President's Message
Report on Bike Summit, Washington DC
March 2012
Fellow NYCC members,
‘'Save Cycling' was the title of this year’s Bike Summit in Washington DC on March 20-22 and I was there representing NYCC with 800 others from every niche of the American cycling world.
Sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists, this important assembly was laser-focused on defending critical funding for bicycling programs in an age of congressional devolution.
The opening session featured "bikepartisan" Earl Blumenauer (Democrat, Oregon) who spoke about bicycling as a political movement, and how he sees it inevitably weaving into the fabric of everyday life in this country.
Ray LaHood, Transportation Secretary, stirred the crowd with his clarion call to Congress: "Pass the Senate Transportation Bill!" The Senate bill, the one in which funding for cycling and Safe Streets to School initiatives has been restored, is a revision of the disastrous House bill.
Said Peter DeFazio (another Democrat, Oregon) about members of Congress keen to pull funding: "We have to educate these people!”
From Donna Edwards (Democrat Maryland): “It’s about making our communities livable, walkable. When you advocate for cycling, you are advocating to save our communities.”
Last in the opening session was Jonathan Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service who spoke of "Healthy Parks, Healthy People," a prescriptive NPS program aimed at getting people outdoors and active, as in: "Take a ride and call me in the morning!"
In the breakout sessions one thing stood out loud and clear, that bicycling means big business and that communicating the value of this 6 billion dollar industry to officials at all levels of government, to promote public funding and pro-bicycling policy, is our urgent responsability.
If I learned nothing else at the Summit, that takeaway, about cycling’s economic clout, how it has successfully boosted local economic vitality, was worth the price of admission.
At lunch I sat with a group of Arkansan cycling advocates whose astonishing list of accomplishments include seeing through a connected web of Little Rock parks and trails including, the Big Dam Bridge, the country’s longest pedestrian/bicycle bridge built specifically for that purpose.
Clearly something is shifting here. The Marriott could barely contain the crowd. And though the Summit is sponsored by LAB, all three big U.S. advocacy organizations. LAB, Bikes Belong and Alliance for Biking and Walking are discussing consolidation into one flagship entity that will have enormous clout.
It’s a sea change we’re in, reflecting a nationwide movement towards livable, sustainable towns and cities, with bicycling a serious transport option and growing recreational endeavor.
This gives us, as devoted cyclists and as New York City’s largest recreational cycling club, an important role to play in our own backyard, as advocates, as communicators of the value that cycling brings to our own community and to those we ride through.
Our goals are not dissimilar to those of the Arkansan advocates who by building the Three Dams Bridge built a bridge to economic growth and quality of life, to health and fitness, to friendship and community.
There will surely be opportunity in the next months for NYCC members to demonstrate support for pro-bicycling policy. With an ever more clear picture of the kind of positive change this can generate, who would not want to get onboard?
Hope to see you on the road!
Ellen
