Blog
At first glance, Ellen Dunham-Jones doesn’t seem to fit the part. A car-free architect. An urban designer with a focus on sustainability. A creative thinker with a passion for problem solving. Even her colleagues, she admits with a laugh, have asked her incredulously: “What are you doing out in the ‘burbs?!” Dunham-Jones is one of the nation’s leading experts on “Retrofitting Suburbia” — in fact, she wrote the book on the topic. But she thinks outside the (big) box (stores).
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It is with great sadness that we received the news that on December 27 41-year-old Baltimore resident, Thomas Palermo, was struck and killed while riding his bike. As details emerged, and prosecutors alleged the intoxicated and text-messaging driver left the scene initially and had an arrest record for drunk driving, our sadness and exasperation increased. The specifics of the case -– that the driver was one of the highest ranking officials in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland; that her blood-alcohol level was 0.22 when the Maryland legal limit is 0.08; that charges were not immediately filed; that the crash occurred in a bike lane –- have made this a particularly high profile event. But preventable fatalities on our roadways are all too common.
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In the latest edition of Bike Law University, the League’s Legal Specialist Ken McLeod looks at dooring laws nationwide. Read more of his bike law analyses here. Dooring laws are laws that require people in a vehicle to open their door with a degree of care for moving traffic. A typical dooring law requires that a person opening a vehicle door ensure that it is reasonably safe to open the door, that opening the door will not interfere with moving traffic, and that the door is not open for any more time than necessary.
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We’re excited to announce the featured speaker at the opening plenary of the 2015 National Bike Summit: Maya Rockeymoore, the President of Center for Global Policy Solutions and director of Leadership for Healthy Communities, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Rockeymoore is an expert in equity in policy, specifically in health care. As a part of her responsibilities as director of Leadership for Healthy Communities, Rockeymoore is dedicated to helping state and local elected and appointed officials advance policies that support healthy eating, active living, and childhood obesity prevention. At the Summit, Rockeymoore will be discussing targeted universalism in policy and how that relates to transportation equity.
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“Bikeyface” [bahyk-e-feys] noun 1.The face you make unconsciously when you bike. Bekka Wright coined the term, which came to be her bike-centric and hugely popular webcomic, in the summer of 2011. Wright’s background is in fine art painting — drawing cartoons was an after-thought, mostly a fun gift for family and friends. But not long after he move from Los Angeles to Boston, and her commitment to biking for transportation grew, Wright saw an opportunity. The artist will be presenting at the 2015 National Bike Summit. Her big idea? Laughter. I spoke with Wright last week about Bikeyface and the power of making someone smile.
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Last month we hosted a webinar featuring the work of Liz Jose and Casey Ashenhurst of WE Bike NYC. WE Bike NYC is a community of women who ride bikes. They envision a community of bicyclists as diverse as the neighborhoods that comprise New York. In order to conduct more effective outreach to Spanish speaking participants, WE Bike NYC Founder Liz Jose and 2014 Women Bike Mini Grant recipient set out to create a toolkit that provides beginning Spanish language resources for bike clubs.
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We often divide the world of bicycling into three realms: the sport of racing, the business of the bike industry and the multi-faceted fronts of bicycle advocacy. With a pedal in all three areas, Karen Bliss is a leader with truly unique perspective. And we couldn’t be more excited to hear from her at the 2015 National Forum on Women & Bicycling on March 10. A former U.S. professional cyclist, Bliss earned the title “Winningest Cyclist in North America” during her career — and has continued to push for gender equity as a member of the USA Cycling and UCI women’s committees. A veteran of the bike industry, she’s currently the Vice President of Marketing for Advanced Sports International and sits on the board of the Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition. And, as the chair of the new Philadelphia Bicycle Advocacy Board, she’s catalyzing efforts to make biking better in the City of Brotherly Love.
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If we know anything about bicycling advocates, it’s that they’re an innovative bunch. At the National Bike Summit this year we are putting the spotlight on exciting new ideas for advocacy – our theme is Big Ideas. One of the ways we doing that is by collaborating with our partners at the crowdfunding platform ioby. ioby is a nation-wide, nonprofit crowdfunding platform that helps local leaders raise cash, in-kind donations, and volunteer power from their own communities.
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In our September-October 2014 issue of American Bicyclist, we heard from the Cascade Bicycle Club on their innovative Advocacy Leadership Institute. Cascade will be presenting on the ALI in March at the 2015 National Bike Summit. Read more about their efforts below, and be sure to register for the Summit today!
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In late 2013, the League teamed up with the Alliance for Biking & Walking to host a series of webinars focused on harnessing social media for bike advocacy. We talked over the basics of the most-used platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and about how to use these social media tools to build an audience and capture media attention. Below are the links to each of these presentations’ recaps, including video and descriptions. If you have any additional questions, please email [email protected].
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