For the second time, I recently attended the League of American Bicyclists’ annual National Bike Summit. This event draws participants from across the country - from professional advocates to caring citizens and students learning more about transportation policy and planning. This event includes more traditional plenaries and break out sessions, to a Lobby Day on Capitol Hill, and concluded with a day targeted to advocacy professionals, where I was on the Keynote Panel and then presented on Local Motion’s Bike Smart program.

The Summit was packed with sessions, informal learning with colleagues across the country, and yes, even bike rides! I’ll just highlight a few key moments here:  

The opening plenary featured two speakers:  Wes Marshall, author of Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System, followed by Hahrie Han, author and Director of the SNR Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins. Wes described some of the main points of his book, which simply stated is that we need to stop blaming human behavior and start blaming engineering choices, or rather “we [traffic engineers] can do better.”   With her political science background, Hahrie described the mechanics of how social movements work through three main points: 

1. Organize. People with the authority and motivation to make change can do so; but those with only one or the other may not be able to do so. Therefore, you need to work with what you have and shift that to what you want.  This can happen through,
2. Transformation - gathering more people to be part of the movement by specifically inviting them in; and going beyond basic transactional actions to empowering them to be people who want to get more done, which can be strengthened by,
3. Love. Through “radical hospitality” and creating such a strong feeling of belonging, you can get people to believe more in the cause. 

Two fantastic young people from the National Youth Bike Council presented about youth engagement in our movement. Pablo from Chicago noted that we need to help to “...get kids to advocate for themselves and for their communities.”  I came away inspired to think about ways that Local Motion can bring together youth from across Vermont and hopefully send a delegation to a future Youth Bike Summit. 

As for infrastructure, Washington is a great city for walking and biking.  The “Bus & Bike: Friends Forever” mobile workshop featured D-DOT (DC Department of Transportation) staffers leading us on a bike tour around the city, highlighting recent infrastructure improvements, such as the ramped bike lanes at bus stops. These allow people on bikes to continue in the bike lanes, and people riding transit to enter and exit the buses at grade level. There are a variety of examples and the staff said they’ve worked out very well so far.

For we Vermonters, the Lobby Day is different from some other states, in that we have a friendly and welcoming delegation on this topic, and yet their power is

 limited. After the Lobby Day, Christopher Coes, a former undersecretary of transportation in the Biden Administration suggested that we  “...don’t be distracted by the noise”  (such as the internal memo that came out from the Trump administration dictating to kill all projects with the words bike lanes), but rather to “...go out and frickin’ organize”, especially in the case that Congress actually votes to move forward and take back previously awarded discretionary grants. 

And so, let’s come together and organize!  Start by signing the League’s petition, and then show up in your communities and share why safe walking and biking is essential. 

P.S. Shout out to Jen Green Designs for having *just* the right clothing to wear to such an event! Function + Fashion is a win-win.