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Entries tagged: East Bay Bicycle Coalition

The East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC) is meeting the funding opportunity of a generation with the assistance of an Advocacy Advance Rapid Response Grant.

EBBC’s “One Billion for Bikes: Yes on the Alameda County Transportation Sales Tax Reauthorization” campaign targets a 30-year, $7.8 billion regional transportation plan. As part of the Citizens Advisory Working Group, EBBC helped develop the Expenditure Plan for the Reauthorization, galvanize the Community Vision Platform stakeholder group, and influence elected officials to include $883 million dollars – 11.34% of all funds – for bike/ped projects in the plan.

East Bay advocates have until November to work with their broad coalition of supporters to gain two-thirds voter approval for this ballot measure. They will leverage the $3,000 Rapid Response grant and use funds for voter outreach, publicity, and strengthening collaboration opportunities.

This campaign win would transform transportation in Alameda County and be a major win for the movement. This measure represents 75% of ALL transportation funding in the County over the next 30 years and for the first time in history, a transportation sales tax in California would allocate more money for bike/ped than for highway projects. It would also require all projects in the measure to comply with the County’s new Complete Streets Policy.

Advocacy Advance is a partnership between the Alliance for Biking & Walking and the League of American Bicyclists with the goal to double federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs and projects by supporting advocacy efforts and agency collaboration at the state and local levels. Our Rapid Response grants can be used to fund campaigns that involve all types of public funding: federal, state, regional and city.

Thanks to the support of SRAM Cycling Fund, Advocacy Advance has $29,000 remaining to fund organizations met with urgent and unexpected opportunities to win, increase, or preserve funding for biking and walking. There is no application deadline for these rolling grants and accepted proposals will be funded within one month.

Rapid Response grants have funded the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin’s successful campaign to restore $2 million of the state’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Facilities Program, the BTA’s bike sharing success in Portland, and Active Living LaCrescent’s bridge accommodations campaign.

As public works employees put paint to pavement on Friday, advocates and officials celebrated Oakland’s most successful year yet in biking and walking infrastructure.

Leaders from the East Bay Bicycle Coalition and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland joined Mayor Jean Quan to mark the installation of more than 18 miles of bike lanes and nearly 300 bike parking spots in 2011 alone.

Though it didn’t hit the organizations’ target of 30 miles by the end of 2011, the uptick in infrastructure has been a major victory for the Oakland Bikeways Campaign, a joint effort of the EEBC and WOBO. And city officials promised the next wave of sharrows and bike lanes should be on the ground by mid-2012.

“The bike lanes installed this year go a long way to fulfilling WOBO’s goal of connecting Oakland’s neighborhoods with safe, reliable and affordable transportation options,” Gloria Bruce, chair of the board at WOBO, said at the press conference. “Bicycling is fun, it’s healthy, and people want to do it. Despite the budget and other challenges, the City is moving forward quickly to build the network and we applaud them for that. Safe biking makes a big difference in people’s lives.”

“It’s not just putting down more miles, but miles that connect, and create a safe, continuous network that really gets you where you need to go and doesn’t drop you along the way,” Renee Rivera, executive director of EEBC, said. “We need to make Oakland a safe place to bike for everyone. We need to pay more attention to the eastern side of town, working with great partners like Cycles of Change and their earn-a-bike program, and bringing more infrastructure to the east side where it’s so badly needed.”

It’s worth noting that staff and volunteers from WOBO and EBBC worked on aspects of the Oakland Bikeways initiative at Alliance Winning Campaigns Training in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Jumpstart your 2012 campaigns by attending one of these workshops in your area. The first is coming up in a matter of weeks: Register now for the Winning Campaigns Training in Tucson, AZ, January 13-15th. The early bird rate — just $75 for Alliance members — ends on Friday.

Read more about last week’s celebration from the EBBC here.

Photo: Renee Rivera (left), executive director of the EBBC, with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. (Credit: Gene Anderson)

It’s been a big week with Bike to Work events and news of legislative victories in a number of states, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busily uploading the latest research and exemplary materials from Alliance member organizations to the Resource Library. Here’s the latest…

• Transportation Alternatives in New York City put together a best practices guide for its innovative Play Streets initiative — which we wrote about on the People Powered Blog back in November.

• Lisa Quinn at Feet First got us psyched about her participation in our upcoming Mutual Aid Call on “Cultivating an Active, Involved Membership” by sharing these great videos about the group’s popular Walk and Talk events.

• We received in the mail (Hint: We love getting mail!) a sleek, eye-catching tip sheet from the East Bay Bicycle Coalition on “5 Easy Ways to Inspire your Employees to Bike To Work,” which the organization used in its mailing to potential business supporters and participants for its Bike to Work Day on May 12.

• Speaking of Bike to Work Day, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition created an artsy postcard promoting its CycleMAYnia events, with a listing of events and link to a one-stop website for all the festivities.

• And another tool for Bike to Work Day: The League of American Bicyclists debuted a quick, convenient online tool that provides bicycle commuting statistics by city, based on data from the 2009 American Community Survey.

• Bike Pittsburgh also launched a fun, new tool — unveiling its Car Free Calculator, which allows cyclists to enter their miles traveled and keep track of their calories burned, dollars saved and carbon dioxide reduced. (p.s. Brought to you, in part, by funding from the Advocacy Advance grant program!)

• Brighid O’Keane, our Advocacy Advance Program Manager, put together a helpful overview that covers funding sources for bike/ped organizations, including grants, government funding, grassroots fundraising, and other resources.

• A (relatively) new study out of Oregon dispels some myths about active transportation in the suburbs.

• And another report finds that traffic crashes are more strongly correlated to the built environment itself rather than random driver error.