (180,000 views) and on Physically Separated Bike Lanes

Segregated cycle facilities

Segregated cycle facilities are marked lanes, tracks, shoulders and paths designated for use by cyclists from which motorised traffic is generally excluded...

 (111,000 views). 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.

Streetfilms was started by Clarence Eckerson

Clarence Eckerson

Clarence Eckerson, Jr. is a Brooklyn-based videographer and the creator of BikeTV and Streetfilms.org.- Background :Eckerson grew up in New York State and delivered newspapers by bicycle for five years. He developed an interest in film at an early age and made many silent home movies with a Super...

in 2004 with support from Mark Gorton.

StreetsBlog

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.