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Phil Valko puts it simply: “It’s a textbook environmental justice issue.” In St. Louis, some of the poorest residents are saddled with the worst environmental conditions. The sources of toxic waste, dirty air and hazardous conditions are located just outside the doors of predominantly low-income, African American neighborhoods.

The advocates at Trailnet aren’t willing to let that trend go unnoticed — or unchallenged.

Despite the staggering heat, the St. Louis bicycle and pedestrian advocates drew a big crowd for an event to shed light on the issue this weekend. On Saturday, Trailnet hosts its third Environmental Justice Ride and nearly three dozen people came out to witness firsthand the clear and tragic inequality.

Phil Valko, Trailnet’s Active Living Program Manager, says the ride was the organic result of a partnership with the residents in the affected communities.

“We started this ride through a partnership with a social services non-profit called Grace Hill Settlement House,” he explains. “Grace Hill and Trailnet successfully collaborated on an EPA grant application, which included hosting two of these rides. The first ride was attended by approximately 30 people, which included roughly half local residents and roughly half folks from other areas. Many of the riders on that first ride were lower-income residents. The EPA grant allowed us to provide free bike helmets, free bike locks, and $5 coupons to a local cafe or the local food co-op, too. In addition, Trailnet partnered with another local organization, St. Louis BicycleWorks, to provide free loaner bikes.”

Because the first two rides made such an impression, Trailnet decided to host a third without EPA support.

“The ride highlights the high concentration of dirty businesses and the adjacent low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods,” Valko says. “The air quality within the district is among the worst in the entire state. As the rides moves through the area, it becomes clear why: There are waste incinerators; scrap metal yards that shred toxic metals and spew dust; exposed piles of salt that leave trails of saline dust on windy days; radioactive hotspots that the Army Corps and EPA are finally remediating after 60 years of contamination; and more. And all of this is adjacent to one of the poorest areas in the region.

So how can a bike ride change entrenched social injustice? “The goal is to raise awareness in hopes that we can catalyze action,” Valko suggests. “This third ride we are hosting may be the beginning of that. The first two rides grabbed the attention of the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, so we decided to hold a third so that they could do the ride and see the issues first hand. We hope that they’ll pick up the ball and run with it afterwards, but of course, keeping community members engaged in the process.”

Stay up-to-date and read more about Trailnet on their blog.

PHOTO: Riders from the first Environmental Justice Ride in April. (Sam Blue)

At long last, a living memorial now grows in the city of Susie Stephens’ tragic death.

Had she not been struck and killed by a bus while legally crossing the street in St. Louis during a conference in 2002, Susie would have turned 46 years old young this past Saturday, April 16. To commemorate and honor her joyful and lasting legacy, a handful of bike/ped advocates planted a Susie Tree in the shadow of the iconic Gateway Arch.

As many of you know, Susie was not just a co-founder of the Alliance; she was an inspiration to all who knew her. She was a passionate bicyclist and environmentalist, who celebrated life through song and advocacy and, above all, believed that the tough work of making the world a better place is best done with a smile on your face.

After her death, Susie’s mom, Nancy MacKerrow, started the Susie Forest project, planting trees around the globe to memorialize Susie’s indominable spirit. Sinking roots into the city where Susie passed was a long-held hope for MacKerrow and her family. This weekend, a trio of advocacy groups — Trailnet, the Great Rivers Greenway and the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation — helped to make that hope come true.

“This will provide some closure to a terrible incident that happened in St. Louis in 2002,” Brent Hugh, Executive Director of the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation, said in a press release before the event. “Susie was killed just about the time I was getting interested in bicycle and pedestrian issues, and it had a profound impact on me and on our work at the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation.”

On the blog for the Susie Forest project, MacKerrow described the weekend as bittersweet.

“The trip to St Louis was wonderful but hard,” MacKerrow wrote. “It was hard to show Jack and Becky [Susie’s brother and sister] the corner where Susie was killed and hard to walk where she had walked to the Gateway Arch on her last evening. Somehow the cold and windy and rainy weekend seemed appropriate. And yet the flowers and the emerging leaves on the trees also seemed appropriate.

After getting to bed at 2:45 am because of a late plane, it was a groggy threesome that trudged to the arch on Friday morning to watch Susie’s tree go into the ground. The planting crew had to listen to my Susie spiel and look at the pictures and maps, but they were rewarded with tree-kibbles, which they deserved because they planted the Bur Oak correctly.

On Saturday the people from Great Rivers Greenway and Trailnet who made this planting possible came to dedicate this tree to Susie and to wish her happy birthday. None of them knew her, but had heard wonderful things about her. It was very emotional to hear them speak about her influence. We wrote tree-grams, which we hung temporarily in the tree for picture-taking because they are not allowed in national parks. They will be hung in Spokane’s mystery birthday tree when I find it. Someone suggested that I put my tree-gram under the mulch we shoveled. I like that idea because the disintegrating paper will feed the roots and send my thoughts through the entire tree. Perhaps I will do this for every anniversary tree I plant.

I don’t know how to thank the wonderful, welcoming people of Missouri for making this dream of mine come true.”

Read more about the Susie Forest Project here. 

Blog contributed by Alliance intern, Camie Rodan

The Alliance would like to welcome two organizations to our membership: Trailnet and the North Natomas Transportation Management Association.

Located in St. Louis, Trailnet’s mission is to lead in fostering healthy, active and vibrant communities through policy, planning and programming that encourage cycling and walking. The 22-year-old organization initially served as a catalyst for developing trails and greenways and now delivers a variety of programs and services to local communities.

In recent news, Trailnet provided scholarships to take a diverse contingent of thirty people to Pro Walk Pro Bike in Chattanooga last September with hopes of setting the stage to host the conference in St. Louis in the near future. Trailnet also provided technical assistance resulting in the passage of Complete Streets policies in at least three of their communities, including the City of St. Louis.

Next up, Trailnet will play a key role in the HUD/DOT/EPA Sustainable Communities grant award to St. Louis, the second largest award in the country. Services to be provided include: Healthy, Active and Vibrant Communities, nationally recognized as an emerging intervention; the TravelGreen program which works with businesses and communities to create a mode shift away from the single passenger car; the Safe Routes to School program; and the Bikeable/Walkable Master Planning process which has just been completed in their 20th community.

The North Natomas Transportation Management Association (NNTMA) of Sacramento, California, fosters transportation behaviors that benefit the community through advocacy, programs, education, and services.

NNTMA offers many exciting programs and services to the North Natomas community. Most notable is their Mobile Bicycle Service Station, a unique custom-built bicycle. Used at community, school, and business events to perform diagnosis, basic bike maintenance, and repair for community members, the bicycle arrived last August and has already repaired 183 bikes. The organization also encourages kids of the North Natomas schools to walk and bike to school; on average, 1,050 kids walk or bike to school weekly! Lastly, their Flyer Shuttle is offered as a highly utilized commuter service to downtown on weekdays.

Be sure to keep up with NNTMA here and Trailnet here.

The complete streets movement kicked off summer in sizzling fashion, with a handful of policies passing in places you might not imagine.

In recent weeks, measures to make roadways safe and accessible for all users, from cyclists to pedestrians to transit riders, won approval all over the map. A number of those victories are outlined in the latest newsletter from the National Complete Streets Coalition this week.

-  In Pascagoula, Mississippi, the city council passed a resolution on May 18 that “calls for the inclusion of bicycle and pedestrian ways in new construction and reconstruction projects undertaken by the city.” The resolution made Pascagoula the third city in the state to adopt complete streets language.

- The hard work of Alliance member Active Transportation Alliance paid off when the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission became the third, and largest, metropolitan planning organization in the state to adopt a complete streets policy on May 20.

- Also spurred by local advocates, Edmonton captured the distinction of being the first city in the state of Oklahoma to officially embrace complete streets. On May 24, the city council unanimously approved a resolution to provide accommodation for all users on the city’s roadways in a “balanced, responsible, and equitable way.”

- On May 25, the planning commission in Midland, Michigan, unanimously approved a complete streets policy that specifically calls for attention to safe, accessible intersection design and will apply to any new or reconstructed streets.

- In the Show-Me State, residents of St. Louis will be seeing better access for cyclists and pedestrians after the city council passed a complete streets policy on June 11. Chalk that up to the determined efforts of Trailnet, a group of advocates who pressed for the measure for several years.

- Just last week, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed a bill that added complete streets language to state statute. The Colorado Department of Transportation already had an internal policy of “accommodating bicycle and pedestrian use of the highways in a safe and reliable manner for all highway users.” But the new measure puts that policy into law.

- And finally, a group of advocates in Alaska kicked off a new complete streets campaign in the city of Spenard by drumming up more than 100 supporters on Facebook in advance of their first meeting with city officials last week.

For more information about the movement, visit the National Complete Streets Coalition.