Blog
This Friday during our weekly Twitter chat, #BikeChat, we asked the question, “What does a Bicycle Friendly Community look like to you?” Bicycle Friendly Communities come in all shapes and sizes. In one you might ride past a dairy farm, with nothing but green ahead of you, and in the next you might be stopping at a bike-specific red light within a two-way cycle track on a busy city block. We work with community leaders in neighborhoods big or small, sprawling or compact, densely or sparsely populated, and everything in between.
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Two weeks ago, I had the honor and privilege of being a panelist at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. The Summit is an annual bike advocacy event that unites bicyclists from across the nation to build a bicycle-friendly America for everyone. I joined the panel, “People and Policies Successfully Addressing the Root Causes of Inequity” to talk about equity, specifically racial equity, and why it matters for the bike movement.
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Walking advocate Vanessa Garrison is taking on the crisis of inactivity. “Everything we do is around a broader discussion about black community— household stability, health, women with chronic diseases, and the crisis of inactivity,” Garrison, the founder of GirlTrek, said of her work. It’s not about walking, per se, but about how people walking more and creating environments where people walk can impact our society. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the shift that’s happening in bicycling advocacy right now, too.
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You might find it odd for a reflective gear company to leave the safety talking points out of its marketing to consumers. But for Nick Drombosky, that’s what makes his Pittsburgh-based company, Fiks:Reflective, work. His company’s tagline says it all: “Stay safe without looking like a traffic cone.” “Safety doesn’t sell to a big market–safety sells to mothers and then safety sits in the bottom of a drawer,” Drombosky said. “We make cool products that people want to use, want to brag about, and post pictures of. Look at our Instagram or Facebook: we have 15-year-old kids all over the world wanting to get their hands on our products. Find a safety products company that has that.”
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Last Friday we talked bike laws during our weekly Twitter chat, #BikeChat, with Peter Wilborn of BikeLaw.com and Ken McLeod, the League’s Legal Specialist. The patchwork nature of bike laws throughout the United States is a popular topic of disucssion among advocates, government workers and daily riders alike. The League’s bike law resources and Bike Law University series has aimed to equip people who bike with the information they need when out on the road. And our recent partnership with BikeLaw.com has further bolstered those efforts. You can view the bike attorney directory, powered by BikeLaw.com, here.
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What do Portland and Boulder have in common? They are, of course, both considered among the most bike-friendly places in the United States — including by the League. They are two of just four Platinum level communities in our Bicycle Friendly Community program. And in recent years, both communities have dropped the ball when it comes to addressing the needs of, and providing opportunities for, mountain bikers. Boulder has opened the excellent Valmont Park facility recently, but in both cities, there are large swathes of prime mountain biking venues that are declared out of bounds, for no good reason. The local mountain bike community feels unfairly shut out, despite going to great lengths to go through the appropriate channels, follow the process, be part of planning meetings, hearings, studies etc.
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It’s well within Bill Ford’s job description to foresee the threat of global gridlock. But in his 2011 TED talk, the CEO of the automotive giant described an innovative detour to avoid the impending transportation crisis. “The solution is not going to be more cars, more roads or a new rail system; it can only be found, I believe, in a global network of interconnected solutions,” Ford said.
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Big ideas are a lot like children. They’re unpredictable. Challenging. A little scary. Each one has the potential to change the world. And like children, big ideas grow and grow and grow. Members of the U.S. bicycling community have been asking themselves lots of hard questions lately. Who are we really serving? Who’s been included — and who’s been left out? And most importantly: how can we do better? We have just scratched the surface in examining how our work can better reflect the communities we serve.
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Why do we bike? As advocates, we’re quick to point out the benefits we can measure: It burns calories, reduces air pollution, relieves traffic congestion and costs less than car ownership. But, for those of us who ride, we know there are even bigger upsides to cycling: Biking makes us feel good. And now there’s data to prove it.
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Thank you to everyone who came to, supported and engaged with the 2015 National Bike Summit! It was such an inspiring and thought-provoking three days — because of you! If you want to catch up on some of the discussions you missed, or relive some of your favorite memories from the event, read through our recap below. Don’t forget to read the #womenbike recap here, too!
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