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Entries tagged: Cycling

The very first issue of the Bike Cleveland News thanked the more than 125 participants who attended a two-day Strategic Planning Summit in September: “As a participant you did something mighty. You gave birth to an organization that will be a force for positive change for cycling in our region.”

The strategic planning process, facilitated by the Alliance, kicked off in December 2010, when 10 people gathered together as a Leadership Team for the project. The goal: create the organization and design a strategic planning summit that would engage and strengthen the Greater Cleveland cycling community.

The Leadership Team intentionally included participants from the Cleveland YMCA and the Earth Day Coalition, two planners (county and city), and a representative from the business community. They were joined by three leaders from the cycling community, and two staff from Slavic Village, a community development corporation in Cleveland committed to improving cycling. Slavic Village had conducted interviews with members of the Cleveland cycling community, and the team used that to design a solid plan to engage the whole community in further strategic planning, to increase the buy-in and support for the new organization.

The Alliance facilitated a series of meetings, guiding the team through securing a design team, which came together in March to provide feedback on a rough draft strategy, input on the summit, and more than 800 suggested participants who might have interest in participating in the two-day event. After the March meeting, various committees met to execute planning items for the summit, and the Leadership Team worked to secure a solid board to lead the organization, file important documents to start the organization, and even explore staffing models that the organization could consider. The organization also held other events along the way, such as a naming ceremony for the community to help select a name for the organization, as well as a design team meeting to give feedback on strategy and event development.

Finally, September 10 arrived and more than 120 people showed up to Windows on the River, a perfectly designed facility to build a common desire within the group, develop a compelling vision for how they saw the organization serving its stakeholders, and create a clear action plan.

I’ve been facilitating groups through this process for 10 years, and was still amazed at the way the Leadership Team was able to secure the funding to hold their summit and create a summit that empowered the community to come together and create a strong organization that can really move itself to the next level. The interaction among members of the cycling community was fantastic and it was great to see creative ideas, building relationships, and the transition of leadership to a strong and committed board to implement the strategy.

Since September, the organization has already:

• Officially endorsed the Bike Cleveland Mission, Vision, Principles, Goals and the organization’s action plan as developed by the Bike Cleveland Summit participants;
• Set advocacy priorities for the coming year, including work making the West Shoreway bike-friendly;
• Created a website that is becoming the hub for cycling in Greater Cleveland: BikeCleveland.org;
• And, set the foundation for making Bike Cleveland an integral part of improving Northeast Ohio.

The organization has also secured foundation support. They were awarded $10,000 from the YMCA of Greater Cleveland that is a part of a larger grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health” program. These funds will be used in Bike Cleveland’s advocacy efforts on behalf of “necessity cyclists.” In addition, Bike Cleveland was also awarded a $60,000 start-up grant for advocacy and organizing efforts from The George Gund Foundation, to “make Cleveland a more bike-friendly city.”

Chris Alvarado, Bike Cleveland Board President, writes “The Bike Cleveland Summit was a remarkable opportunity to bring together over 120 Clevelanders who are not only passionate about cycling, but who have a deep and abiding love of Cleveland and wish to express that through the establishment of our new advocacy organization. We believe that Bike Cleveland is becoming a force that not only advocates for cyclists, but does so with a heartfelt devotion to the assets that make Northeast Ohio special: the incredible diversity of Clevelanders, our natural assets of rivers, Lake Erie, and greenspaces, our engaging built environment, and our culture of hard work, grass-roots efforts, and a commitment to making Cleveland great. Jeremy has been absolutely instrumental in bringing us together and focusing our efforts towards creating Bike Cleveland. Already, we have attracted over $70,000 in funds (including grants from The George Gund Foundation and YMCA of Greater Cleveland), tens of thousands of volunteer hours, and the attention of cyclists and change-agents throughout Northeast Ohio. We are looking forward to building our relationship with the Alliance for Biking & Walking and with our sister organizations near and far.

Bike Cleveland is just one of the organizations that have received Strategic Planning Assistance from the Alliance. Strategic Planning Summits range from big to small, depending on the approach the organization wants to take with the process. Reflects Marie Kittredge, Executive Director of Slavic Village (who hired the Alliance for this project), “I was equally impressed with the process you led us through—truly transformational and powerful, a huge win for Cleveland and cycling”.

The Alliance would like to recognize the commitment and direct support of the Bike Cleveland project from Slavic Village Development, Cleveland YMCA, The George Gund Foundation, and, of course, the leadership team and design team of the project. Thank you for the opportunity to work with such a talented group of advocates.

The Alliance would also like to thank New Belgium Brewing Company for its overall commitment to helping the Alliance make more strategic planning assistance and other coaching like the process used in Cleveland more affordable to Alliance member organizations. Next month, we highlight the success of the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, a project supported directly by New Belgium.

Contact Jeremy at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more details, and help your organization take its work to the next level.

Transportation Alternatives has released its annual estimate of how many New Yorkers ride bicycles daily. There are now 236,000 daily cyclists in the five boroughs. The figure represents a 28% increase over the previous year, continuing recent double-digit growth trends.  More than 200 miles of bike lanes have been installed in New York City over the past three years. These bike lanes are helping to fuel the dramatic growth in cycling across the city. For more information, visit Transportation Alternatives.

Thanks to Claire Gron for contributing this member news.

Toronto Cyclists Union recently announced that a new grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation will give their Newcomers Cycling Project a boost. Recently awarded a 2010 Alliance Advocacy Award for innovation, the project is part of a joint effort with CultureLink Settlement Services to promote cycling amongst newcomer communities. The partnership is entering into the second phase of the outreach campaign in 2010 and the new grant will fund a full time coordinator to serve the campaign and expand cycling outreach initiatives amongst newcomers to Toronto.

According to Toronto Cyclists Union, “During this year’s Bike Month, the partnership hopes to release the Toronto Cyclists Handbook in 15 languages, as per our ‘From back home to our new home’ poster series, and to distribute the handbook to newcomer communities thanks also to generous support from the Toronto Community Foundation. Through interactive workshops, the coordinator will start to mobilize cyclists from newcomer communities to actively engage in a grass-roots effort to make our city more bike-friendly.”

Kristin Schwartz takes up this new and exciting challenge as the new Cycling Outreach Coordinator. Kristin can be reached at cycling@culturelink.net.

For more information on Toronto Cyclists Union visit http://www.bikeunion.to.

Consider Biking has convened a Cycling Corporate Caucus representing more than twenty of Columbus’ largest employers. Since the formation of the caucus in 2009, Consider Biking has held meetings, and in partnership with Leadership Columbus, developed a “Two-Wheel Toolkit”. Consider Biking introduced the toolkit in a meeting with many of Columbus’ largest organizations’ CEOs, presenting information on encouraging employees to bicycle more and providing targeted resources for each specific audience within a business.

ConsiderBiking activated the caucus in late December in order to speak in unified support of a funding request on behalf of the city of Columbus to implement the Columbus Bike Plan. The caucus drafted a “case for support” that demonstrated why investment in bicycling is good for Columbus’ community’s health and economic efforts, but also for a business’s bottom line.

Consider Biking states “We had over 20 of our community’s most prominent business leaders & CEOs, sign our letter of support. No doubt - our business leaders “get it” We believe major organizations and workforces have the ability to affect behavior change quickly.  That’s why we’re placing a significant effort on our worksite intervention Mode Shift program. (Bike to Work and Bike Away from Work).”

For more information about the “Two Wheel Toolkit” and to learn more about how the caucus is affecting its community, visit http://www.considerbiking.org/activities/consulting/

In August of this year Portland, Oregon’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) asked its members and the public for feedback to help them plan for bike advocacy and organizational growth in the future. Over 2,000 people responded to the survey providing the BTA with data on a wide range of advocacy and education topics, bicyclists’ perceptions, and organizational direction.

According to the BTA, some of the findings include:

• “As cycling experience levels increase, so do the number and percentage of trips that occur by bicycle. Those extra bike trips are mostly replacing car trips: automobile usage decreases significantly as bicycling experience increases, but public transit and walking trips remain relatively consistent.
• People who rate themselves “intermediate” or “advanced” cyclists are more likely to ride for commute purposes than beginner cyclists. Conversely, beginners report a higher ratio of recreational and utilitarian trips.
• Virtually everyone responded “bicycling in my community is safer for me personally than for my family.”
• Advocacy work at the local, regional and state levels is more important than national advocacy.”

The BTA survey was developed and analyzed with support from Inavero Institute for Service Research in Portland. For more information and to download the pdf with complete survey results, visit http://www.bta4bikes.org/btablog/2009/11/11/bta-survey-reveals-trends-perceptions-of-bicycling-around-oregon/.