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When you call up a Tucson bicycling advocate, you will likely find her setting up a dinner with a traveling bike advocacy speaker. Or maybe she’ll be heading off to a meeting of the committee to make Tucson a Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community. Perhaps she will tell you about the upcoming Winning Campaigns Training that Tucson is hosting. Despite all that Tucson has going for it, the city’s bicycling advocates and transportation officials are hungry for more.

That kind of energy made them perfect for the very first Advocacy Advance Action 2020 Workshop.

This successful workshop, hosted by the Pima Association of Governments and local Alliance member Living Streets Alliance, brought together over 60 advocates, agency staff, and elected officials to learn about underutilized federal funding sources for bicycle and pedestrian programs and projects. Participants included Arizona DOT program managers, University of Arizona officials, local and state advocates, and Tucson City Council members.

The workshop presented an overview of federal funding source, gave state and local information, shared best practices from the field from Peter Lagerwey, the Regional Office Director for Toole Design Group in the Northwest, and offered time in the afternoon for participants to map out next steps. Tucson mayor Bob Walkup and Arizona State Representative Steve Farley spoke on a panel of elected officials.

The session provided a great opportunity to bring advocates and officials together in the same room.  “What has been the most exciting for me to see is just in the course of this morning, people making connections and trying to answer questions for each other in the audience.” Living Streets Alliance president, Emily Yetman said. “One person will bring up an issue they are having in another part of the state and someone from ADOT will stand up and say, ‘Hey I’m the guy you need to talk to.’”

Action 2020 Workshops are designed to ensure advocates, agency staff, and elected officials have the knowledge, skills and resources to access untapped or under-utilized federal funding sources at the state, regional and local level to build bicycling and walking infrastructure and programs.

We invite advocates and agency staff to register for the nearest workshop, which are offered for free, thanks to the generous support of SRAM. Upcoming Action 2020 Workshop locations and dates are:

• 11/4/11 – Hartford, CT hosted by Bike Walk Connecticut and Capitol Region Council of Governments
• 12/2/11 – Houston, TX hosted by BikeHouston and Houston Galveston Area Council
• 1/20/12 – Pittsburgh, PA hosted by Bike Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission
• 2/10/12 – Atlanta, GA hosted by Atlanta Bicycling Coalition and Atlanta Regional Commission

For more information about Advocacy Advance and the Action 2020 Workshops, or to apply to host future workshops, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Action 2020 Workshops are facilitated by Advocacy Advance – a partnership between the League of American Bicyclists and Alliance for Biking & Walking.