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Entries tagged: Guide For Reviewing Public Road Design And Bicycling Accommodations

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.