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Entries tagged: Fairfax Advocates For Better Bicycling

To shine the spotlight on the progress and victories of the bicycle and pedestrian advocacy movement, the Alliance for Biking & Walking is pleased to announce its 2011 Advocacy Award winners. Since 2009, the Alliance has solicited public nominations and recognized the individuals, organizations and business leaders who are propelling our People Powered Movement. This year, we honor the following winners from across North America.

Advocacy Organization of the Year- Bike Pittsburgh

On its face, Pittsburgh is a tough place to ride a bicycle. The streets are steep and twisting, and the winters are long and brutal. But bicycle mode share is up and the Steel City is charged up with new enthusiasm for active transportation. Why? Bike Pittsburgh. The advocates at BikePGH have been working hand-in-hand with government officials to get new infrastructure on the ground, partnered with the local companies to get the business community on board and created innovative programs, like Car Free Fridays, that are getting more people on bicycles. But BikePGH excels at more than the nuts and bolts of basic organizing. The members of their small staff are the best kind of ambassadors for the movement: They’re friendly, energetic and welcoming. The work and attitude of BikePGH are making Pittsburgh a mighty appealing place to ride… despite the tough terrain.

Advocate of the Year: Jackie Douglas, LivableStreets (Boston)

This award goes to an individual who has shown tireless commitment to promoting bicycling and walking in his or her community and serves as a role model for other advocates across North America. In 2010, there was no advocate more tireless or worthy of modeling than Jackie Douglas from LivableStreets in Boston. Having risen from the ranks of intern, Douglas never rests as executive director, working to improve conditions for cyclists and pedestrians; increase membership for the organization, bring in grant funding for its programming and act as the face of LivableStreets at near-daily public meetings, volunteer gatherings and public speaking events. For Douglas, working overtime is the norm and that tireless dedication shows in the sophistication and success of LivableStreets campaigns, including a Better Bridges initiative that’s tackling the tough task of getting better provisions for bicyclists and pedestrians on the region’s river crossings. Despite her busy schedule, Douglas is generous with her time, frequently sharing her experiences and insights with other advocacy leaders in Advocacy Advance reports and Alliance Mutual Aid Calls.

Business Advocate of the Year: New Belgium Brewing Company

In 2010 alone, New Belgium Brewing Company raised more than $330,000 for bicycle advocacy organizations with a nationwide event that blew the minds of more than 70,000 residents in 13 different cities. The Tour de Fat festival is an ingenious way to celebrate and elevate bicycle culture - and give back to the bike-ped movement. In each Tour city, New Belgium selected area nonprofits to receive the proceeds from the beer sales, funneling thousands of critical dollars into local advocacy efforts to improve biking and walking. In addition to the Tour de Fat, New Belgium Brewing promotes biking to the brewery for employees and visitors; provides a free bike to each employee upon their first anniversary; provides funding to many bicycling-related non-profits through its Community Grants program and sponsors dozens of bicycling events around the country.

Winning Campaign of the Year: Michigan Complete Streets

At the start of 2010, Michigan had just one local complete streets ordinance. By the end of the year, there were more than 20 communities with complete streets policies and the Governor had signed a new statewide complete streets law. That incredible and rapid transformation was sparked and spurred by advocates from the League of Michigan Bicyclists, who helped to create a powerful Michigan Complete Streets Coalition with more than 100 diverse member organizations. That powerful, unified voice led to the passage of a statewide complete streets bill, the adoption of policies in a number of communities and a new priority within the state Department of Transportation to plan streets that safely accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians. Thanks in large part to this Winning Campaign, the state that spent the last century focused on all things automotive is now leading the way in the Great Lakes region.

Best Practices Award: Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition

The Best Practices Award goes to an organization that serves as a model for other bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations. In 2010, countless individuals and a number of advocacy organizations drew information and inspiration from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. The LACBC’s City of Lights initiative elevated the conversation about “invisible cyclists” - men and women who ride bicycles but whose voices aren’t heard and needs aren’t acknowledged because of language or economic barriers. Through thoughtful outreach and, more importantly, true collaboration, the LACBC is changing the dialogue among city officials about urban planning, bringing new cyclists into the movement and, expanding the scope of the bike-ped movement to address critical issues of social and economic justice.

Susie Stephens Joyful Enthusiasm Award: Stephanie Routh, Willamette Pedestrian Coalition

The Susie Stephens Joyful Enthusiasm Award commemorates Alliance co-founder, Susie Stephens, commemorating her passion for biking and walking as fun and economical means of transportation and her commitment to creating a safe environment for all street users. This year we honor Stephanie Routh, executive director of the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition. In just two years, Routh has transformed the group from struggling-to-be-noticed to well-networked, in the news, and in demand for participation in regional active transportation forums. Stephanie has embraced this role with great enthusiasm, increasing the membership and volunteer base, building bridges to diverse communities and partnering with other active transportation organizations.

Innovation Award: Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling

The Innovation Award goes to an organization that’s pioneering or inventing new ways to promote biking and walking. In 2010, the Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling released a groundbreaking new resource: Guide to Reviewing Public Road Design and Bicycling Accommodations for Virginia Bicycling Advocates. The 28-page booklet simplifies and streamlines the confusing road design process with easy-to-follow flow charts, handy check lists and explanations that make sense to folks who don’t have a masters degree in urban planning. Almost immediately, FABB’s innovative guide was in high demand. Over the past six months, it has been widely distributed, well received by both advocates and transportation officials, and now FABB advocates are working on a template that other organizations can use to tailor the guide for their specific states and transportation jurisdictions.

Last week, on the very same morning, we celebrated the past, present and future of the Advocacy Advance initiative.

When I arrived at the Patrick Henry Library on Thursday morning, I was still putting the finishing touches on the Alliance’s press release announcing SRAM’s continued support (to the tune of $1.2 million) of Advocacy Advance — a partnership between the Alliance and the League of American Bicyclists.

But the reason for my Virginia field trip was to congratulate the recipients of one of the very first Advocacy Advance Grants. Last year, the Alliance awarded the Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling a $9,600 grant to create a new handbook on the complex subject of road design. The folks at FABB took the challenge and knocked it out of the park.

A perfect example of the intent of Advocacy Advance, the Guide for Reviewing Public Road Design and Bicycling Accommodations is simple to read, nice to look at and absolutely essential to any advocate working for better bicycling infrastructure. It demystifies the complicated process and gives folks who don’t have an engineering degree the knowledge they need to get engaged in the process that shapes their streets.

For the public launch of the guide, a diverse group of advocates and officials braved a downpour to celebrate. Bruce Wright and Fionnuala Quinn (pictured above), the two FABB advocates who played the lead role in the creation of the guide, had plenty of people to thank, from members of their own organization to transportation planners at the county and state level. But every one of the speakers turned the tables and praised Wright and Quinn for compiling such a valuable resource for bike advocates across the country.

Shane Farthing, the executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, said his copy of the guide is already dog-eared and well-worn. In fact, he said, it was one of the first things he read when he took the top job at WABA. But it’s not just advocates who are pouring over its contents. Doug Miller, from the Virginia Department of Transportation, said he took a stack of guides to a VDOT district meeting and it made quite the impression on his colleagues, too.

Andy Clarke, president of the League, noted that FABB, a small volunteer group, had to compete against the proposals of numerous big-city organizations with sizable staffs and budgets to receive the Advocacy Advance Grant. But the Guide to Road Design, Clarke said, has had perhaps the biggest impact of any grant awarded thus far. “The stuff that makes life better for bicyclists is done at the local level,” he said. “And this will be really useful.”

In fact, the guide is proving so useful — and in-demand — that FABB is working on a template that would allow your organization to use the information and structure of the guide and simply tweak some of the contents to fit your city, state or region.

In the meantime, if you haven’t read it yet, click here to download the guide from our Resource Library. For pictures of the event, check out the Alliance Flickr page.

Cyclists understand public streets more intimately than most motorists. On our regular routes, we know the precise location of every pothole and potentially wheel-swallowing sewer grate. We learn how traffic flows and explore streets that many automobiles never see.

But, when it comes to road design, many bike commuters and recreational riders are tossed into utterly unknown territory.

Advocates want to see bicycle facilities included in local transportation projects, but the agency jargon and hyper-detailed engineering schematics can be a foreign language.

Virginia advocates have come up with a handy road map that demystifies the bureaucratic maze.

In 2009, the Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling — a working group of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association — received one of the very first Advocacy Advance Grants from the Alliance. In the span of a single year, the FABB turned that $9,600 award into a “Guide for Reviewing Public Road Design and Bicycling Accommodations for Virginia Bicycling Advocates.”

The 28-page resource simplifies and streamlines the confusing road design process with easy-to-follow flow charts, handy check lists and explanations that make sense to folks who don’t have a masters degree in urban planning. In a neatly designed format, FABB lays out the anatomy of road projects, from initial planning to final inspection, and provides specific advice for how bicycle advocates can get involved.

“As far as we know, no one has compiled material like this before,” said Fionnuala Quinn, the primary author of the guide, in the group’s press release last week. “I wanted to use my background in civil engineering to help demystify the road design process and to help people take advantage of occasions to incorporate bike facilities whenever roads projects are being designed. A crucial point to remember is that the earlier you provide input to the road design, the better your chances of having an effect on the final design.”

Chanda Causer, Alliance Grants Manager, said she was impressed with the content and quality of the guide, which represents an exciting, tangible product of the Advocacy Advance program. Although the agency details are specific to Virginia, the ideas and strategies in the guide are applicable to advocates across the country.

Download a copy from the Alliance Resource Library or the FABB website.

On November 5, the Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling (FABB) (Fairfax County, VA) held a workshop in Sterling, VA to test materials they developed for a new engineering for advocates handbook.  According to FABB, “A small but interested audience showed up to learn how they could better comment to public officials on the design of bicycling facilities during the engineering process.  One of the things that we found was that there seemed to be demand from new advocates to learn about the very basic steps in accessing the process so we have gone back to add additional diagrams and explanations to the handbook to better address this need.”

The engineering for advocates handbook is a project funded by an Alliance for Biking & Walking Advocacy Advance Grant. For more information about this project, please visit http://www.fabb-bikes.org/index.html

http://www.fabb-bikes.org/resources.html