Doubling your impact on Capitol Hill

Thanks to everyone who lobbied last Wednesday here in DC. It is so great to see the halls of Congress filled with people with bike pins. Collectively you had 338 meetings — more than half of Congress! 

Having you visit makes a big difference because it shows your elected officials that you cared enough to come all the way to DC to meet with them.

And you can double your impact by doing two simple things: Send a follow-up email to the Congressional office, and fill out this survey for the League. 

1. Follow up with the Congressional office.  Please make sure to send a quick thank you email to the staffer. This is a great time to:

• Say Thank you
  • It was a pleasure to meet with you last week, to discuss the role of bicycling in the transportation system
• Reinforce the points you made in the meetings. You can re-send the fact sheets[1] or local stories, or send new data
  • As we discussed, increasing federal funding for bicycling infrastructure is supported by a majority of Americans. You can see the benefits of such projects in our community such as the road diet on Maryland Ave, which has led to slower speeds, and higher bike/walk to school rates for the neighborhood schools in a half mile radius of the projects
• Answer any questions they had of you.  If you don’t know the answers, send me an email ([email protected]) and I’ll help.
  • At the meeting, you had a question about whether small communities like ours could benefit from the Vision Zero Bill.  The answer is yes, 25% of the funding is reserved for communities under 200,000.
• Make the “ask”
  • Will the Congresswoman co-sponsor HR 1266: The Vision Zero Bill?
  • Please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

2. Please fill out this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/227JWWP.  I’ve heard from a few of you but I look forward to getting report from your meetings. Those reports help me determine which offices I need to target for co-sponsorship, which need more convincing, etc. I really, really use those reports, so please take a few minutes to fill out this survey. (Or you can use the follow up feature in the Advocacy Day app.)