This overview of the 2011 National Bike Summit was presented to the GEARs Board last night (April 4th) by Price Armstrong who was partly funded by GEARs to attend this years summit. The report outlines some of what Price learned at the summit with ideas for future participation and is followed by a slideshow presentation:
The National Bike Summit is an annual event held in Washington, DC organized by the League of American Bicyclists. Based on the experience of the 2011 Summit, this report focuses on contacts made, information gathered, and lessons learned for the future participation of advocates from the Southern Willamette Valley. Based on that experience, I would highly recommend that the Greater Eugene Area Riders, in addition to point2point Solutions, the cities of Eugene and Springfield, and Lane County all send representatives to the conference if possible.
The Summit
The main purpose of the National Bike Summit is to bring bike advocates from around the nation to the capital for the purposes of communicating to elected federal officials the importance of bicycle programs, infrastructure, and funding. A secondary goal is to share information and stories between bike advocates from the various communities across the country. Finally, the Summit offers the opportunity to network not just with federal employees and elected officials, but also make connections to these community representatives from around America, creating a network of interested citizens and professionals working together to improve the country’s bicycle environment.
The 2011 Summit came at a particularly important time for bicycle advocacy, as the federal transportation authorization will likely be renewed sometime within the next year. SAFETEA-LU, the most recent authorization, allocated around $250 billion over five years to surface transportation projects and programs around the country, most notably including Safe Routes to School and Transportation Enhancements. In congressional District 4 (which includes Lane County), over $14,000,000 in federal funding has been devoted to active transportation projects between 2008 and 2011 alone. The next authorization will determine whether that amount of money will increase, decrease, or remain constant.
In order to maintain or expand bicycle funding, the main message from the organizers of the Summit was to emphasize the economic development aspect of bike spending. Examples of this abound, but one is Oakridge, Oregon. This historic logging town essentially went bankrupt as a result of the restrictions put on harvesting timber throughout the 1980s and 1990s. However, today it has a strong recreational economy centered largely on mountain biking. This is certainly not to mean that biking has fully replaced logging, but the road to recovery is long and winding, and this is definitely a big leap down that road.
The People
The Summit had almost 800 attendees from around the country, and Oregon alone had a delegation of over 40 people from across the state. While Portland was the most heavily represented, there were also
representatives from Lane County, the Columbia Gorge, Bend, and even John Day in eastern Oregon. Ted Sweeney, the UO Bike Program Coordinator, and I were the only representatives from Eugene/Springfield, and the first representatives from the area in several years, even though it is the second largest metropolitan area in the state.
In addition to the Oregon delegation, every state except for North Dakota was represented at the Summit. This provided ample opportunity to network with advocates from around the country, including the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, and the Washington- Area Bicyclist Alliance. What struck me most was that around the country, cities of all sizes are dealing with issues that Eugene/Springfield has largely dealt with; indeed, Oregon is the national leader for bike/ped infrastructure, programs and funding. Washington, DC is an example of a city that, despite heavy traffic congestion, is still engineered toward car-friendly streets. Wide rights of way, high speed limits and few pedestrian crossings or bike facilities are the norm. This stands in striking contrast to the multiple bike boulevards and lanes that are virtually omnipresent in our area. The take-away from this is that Oregon has much to teach the rest of the country.
The business cards really flew (see appendix A for a full listing of the business cards I collected), and what was so striking to me was the way in which all those at the summit really welcomed and embraced new faces. I myself am relatively young and without a lot of experience; yet, the seasoned Summit “veterans” were eager to find out where I was from, what organization I was with, and what ideas I might have for bike advocacy. This demonstrated to me not only the value personally of attending the Summit, but also the value that other attendees perceived from new participation. The openness and accessibility of the Summit really left a lasting impression.
The Strategies
There were myriad strategies described by panelists and attendees around the country to promote bicycling.
As mentioned above, right now the strongest argument for anything, including biking, is economic benefit. If you can make the case that it is financially responsible to invest in bike programs and infrastructure, then it is more likely to get heard. Indeed, when one compares the cost of bike facilities to car lanes (which can run up to $30 million per mile in urban areas), bikes are “a cheap date.” As one panelist put it, the transportation bill is a national health care bill. Those who are physically active are much less likely to have health problems associated with obesity, such as circulatory system problems or diabetes. The way we fund and build our transportation infrastructure will determine in large part whether people walk 10 feet to their driveway or a mile to a transit stop, or if they are willing to bike a five-mile commute. Stories are powerful when talking to policymakers and citizens alike. Numbers and data are good, but made even more compelling when attached to a face. The story of Sweetpea Bicycles, for example, is where a boutique frame builder in Portland had so many orders for his bikes that he had to contract out frame building to the bike fabrication firm Co-Motion in Eugene, bringing jobs into our economically depressed region. When you combine this with the fact that bikes directly support over 500 jobs and nearly $30 million in annual revenue in the Eugene/Springfield area, you create a very powerful argument for policymakers. Carlos Babcock of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition pointed out to me that one major problem when trying to run a largely-volunteer based bike non-profit is that there are more zealous or hard-line people who might not deliver exactly the message you would want. He presented an interesting take on that; if you let the extreme message be delivered first, then that opens the opportunity to be the moderate voice of reason when advocating for bikes.
Finally, the League of American Bicyclists’ head lobbyist showed survey results which showed that the most important thing a constituent can do when advocating is an in-person meeting with the elected official. This underscores the importance of having feet on the ground and faces in the office of our elected representatives in Washington, DC.
Suggestions for Future Summits
Given that this was the first Summit I ever attended, I knew that the learning curve would be steep. Below are listed some suggestions for the next person who attends the National Bike Summit.
1. GEARs materials – It would have been incredibly helpful if I had some number of GEARs business cards to hand out, not to mention buttons, t-shirts, and other free items with the GEARs brand on it. There were a lot of freebies being given out by other organizations, and so this would have been a good way to give more legitimacy and name recognition to the organization.
2. Start early – The Summit was in early March, and the next attendee will need to begin work on gathering personal stories and information to relate to the congresspersons by early January. The Bicycle Transportation Alliance is good about giving support for what information needs to be gathered, but the more time you have, the better.
3. Raising money – It took me about two months to put together the funding for this trip, and I was extremely lucky in soliciting state money. However, in the future it may be more of an obstacle.
4. The congressional bike ride – Though it was not on the draft Summit schedule, the Congressional Bike Ride was the Friday morning at the end of the Summit. I had already booked my plane ticket and so could not attend, but it would have been a good opportunity to further network with hill staffers and advocates.
Closing Thoughts
The National Bike Summit was well worth the time and energy it took to attend. The level of access to top officials in the federal government, not to mention Oregon congresspersons, was impressive. Despite the fact that I am relatively young, the environment was very accepting and open to people of all kinds, and receptive to hearing ideas and finding out more information about GEARs. Even just coordinating with the BTA and other advocates around the state, the name of GEARs gained significant recognition.
All around the state, there was apparent hope and expectation that representatives from the area will attend future summits. Being able to communicate the values of Peter DeFazio’s major constituents,
those in Eugene/Springfield, was incredibly important given his senior position on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. As noted above, those in-person meetings are incredibly important to be able to let him know that we value biking, and as our elected representative we want him to fight for it. Oregon is a national leader, but could easily fall behind without continued hard work.
