Blog
National Bike Month isn’t just about riding to work. Bike to Work Day is just one event in May — what about those 30 other days? Janet Lafleur seized the opportunity, and teamed up with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition to organize a Bike to Shop Day in the region during Bike Month in 2014. Her Big Idea, which she’ll be speaking more about at the 2015 National Bike Summit, is to expand Bike To Shop Day. We spoke with Lafleur about how Bike to Shop Day came to be and where she’s set her sights for the future.
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We’re exactly six weeks away from the premier bicycle advocacy event of the year: the 2015 National Bike Summit and National Forum on Women & Bicycling. It’s been months in the making, and we couldn’t be more excited to reveal the full agenda. What’s in it for you? How is this year different than the past? Keep reading…
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The 2015 National Bike Summit is the largest annual gathering of bike advocates — and it’s the time of year when we share our message with congressional leaders and staff. Face-to-face meetings are hugely important, and we know it works. If you’re headed to the Summit and are looking to learn more of the basics, or even a refresher, we’re holding two webinars on “what to know before you go.”
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Pioneered by Northeastern University Professor Peter Furth and others, Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) analysis has brought to the forefront a means to identify barriers to riding for people with a low tolerance for traffic. It’s a Big Idea that’s taking root across the country and we’re excited to hear more on this timely topic from Tim Blagden, Executive Director of the Bike-Walk Alliance of New Hampshire, at the 2015 National Bike Summit in March.
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For many in the bike movement, Portland has an almost mythical status — earning the distinction of being the closest we’ve come in the United States to a major metropolitan cycling uptopia. But Portlandia faces the same challenges as the rest of urban America, including the burgeoning need to bring biking to the suburbs.
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Many people get involved in bike advocacy because they want to promote bicycling and increase safety, yet we all know that not everyone who rides has the time or inclination to become an advocate. Sometimes the people who don’t get involved actually have the most need for better streets in their neighborhoods. How can we ensure that bike advocacy agendas are designed to meet those communities’ needs? Multicultural Communities for Mobility (MCM) in Los Angeles has been experimenting with this question since its early days as a bike light giveaway program housed at the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition in 2008. Today, MCM is leading the nation in innovating ways to transform community-engaged bike advocacy from a good idea into action.
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While riding, most bicyclists are focused on their safety and their ride, rather than their rights. “Can I make this light?” “What is that car doing?” Rarely, a person riding may notice that they pass from one jurisdiction to another. Maybe there is a Bicycle Friendly Community sign celebrating that jurisdiction’s efforts to improve bicycling conditions, maybe there is a general purpose sign saying that you have entered or are leaving the great city of Wherever. Perhaps, but hopefully not too frequently, the change from one jurisdiction to another will be met with an ominous sign that affects your rights as a bicyclist. The most common may be “No bicycling on sidewalks in the Central Business District,” but depending upon the powers of a local government there may be few, if any, limits on what restrictions you may face. In this edition of Bike Law University, I’m digging into the authorization of local regulations as they relate to riding a bike from one community to the next — and how that might affect your ride.
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Organizations often have a culture that doesn’t allow women to thrive as leaders. Ashley Fullenwider and Laura Todd of Nuu-Muu want to inspire women to take stock of their authentic selves and create the space they want to be in. With a wealth of experience in this realm, we’re excited the duo will be leading a breakout session at this year’s National Forum on Women & Bicycling that will encourage participants to “discover their core motivations for doing the work that keeps them bright.”
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For Mychal Tetteh, the old adage proved true: Necessity is the mother of invention. Portland may be his hometown, but when he started as the Executive Director of the Community Cycling Center in 2013, he felt like he was working from a disjointed map, an incomplete playbook on how to make streets safer in his community. “As soon as I got the job, I wanted to know everything,” he recalled. “From a regional standpoint, I wanted more complete information. I wanted to know who all the stakeholders were, a categorical list of all the advocacy organizations and agencies and neighborhood institutions.” He quickly discovered he wasn’t alone.
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Leah Shahum had a jarring realization in 2013. In the wake of a particularly fatal year for bicyclists and pedestrians in San Francisco, it became clear to her that the slow, piecemeal approach to create safer streets wasn’t moving nearly fast enough. It was time to redraw the lines of the debate, shift the cultural compass for the city, the public and advocates to no longer accept traffic deaths as tragedies out of their control. So, at the start of 2014, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition launched a Vision Zero campaign, calling for a reduction of all traffic deaths to zero in 10 years.
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