The National Bike Summit in Washington DC begins this evening. I will be attending as MTGA’s Detroit Greenways Coordinator, along with Kelli Kavanaugh from the Wheelhouse Detroit, Mike Reuter from American Cycle and Fitness, John Waterman from PEAC, and others.

I hope to do some live blogging from the event, but that’s going to be a challenge given the very busy schedule.

I will provide one teaser. Yesterday I received the following invitation from Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists, the group organizing this summit.

I would be honored if you would join special National Bike Summit guests for Lunch on Wednesday, March 10. Please take your seat at the ENVIRONMENT table near the podium.

All I can say at this point is its some more good news for biking in Detroit.

– Todd Scott

Liz from Continental Bikes asked the question “What legislation did you discuss with the representatives?”

In looking over the previous entries, it seems we never really answered that question. So here’s the list.

Complete Streets

Actually this is one topic we did cover fairly well.

Active Transportation 2010

In the current federal transportation bill, four U.S. cities received $25 million each to get more people chosing biking and walking over driving.?

The hope is to expand that pilot program to 50 cities in the next transportation bill due later this year. Three Michigan cities have applied for this program: Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Detroit. We encouraged our legislators to include these Michigan cities in the future transportation bill.

Detroit’s Active Transportation proposal was briefly discussed earlier.

Transportation Enhancements

The current transportation bill (and recent stimulus package) funds Transportation Enhancements which is largely responsible for funding biking facilities and trails. We want to see this program continued and increased the next transportation budget.

This was an easy program to talk about since there many great examples of how this funding has been used within each congressional district.

Recreational Trail Program

This program captures a portion of the fuel tax used by off-road vehicles (e.g. snowmobiles) and directs to state trails, including non-motorized trails. We advocated for increased funding for this program.

Multi-Modal Commuter Credit

This legislation fixes the hastily passed bike commuter bill, which is another topic we previously discussed briefly.

Clean TEA

This legislation would take some of the funds generated through a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas program to pay for alternative transportation infrastructure, including biking and walking. Whether or not the greenhouse gas legislation makes it to the President’s desk remains to be seen, but if it does, we want to make sure it helps promote more non-polluting transportation choices.

There’s additional information on Clean TEA?at StreetsBlog.

John from Pedestrians.org recently posted a comment about videos from the National Bike Summit. They really deserve a bit more visibility.

And this probably is the next best thing to being there.

Perhaps the best is of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood:

What a striking improvement over the former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters who tried re-defining “transportation” and “infrastructure” to exclude biking and walking.

Other videos from the Summit include:

• US Representative Earl Blumenauer
• US Representative Daniel Lipinski
• US Representative Doris Matsui (Complete Streets)

You’ll also want to check out this video from the Iowa Bicycle Coalition. Blumenauer’s breakfast speech beginning at :40 seconds captures a great moment from this event. Congressman Tom Petri of Wisconsin also provides some interesting commentary.

Mike Reuter, Todd Scott, Cullen Watkins

Here’s additional information from the National Bike Summit.

Bicycle Respect and Recognition

We reported earlier that Congressman Oberstar said, We need to make bicyclists a standard transportation mode by law.

BikePortland.org published more information on Oberstar’s initiative last week:

Today at the National Bike Summit in Washington D.C., Oberstar will meet with the country’s top bike lawyers to discuss the potential of a new legislative initiative to draft the country’s first piece of legal policy that would directly relate to the respect and recognition of bicycles as users of our roadways.

Portland bike lawyer Ray Thomas… describes the initiative as a way to create a federal law to ensure equitable treatment of people on bicycles who are involved in crashes. Too often, he says, drivers do not receive serious charges in collision cases. The way the system is set up now, police officers and prosecutors (for a variety of reasons) will often not even attempt to press serious charges against motorists.

Oberstar wants to fix the system so there’s a better chance that justice will be done.

A Plan for Circuit City Stores

One of the most interesting ideas I heard at the Summit was at an IMBA advocacy session. Sitting next to IMBA trail guru Rich Edwards, I began discussing potential indoor mountain bike facilities in Detroit.

Rich mentioned another more suburban opportunity.

567 Circuit City stores have closed around the U.S. These stores are large, well-lit, have concrete floors, heat, water, and very few uses — especially in this market.

One alternative idea is to make them into indoor dirt parks.

John Burke (right) holds a Detroit Gets Green pin

Trek Ride in Detroit

I attended the Summit with Mike Reuter and Cullen Watkins from American Cycle and Fitness. They invited me to a Trek dealer event at the Summit hosted by President John Burke.

After giving John a brief overview of what we’re achieving in Detroit, he offered to come to town this spring for an urban tour.

Detroit is 140 square miles with zero bike shops stocking new bikes on their floor.

Cyclists are Important Users

Ray LaHood, the Department of Transportation Secretary has a blog where he recently left comments on attending the National Bike Summit.

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of addressing the National Bike Summit. I was invited to speak as a member of the Obama administration, but I have been a supporter of bicycling for many years and was a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus when I was in Congress.

Still, I don’t think the League of American Bicyclists knew what to expect when they invited me to their summit.

I hope they were pleasantly surprised because I am committed to investing in programs that encourage bikes to coexist with other modes and to safely share our roads and bridges. And there’s strong support in Congress for these goals as well.

Secretary LaHood also noted his excitement for the Active Transportation pilot program. The city of Detroit has submitted a proposal for participating in this program under the next federal transportation bill.

Photo courtesy of Dan Burden

While meeting with members of Congress at the National Bike Summit, Complete Streets legislation was re-introduced. The same bill was introduced in the Senate in 2008 but died in committee.

The basic premise is road agencies should adopt a policy that ensures all transportation modes are reasonably accomodated, includinng biking and walking.

According to bill sponsor Senator Tom Harkin:

When Americans choose to leave their car at home and walk or ride a bike to school or work, they are making a healthy decision. We need to ensure streets, intersections and trails are designed to make them easier to use and maximize their safety.

This legislation will encourage Americans to be more active, while also providing more travel options and cutting down on traffic congestion.

Everyone is encouraged to use this quick online form letter to ask your Senator and Representative to support this legislation.

We typically got receptive but uncommitted support while in Washington DC, perhaps in large part because the bills were only recently introduced.

More details from the Complete Streets web site: (more…)