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Entries tagged: Cascade Bicycle Club

We hate to be alarmists here at the Alliance and we know that, in recent months, we’ve been sending a lot of action alerts with urgent asks to help preserve federal funding for biking and walking. But we do it because we know local and state bicycle and pedestrian advocates have incredible power. Cascade Bicycle Club proved that in the latest round of rescissions.

You may remember earlier this month when the Alliance and League of American Bicyclists raised the alarm about states having to send a collective $2.5 billion in unspent federal transportation fund back to Washington, DC. In the past, many state Departments of Transportation have balanced these tough cuts on the backs of bike-ped programs, disproportionately raiding the pots of money that fund bicycle and pedestrian projects. Well, the advocates at Cascade Bicycle Club rallied their members to call for fair and proportional cuts. Clearly, the more than 1,000 e-mails sent to Washington Governor Chris Gregoire and to WSDOT Secretary Paula Hammond made quite an impression.

“Almost immediately after we started the campaign, we heard from WSDOT,” John Mauro wrote on the Cascade blog this week. “It’s hard to say exactly what we accomplished, because we don’t have a precise picture of what kind of send-backs they were planning before they heard from us. But in comparison to their August 2010 rescissions, nonmotorized transportation fared far better.”

For instance, in 2010 WSDOT sent back $16 million from the CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality) program. This round CMAQ only lost $3.2 million. Even better: In 2010, “Enhancements Set-aside” program — one of the largest sources of bicycle funding — lost $13 million. In this round, that funding stream was untouched.

“Aside from protecting this unobligated funding from being returned, we are also glad to have started a positive conversation with WSDOT about their process,” Mauro added. “It can’t be any fun to scramble around and send back $43 million, and we understand that they want to send back less flexible funds so they can be more nimble. I think they’ve heard from you that we don’t want to disproportionately ding nonmotorized transportation. And we’ll hold that line, because there are billions of dollars of needed bike and ped projects — $1.6 billion statewide of which sit unfunded on Local Transportation Improvement Plans (TIPs).”

Way to go, Cascade! Read more about their efforts on their blog.

The logic is like that old proverb. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he’ll eat forever.

The folks at the Cascade Bicycle Club tweaked that idea with a cycling perspective. Organize a ride and a Seattle resident may pedal for a day; give that resident her own wheels and she’ll commute forever.

Now in its second year, the Green Bike Program aims to do just that — get car commuters to replace auto trips with bicycle travel. And it’s reeling in results. Turns out, getting people to give up their beloved automobiles can be as easy as baiting the hook with equipment and education.

Back in May, Cascade recruited a few newbie cyclists for the Green Bike initiative, providing willing participants with bicycles, locks and helmets. Next, they schooled the amateur commuters on road safety and basic mechanics. Then, they extended a challenge: Commute on two wheels for 50 percent of your travel and that shiny new bicycle is yours to keep.

Sound like wishful thinking? Not by a long shot. An impressive 86 percent of participants are now proud owners of Green Bikes.

“This is an incredible result,” Chuck Ayers, executive director of the Cascade Bicycle Club, said in a statement. “In only three months, we’ve helped more than 30 people new to bike commuting become comfortable, confident, and competent cyclists. I don’t know of many other programs that can boast an 86 percent success rate.”

Among those new cyclists is Alex Fuentes, a teacher at Odyssey High School who converted her 25-mile commute from automobile to open-air. Last week, she joined other green bicyclists at a celebration led by Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen. The look on her face (pictured) says it all: Fuentes is hooked. “I love riding my bike to work,” she said, “and plan to keep it up the rest of my life.”

  Click here to read more about the Green Bike program.