“What makes the Cultural Trail unique is that it’s an urban exploration trail, as opposed to an urban escape trail.” / Photo: Indianapolis Cultural Trail

Back in 2007, we highlighted the Indianapolis Cultural Trail project in Bold Moves, Brave Actions, a feature that looked at five cities on five continents making exceptional strides toward becoming more people-friendly places. Indy, we wrote, was “taking what may be the boldest step of any American city towards supporting bicyclists and pedestrians” – an especially exciting thing to see happening in a city that may be most famous for speeding cars.

Now, five years later, the project’s big debut is upon us! Today marks the official grand opening of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. Tomorrow, May 11^th, 2013, the city will host Get Down On It, a massive, downtown-wide effort to stage 75 cultural and entertainment events all along the eight-mile trail route.

We are particularly thrilled to see this project come to fruition, and not just because we had the opportunity to serve as part of the design team. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is a significant project in and of itself, but it gains even more significance when considered in the larger scope of the transformation taking place in this Midwestern state capital. Driven largely by the efforts of the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) over the past decade, Indy is fast becoming a city where Placemaking is a way of life for all citizens. The focus on place, from the top down and the bottom up, is creating a stronger, more vibrant city that doubles down on the local people and places that make it most unique.

To mark the opening of the Cultural Trail, we spoke with Brian Payne, the president and CEO of the CICF and the “zealous nut” who took this amazing project from inspiration to implementation. Congratulations to Brian and everyone at the foundation for this remarkable accomplishment! We’re lucky to have had the pleasure of working with him, and to have seen the potential that a community foundation can have in leading a Placemaking agenda for a city.

We’ve gotten to know many of the projects of his Inspiring Places Initiative through having PPS lead trainings and technical assistance, and are looking forward to starting work shortly on major transformation of Monument Circle (a project that Brian had us help kickstart back in 2008 with a concept paper), the heart of the city and the Cultural Trail.

Why don’t we start this off by having you tell us a bit about what the Indianapolis Cultural Trail is, and how the project came about?

The trail is, from an experiential perspective, a great way to experience all of the great stuff in downtown Indianapolis; it’s also meant to serve as a catalyst for areas that need a catalyst. It is a curbed, buffered, beautifully paved, richly landscaped, and artfully lighted bike and pedestrian pathway that connects to every arts, cultural heritage, sports, and entertainment venue in the urban core. The inspiration for the idea was that it was going to connect to five designated cultural districts downtown in order to make those districts more vibrant and viable by connecting them and giving people a way to get to them that was walkable and bikeable.

Most bike trails are greenways; they’re a way to escape the urban environment and experience nature. The Cultural Trail is actually an urban trail that connects you to everything that’s good in the city center. What makes it unique is that it’s an urban exploration trail, as opposed to an urban escape trail.

One of the big benefits of this project is that it’s changing what we value in Indianapolis. We value beautiful design more since the trail came up; we value bicycle culture; we value sustainability. It’s also a major amenity that the tourism and convention industry is selling and appreciating. It’s a unique experience that makes Indianapolis different or better than it was as a destination. Even in these tough economic times, it’s actually been a catalyst for over a hundred million dollars of new real estate development. People are even moving their offices in order to be on the trail. We’ve had three major nonprofits relocate so that they can connect to the vibrancy this project is generating.

How did you first come to realize the importance of focusing on place? Did you come to Placemaking while you were working on the trail, or was it something you were aware of before?

It’s funny…today, I’m considered a local expert on Placemaking, but it was actually the trail project that taught me what I know. It wasn’t like I was an expert going in. Before I joined CICF as the president and CEO, my career was in managing professional theater companies. A few months after getting hired at the foundation, I was appointed by the mayor at the time, Bart Peterson, to be a commissioner of a new initiative that was originally scheduled to be a five-year, $10 million effort called the Cultural Development Commission. The goal was to establish Indianapolis more as a regional or even national cultural destination city.

We wanted to make our own citizenry connect to our local cultural offerings at a higher deeper level, but also to establish ourselves as a cultural city. My perspective was always: what are we going to offer that’s different, authentic, or unique compared to the cities around us? Why would someone from Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis—or, thinking nationally, Denver, Austin, etc—why would they come to Indianapolis for a cultural experience if we just offer what every city offers: regional theater, symphony, dance company, etc? What was going to make us a destination?

There was this idea presented to us, as new commissioners, that there was a significant opportunity in  the historic retail villages that were either part of downtown or just outside of it. It struck me that, inherently, cultural neighborhoods are unique from other cultural neighborhoods. Focusing on drawing out those neighborhoods’ distinctive qualities seemed like a great way to make the city a unique destination that people would travel to. I tried to raise money for that and got nowhere, because everyone said it wasn’t going to work because these districts were too disconnected: from downtown, and from each other.

So, I thought, let’s connect them! I was a new bicyclist at the time, and was enjoying this rail trail that we had called the Monon Trail. And I thought well we can just connect these downtown districts by creating an urban version of the Monon Trail. Over the years, the idea got more and more ambitious. We could have connected the districts with a five mile trail, but the trail wound up being eight miles. It also became a bigger idea, to connect every significant venue downtown. It’s also now the hub for an entire countywide system of trails. It connects the three other major trails in our multi-county area.

Placemaking has played a major role in transforming Indianapolis / Photo: Indianapolis Cultural Trail

There are a lot of other exciting new public space projects happening in the center of Indianapolis. Can you talk about the role that the trail has played in driving that shift toward the Placemaking idea?

PPS was certainly a big influence, but what’s happened is that, at CICF, the trail became the first of what we now call community leadership initiatives. The foundation used to be a straightforward, donor-advised grant-making organization. But we saw the trail project as a community leadership opportunity, and we started tying other community leadership efforts to what we were learning while working on the trail.

In 2005 (the trail idea started in 2001) we created two community leadership initiatives, one of which was called Inspiring Places, which has played a major role in encouraging people in Indianapolis to care more about Placemaking. We now have this idea that we should be a leading city in America for creating access to art, nature, and beauty every day, for everybody. Today, many of the people who cared about this trail project have been emboldened by the success of the Cultural Trail and Inspiring Places; they feel like they can get their ideas done, too. They feel like it’s worth being an advocate and having big ideas because they know there’s momentum around that now. There is now a huge, huge focus, and a lot of energy and people who are spending their creative time and resources making Indianapolis this great place.

You said something interesting earlier about cultural neighborhoods, and how each one is inherently different from other neighborhoods. How has the trail’s development affected the city’s neighborhoods? Is this energy spreading out from downtown?

It really is. Since we took on the Cultural Trail project we’ve been making sure that we balance that with our neighborhood efforts. We’ve had opportunities through that to work with some great partners. We have a very dynamic LISC in Indianapolis, and they had this idea of doing neighborhood quality of life plans. They’ve gone in and worked from the grassroots, doing neighborhood organizing around this idea of what the neighbors want to do to improve their local quality of life. The trail created major awareness, so among other things these neighborhoods want walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, they want cultural assets, and beautiful green spaces. All of these things reinforce each other.

Another great partner has been Keep Indianapolis Beautiful. They used to just be a neighborhood beautification initiative, but over the past ten years KIB has become a major community development organization. They use their principles of enhancing nature, expanding the tree canopy—the tools that they’ve always used—but they frame it with a much bigger ambition. Now, their work is about transforming neighborhoods and quality of life. They think much more comprehensively about what they do. All of these great organizations, we’re working together from different angles, but we all reinforce each others’ work.

You’ve been talking about connectivity; how do the Cultural Trail and the Inspiring Places initiative improve connectivity in Indianapolis?

At our foundation, we think that connectivity is the theme of the 21^st century. Whether it’s physical connectivity, digital, social, community—we think that a city that creates connectivity at all different levels is going to be a successful city. We’re big believers that innovation and creativity come from the collision and connection between different sectors and different kinds of people. We organize all of our work around connectivity.

The trail project is all about the journey, and the idea that the journey should be as exciting and inspiring as any of the destinations in our city. In fact, the journey itself should be a destination. The journey needs to be a great inspiring thing to do.

“We’re trying to create a city where the journey is as powerful and inspiring as the destinations.” / Photo: Indianapolis Cultural Trail

If we are what we eat, do we also design what we experience? / Photo: Mr. T in DC via Flickr

A few years back, I paid a visit to the headquarters of a state DOT, for the purpose of helping to plan its Safe Routes to School program. As DOTs went, this one had a reputation for being fairly amenable toward pedestrians, by which I mean that the department in question considered walking to be a legitimate form of transportation, which was eligible for spending federal transportation dollars. That, of course, doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Returning from lunch (in a car, because we certainly weren’t in a mixed use neighborhood) we encountered a pedestrian about to cross the DOT’s driveway apron. The driver, being both a human being and a law-abiding citizen, yielded to the pedestrian. But the ped stopped and waived us through. We insisted, and after a confused shrug, he proceeded along his right-of-way. Some might read this merely as a courteous interaction between two users of the transportation system. I saw something more sinister: a microcosmic reminder of the hierarchy at play on our nation’s roads, in which the convenience of the driver subordinates all other forms of transportation. I immediately cracked a joke that the yielding pedestrian was probably a traffic engineer. (As it turned out, he was.)

Entering the building I noticed, next to the front door (kudos!), what is to date the saddest, loneliest, and  rustiest specimen of a wheel-bender bike rack that I have ever seen. I was begged not to take a picture of it. (I did anyway, and framed it nicely with the DOT’s name placard above the front door. Sadly, I’ve lost track of the photo…it’s gone to the great digital beyond.) My final reward came at the end of the day when, upon exiting the building into the parking lot, I stepped out onto a raised, textured crosswalk. I joked: this is the only raised crosswalk in the state, and it’s in the DOT’s parking lot! My smirk turned into a grimace when I was informed there was a not-so-funny reason for that particular traffic calming feature being exactly where it was.

I had largely forgotten about this experience until I received a call recently from a reporter who was doing a story on a spate of pedestrian deaths where he lived. As one who aced the state capitals quiz in 7th grade Geography, I immediately recognized the city in question was also that state’s seat of government. After examining the corridor where the deaths occurred—a multi-lane, high-speed, no-median, state road lined with strip retail development—I located the state DOT’s headquarters, which happened to be a 10-second drive from the road in question, at the confluence of an expressway and a sea of parking.

I had to wonder: if we are what we eat, do we also design what we experience? It isn’t hard to imagine that, deep within the bowels of the state DOT, there are people who’ve never ridden transit, who’ve never walked to lunch, who live a suburban lifestyle, who cannot imagine their children walking to school, and who haven’t ridden a bike since they passed their driving test? Should it be a surprise to us that driving is the first thing the engineer or planner thinks about when he or she sits down to review a plan for a bridge, an intersection, a corridor, or a roadway “improvement”?

We decided to have some fun with Walkscore and state DOT headquarters. We found the address for each state headquarters office and found that the average walkability rating for state DOT headquarters offices is a paltry 67.4. As any high school student can tell you, that’s a barely-passing “D” grade. Below is a slideshow of the eight state DOT offices with Walkscores below 50, which the site categorizes as “Car-Dependent.” We’ve ranked them from best (or: least horrible of the worst) to worst. Take a look, and then let us know how well the built environment around a your state’s DOT correlates to its consideration for walking, bicycling, and transit.

UPDATE: You can also click here to download the list of all 50 DOT offices, ranked by Walkscore.

Mark Plotz

Mark Plotz is the director of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking, a resident program of the Project for Public Spaces. What that means, in practice, is that Mark is the man who makes Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place happen! Mark’s been poring over the results of last September’s conference in Long Beach, CA, and we recently had the chance to sit down with him when he made the trek up to HQ, to get a sense of how people responded to the new “Pro Place” focus. Mark also offered some teasers about the lead-up to Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place 2014, which will take place in Pittsburgh, PA next fall.

What were some of the trends that you saw in terms of what conference-goers voted for with their feet?

The good news is that Placemaking sessions fared very well, which is encouraging because it shows that the conference theme of “Pro Place” was resonating with people. One session that did very well was led by Victor Dover and John Massengale, who spoke about street design where we’re not just talking about paint and asphalt and dimensions, but really paying attention to context and creating beautiful streets.

Women and cycling was a popular subject. I could definitely see a lot of broad interest in making cycling a lot more reflective of this diverse country that we live in. A lot of bike advocacy has been geared toward the alpha-male bicyclists for too long, and now there’s a growing realization that there’s a whole new population that’s really interested in cycling and ready for alternatives to the car. We’re trying to be supportive of that in how we plan for the next conference, because people are indicating that they’re really interested in taking advocacy in that new direction.

Building on that advocacy theme–as much as people were coming to the last Pro Walk/Pro Bike and learning about Placemaking, us Placemakers all have a lot to learn from biking and walking advocates about how to run a campaign. Can you talk more about that?

Fred talks a lot about Zealous Nuts in his presentations, and there are no more zealous or nutty people than bike advocates! We’re very good at organizing, and showing up to meetings, and writing congressional offices. We’re a highly motivated crew. I think that Placemakers can learn a lot from rubbing elbows with bike advocates.

Bikers are sort of tribal. When you get a bunch of them in a room together, the conversation always seems to gravitate to the last a**hole you had an encounter with out on the road. That’s one of the things that really bonds bikers together: we’re out there and we don’t have much in the way of protection, so we’re dependent on the goodwill and skill of drivers, and also the DOT to give us a safe place to ride. So safety is a big shared concern.

You have to take the long view. The first Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference was in 1980, and it was about a hundred people in Asheville, NC. We had 900 people in Long Beach this year. From what I’ve been told by those who were there, the folks who showed up in Asheville were a bunch of idealists, working outside the system. But through the years, biking has been institutionalized, so a lot of those advocates became the first state bike/ped coordinators, and later the first local bike/ped coordinators. Over time, they were co-opted into the transportation establishment, which is a great thing.

There are still advocates out there, because that bike/ped coordinator still needs support from the public, and to know that people want this stuff. So advocates give him or her the cover. And I wonder if maybe that’s where Placemakers need to go now: to organize as advocates, develop a common agenda, and then hopefully get co-opted into transportation, governance, all of these places where our government already spends money but builds a bunch of crap.

How did that co-opting happen? How did these folks go from being the idealists outside of the system to being the inmates running the asylum, so to speak?

I would say it was ISTEA in 1991. It helps if the Feds are saying “look, if you want to get this money to build trails and other enhancement projects, you need to have a state bike/ped coordinator.” That was a major boost for the movement. But there was demand for that legislation. Back when Dan Burden was hired on as the first state bike/ped coordinator in Florida, biking was pretty popular. The Feds saw demand, and they wanted to answer it.

Any other thoughts on where PWPB is heading in 2014, and how it will continue to evolve? 

Well, of course, I think that we have the smartest conference attendees out there! And we function best and are most effective when we can demonstrate that the improvements we’re arguing for benefit a community. That when you rightsize a street, for instance, you’re not just doing good things for people who walk and bike, you’re adding value back to the property that the road had subtracted from. Placemaking is always going to be a part of it, if we’re smart. We’re seeing that in the attendance in 2012, and that’s going to continue in 2014.

The people in Pittsburgh are very excited. One of the reasons that they wanted to host the 2014 conference is that they want to kickstart their bike/ped plan implementation, but they also want to do more with Placemaking. I’m looking forward to doing interventions around the city. We’re going to do a warm-up event in the fall of 2013, and I hope to see a lot of good things come out of that, a lot of project ideas. PPS has budgeted for staff involvement with the city.

Pittsburgh is a great laboratory for Placemaking. That city has a lot of people in foundations that are interested in place, they’ve got a burgeoning tech sector, and they’ve got a couple of great people, like the guys from Walnut Capital who re-purposed an old Nabisco plant…you don’t have to sell these folks on the principles of mixed-use neighborhoods! They want more of this. They want to get developers there so they can evangelize to them and get city councilors there to see that this stuff works, and that there’s demand. That’s exciting.

Coming from the bike advocacy world, I believe that we’ve made a key mistake in thinking that federal legislation is the be-all and end-all of what’s going to make this country bicycle-friendly and walkable. But it’s more complex than that, especially when you’ve got a Congress that’s not interested in solving big problems. It’s going to be incumbent on us to engage with the private sector. It helps when you’ve got people who’ve shown that this can be tremendously lucrative, and that people want it.

Next stop: Pittsburgh! / Photo: mismisimos via Flickr

Industrial Rd & Millard Ave in Omaha, America’s worst intersection for pedestrians according to Streetsblog / Photo: Google

The Pedestrian Pandemic
In 2010, the last year the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHSTA) published such figures, a startling 4,280 pedestrians were hit and killed in traffic and 70,000 were injured. For many states, this past year was one of the most deadly in a decade, ending a general decline in pedestrian fatalities. Even still, there is a disturbing cultural willingness to accept these deaths as a necessary evil. The public increasingly blames the victims. The police rarely prosecute, and if they do, the courts are often lenient. In 2012, 136 pedestrians were killed and another 11,621 were injured in New York City alone—and in all that time, only one sober, unacquainted driver was charged.

The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) just released their annual Urban Mobility Report resulting in the usual public outcry to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to address congestion, because of what time stuck in traffic costs the American economy.  According to AAA, pedestrian deaths and injuries cost American society $300 billion in 2010, that is nearly three times the national cost of congestion as estimated by the Urban Mobility Report.  Where is the public outcry to improve safety?

In the US, Common Law tradition has a clear provision for the right of access. Given that all forms of transportation begin and end with walking, this is essentially a right to be a pedestrian—a right severely restricted by expensive and counterproductive high-speed roads that we’ve built. A key problem in defending this right is that very few laws motivate law enforcement to consider killing a pedestrian as a crime. Involuntary Vehicular Manslaughter is a potential charge, but it’s hard to prove constructive manslaughter since a little speeding is rarely seen as a crime, and the threshold for recklessness is hard to meet. Anecdotally, drivers who kill a pedestrian are better off waiting for the police to arrive, because hit and runs really are about the only time the police reliably pursue these drivers with any prejudice. New laws specifically dealing with pedestrian-vehicle crashes are needed.

Blaming the Victim
In my opinion, our local media outlets are exacerbating the problem. Their stories discount the human loss and reinforce widely held misconceptions. First and foremost, underlying all of the poor media coverage is what I call the “Accident Axiom.” This is the widely-held (but almost never-question) belief that accidents are an unavoidable and innocent consequence of modern motorized society. The assumption here is that crashes not involving excessive speed, alcohol, or gross negligence are presumably the fault of no one, but an unfortunate systemic fluke.

This axiom has two corollaries: the Inherent Risk Corollary and the Reckless Driver Corollary. The former states that in this world of unavoidable accidents, pedestrians and cyclists are senselessly putting themselves in harm’s way by traversing concrete and asphalt. If they get hit, it is a deserved consequence of their poor decision making. And the latter states that those rare instances when a driver is at fault, it is the result of that driver being a reckless and careless individual, a deviant member of society. All blame is attributed to the individuals involved. The road network and driving culture are given immunity.

Recently the focus has been on the bad behaviors of pedestrians: texting, wearing earphones, jaywalking, drunk walking, etc. While there is clearly a personal responsibility to remain aware of your environment, we should not rush to judgement. Freakonomics ran a particularly illogical analysis of drunk walking back in 2011, claiming that it was eight-times safer to drive under the influence. Safer for whom?

As the mounting death toll makes the issue of pedestrian safety harder to ignore, the Reckless Driver Corollary has expanded to include distracted driving, a legitimate problem just like drunk driving. But in the age of TV screens, internet radio, and GPS navigation systems in dashboards, can we really claim distracted driving to be the isolated acts of a few negligent operators? Driving at high speeds with all of these modern additions is a pervasive indiscretion, a transgression a plurality of society idly commits on a daily basis.

I’m from Nebraska, one of the “safest” states for pedestrians, though that statistic is largely a function of our rural population and lack of pedestrians in cities.  Even in the Cornhusker State, 2012 was a 250% increase in pedestrian fatalities over 2011 as reported by AAA. The Omaha World Herald, is particularly fond of stating pedestrians “were not in a crosswalk” when they were hit. But this is often not even true! Victims were often not in a marked crosswalk. By law, crosswalks do not have to be marked; in a city where road salt strips the paint every year, few crosswalks even are. In September, when the World Herald reported on the increase in fatalities, I decided that enough was enough, and I responded by challenging the misconceptions so flagrantly repeated in their reporting. It took mere minutes of research to refute their presumptions.

The state’s traffic laws, Chapter 60 of the Nebraska Revised Statutes, lays out that a crosswalk exists whenever sidewalks are present on both sides of an intersection, regardless of whether there are white lines painted or not.  It goes on to explain a pedestrian can step into an unmarked crosswalk even if an approaching car is in view, so long as the driver has time to stop and there isn’t a Don’t Walk signal.  And most importantly if references a case Vanek v. Prohaska that states, “Violation of a statute is not negligence per se, but is merely evidence of negligence.”  In other words, just because a pedestrian violated these laws, doesn’t mean they should be considered the party at fault.  Given the inadequacy of the infrastructure, it might have been perfectly reasonable to cross in such a way.  Though the original post has since been deleted, you can read the full text of my comment here.

In the early 1900s, cars and their drivers were depicted in editorials, cartoons and accident reports as reckless murderers / Photo: via Peter Norton

The Rise of Motordom—and the Future of the Message
This wasn’t always the media’s modus operandi. In the early 1900s, cars and their drivers were depicted in editorials, cartoons and accident reports as reckless murderers, as grim reapers spreading death across cities and as pagan gods appeased by the sacrificing of children. What changed, mid-century, was that the highway lobby essentially took over the reporting of pedestrian and cyclists harmed by drivers; unsurprisingly, they changed the voice of coverage to presume the innocence of drivers.

Fortunately, there are signs that the narrative might be starting to change. While stories highlighting the injustice inherent in the way we treat pedestrian fatalities are usually the purview of urbanism-friendly publications (think Streetsblog, The Atlantic Cities, et. al.) NPR ran a story last month profiling the impossible task that police face in tracking down hit-and-run drivers involved in vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Brian Williams also covered the topic recently on NBC’s Rock Center, and the segment starts off promisingly enough. Unfortunately, about twenty minutes in, it becomes clear that the story is being framed using the Reckless Driver Corollary, focusing on the fact that drivers involved in the crashes being discussed were on their phones, rather than the fact that pedestrians died.

Solutions
There are many things that can be done to keep pushing the message back to a place that values human life first, and speed and efficient movement of automobiles second. On the policy side, get a Vulnerable Users Law introduced into your state legislature. Vulnerable Users Laws shift the burden of evidence onto the more dangerous individual. Drivers are responsible for cyclists, cyclists for pedestrians. I’m a huge fan of these laws, because pedestrians are put on a pedestal. They’ve been popular in Europe and are catching on in the United States.

You can also pursue other policies like Vision Zero, famously applied in Sweden and currently being campaigned for by Transportation Alternatives in NYC. Essentially, Vision Zero is a directive to eliminate all pedestrian and cyclists fatalities in quick order. The central premise being, “that no loss of life is acceptable.” Concerning law and order, you can find local lawyers to represent and advocate for justice on the behalf of pedestrians and cyclists injured or killed by drivers.

You can work to lower the speed of traffic. More specifically, advocate to decrease the range of speeds driven over a segment of road.  A fundamental belief in traffic engineering is that differences in operating speed causes higher risks of crashes. Spread can be reduced by lowering speed limits and using roundabouts instead of signalized intersections. The end result is travel times remain the same but maximum operating speed and the range of speeds are significantly lowered. Other geometric changes include narrower lanes, pedestrian refuge islands, neck-downs and Rightsizing.

However, only so much will be accomplished until our local papers and the nightly news starts putting pressure on state DOTs and public works departments to keep our citizens safe on foot. So, first and foremost, pay closer attention to the way that pedestrian deaths are portrayed by the local media in your area, and don’t be afraid to put pressure your local news outlets when you see improper coverage that blames the victim. It is easy to find language in your State Statutes that debunk published misconceptions about crosswalks and jaywalking. We all have the right to walk—and like most rights, it’s one that must be defended.

Helpful Resources

• Peter Norton’s excellent presentation on the history of media depictions and societal opinions on pedestrian-vehcile crashes
• AAA report on the societal costs of pedestrian-vehicle crashes
• World Health Organization pamphlet on the risk of pedestrian fatality as a function of traffic speed
• AAA report on the risk of pedestrian fatality as a function of traffic speed
• Transportation for America’s Dangerous by Design, interactive pedestrian-vehicle crash data
• National Highway Transportation Safety Administration pedestrian data
• America Walks, the best starting point for resources, tools and links

Via our Rightsizing Streets Guide, Project for Public Spaces promotes rightsizing as a means of improving streets for all users and creating a sense of place.  Rightsizing improves safety and accessibility for walkers, bikers, and drivers by reconfiguring the street’s space to match the needs of the street’s community. Rightsizing is often critical to the cultivation of streets as places, in which streets provide for safe and enjoyable human experiences and foster inclusive, healthy, and economically viable communities.

The Porch in Philadelphia before and after rightsizing / Photo: University City District

These case studies illustrate that rightsizing can help activate a corner by creating a plaza, transform a corridor for blocks or miles by encouraging pedestrians and bicyclists, and improve access to local businesses, neighbors, and other attractions.

• The Porch at 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia and Broadway Boulevard in New York City transformed poorly utilized road space into active pedestrian plazas.
• When University Place wanted to create a main street in their newly incorporated municipality, their rightsizing effort included installing sidewalks where there had been only road shoulders, improving the ability of pedestrians to cross the street, and beautifying the formerly overwhelmingly car-oriented Bridgeport Way.
• East Boulevard in Charlotte was also rightsized in response to the community’s desire for a safer and more vibrant pedestrian environment with increased opportunities for outdoor dining. They brought the ‘Boulevard’ back to East Boulevard with slower car speeds making for a safer, quieter street, and infrastructure to make that street navigable on foot and by bike. Edgewater Drive has a similar story.
• In Poughkeepsie, rightsizing Raymond Avenue included streetscape improvements that encouraged pedestrian access to local retail and dining establishments.
• Main Street/US 395 in tiny Bridgeport, California was rightsized to increase parking and support pedestrians’ access to local businesses.
• Prospect Park West in Brooklyn was transformed by the inclusion of a traffic-separated two way bike lane and pedestrian refuge islands. The result was a safer street for all users, and much easier access to Prospect Park.
• Rightsizing Nebraska Avenue in Tampa and Stone Way in Seattle reduced traffic crashes, and improved the experience of the street for pedestrians and bicyclists.

East Boulevard Overview / Photo: City of Charlotte

East Boulevard Crossing / Photo: City of Charlotte

Each rightsized street was improved for pedestrians, and most created bike lanes as well, with minimal adverse—and often positive—impacts on vehicle operations. While vehicular transportation is important, our streets should welcome people using many different modes. Youth, some elderly, and many in between are unable to drive, but happy to walk and bike when it’s safe and pleasant. Further, many may prefer to walk or bike for their health, convenience, environmental concerns, or social reasons. By allowing a child to bike to school, a bike lane provides autonomy for the child (and the parent), and improves the atmosphere of that corridor. By calming the traffic next to that bike lane, the street is made safer for all. Of course, street design is not all there is to Placemaking, and not every rightsizing effort is perfectly aligned with its neighborhood’s desires or needs. However, rightsizing is often a critical component of a community’s Placemaking strategy.

East Boulevard Outdoor Dining / Photo: City of Charlotte

Rightsizing projects tend to use before and after measurements of success that come from traditional traffic engineering priorities like reducing injuries, the number of speeding cars, or travel delay. Rightsizing succeeds by these measures, but they only hint at the fundamental place-centered outcomes of such projects: enabling thriving communities. Safety and mobility offer support to, but are different than, our more basic and fulfilling daily activities: shopping, socializing, eating, learning, recreating, game-playing, bench-sitting, people-watching, and all of the many other experiences that are more frequent and better in successful public spaces. We would be well served by more documentation of these activities in addition to the standard safety and mobility metrics. Streets and sidewalks are our most common public spaces. Rightsizing is a major way to activate these spaces and build communities.

Click here to visit our new Rightsizing Streets Guide to learn more about how rightsizing can help a street near you!

“Ready, set, go!” / Photo: Dan Burden

In mid-December I was invited to participate in a listening session convened by the AARP and GOVERNING to consider the question of how local government can prepare for the so-called “Silver Tsunami” of Baby Boomers entering retirement. It was an impressive group that convened: leaders from Federal agencies; leaders from the many national non-profit organizations and associations that populate DC; even a few private sector individuals sprinkled in.

For us to have a common departure point for the morning’s discussion, we had to first define the Baby Boomers in broad strokes, a task that fell to Neil Howe. Howe may be the most widely read and influential generational theorist of our time. He delivered to us some stark statistics and observations: 25% of Boomers have no retirement savings; 26% have no personal savings (beyond a 401k); and the recession couldn’t have  hit at a worse time for the Boomers, who saw a 33% drop in median household net worth just as retirement looked to be approaching. The bottom line of those numbers is that the typical Boomer will work well past retirement age, and remain in his community, in his home. This conclusion is backed up by numerous surveys of Boomers who (overwhelmingly) indicate they’re staying put.

If you are wondering where the Harley Davidson-riding, little-blue-pill-popping “greedy geezers” went, you need to look to the “Silent Generation” (born 1925-1945) who cashed out near the peak of the housing market with generous defined benefit packages. (FYI: the highest median-net-worth cohort is households headed by someone 75 years and older.)

Howe’s words were a reality check for my fellow attendees, many of whom had reached the pinnacles of their careers, and as such were members of the Boomer cohort. I noticed many of them nodding in silent agreement as Howe detailed how the fates of the Boomers and their Millennial children were intertwined. As the Boomers approach retirement age, their children are emerging from college and graduate school saddled with oppressive debt and grim employment prospects. It is no wonder that the percentage of young adults (24-34 years old) living with their parents as doubled since 1980, from 11% to 22%.

The Baby Boomers were our first suburban generation, and it is in the suburban environ that many are likely to remain in retirement. By 2029, when the last Boomers reach retirement age, 1-in-5 Americans will be over 65. Before listening to Howe, I considered the notion of retrofitting suburbia to a more multimodal, mixed-use form to be a quaint, romantic, or even hubristic idea. Now such transformation appears to be a necessity.

Walkable neighborhoods are critical in creating livable, accessible places for senior citizens to live / Photo: Mark Plotz

Despite the tall task before us, I departed the discussion full of optimism because I heard from many people in the room about the importance of place, and the necessity for communities, neighborhoods, and developments that are supportive of walking, bicycling, and transit. These people weren’t ringers; they were drawn from all sectors including housing, finance, commercial development, health care, and governing.

Crisis can precipitate change, which can lead to better outcomes. The Silver Tsunami can be considered such an opportunity for those of us who desire a stronger sense of place, and a more sustainable transportation system to support it. Here are a few ideas that the AARP/GOVERNING discussion inspired for me:

• A deep distrust of institutions. According to Howe, Boomers have a deep distrust of institutions, and in the past have united to oppose war, racism, and environmental destruction. State DOTs remain some of our most opaque and entrenched institutions. Perhaps Boomers will start asking why, when we have passed peak driving, DOTs continue to follow the prime directive of increasing capacity.
• Mixed use in the rough. A major challenge to reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in suburbia is the segregation of land uses and the distance between residential and retail. One way to solve this may be to start converting some of this country’s 16,000 golf courses, only one-third of which break even or actually turn a profit, into mixed use developments. Think about it: they’re often at the center of a neighborhood or community, they contain miles of cart paths that could become multiuse trails, and they’re not even in use for part of the year. (Of course, I don’t play the game, and if you suggest turning my pool or velodrome into a lifestyle center, then we’re going to have a problem!)
• We’re spending the money anyway. We spend billions annually to build un-walkable and un-bikeable junk; that money could just as easily be used to build something that supports sane transportation and land use. Yes, MAP-21 is problematic, but your state DOT has a tremendous amount of flexibility with what they can build using Surface Transportation funds. At the local level, The Man is constantly replacing out worn out roads, bridges, and water/sewer infrastructure, so go stick it to him when he shows up with the orange cones and bulldozers and tell him to complete your street. Groovy!

Ian Thomas

If you’re working to make it easier for children to walk and bike to school in your community, Ian Thomas is a name that you should know! Ian is currently serving as the Executive Director of the Pedestrian and Pedaling Network of Columbia, Missouri (PedNet). As he prepares to step down from this position to run for the Fourth Ward seat in City Council in Columbia, MO, this April, we spoke with him recently about the lessons that he learned in setting up the organization’s Walking School Bus program, a nationally-recognized Safe Routes to School success story.

Ian shared his personal goals for making active transportation a citywide priority, and shed light on how drastically people’s perceptions can change from just one generation to the next—and what those changes mean for physical infrastructure.

Can you tell us a little bit about the Walking School Bus Program PedNet runs in Columbia, MO, and how it has become so successful?

PedNet’s Walking School Bus program, which started in 2003 , is a component of our Safe Routes to School (SRTS) initiative [Editor's Note: you can read more about Walking School Bus creator David Engwicht here]. This started prior to federal legislation about SRTS, and at a time when there wasn’t much funding, but SRTS was a concept that was starting to catch on in Missouri. PedNet was a young organization then, focused on street design standards, or what are known now as complete streets. We wanted some encouragement programs that would get people out walking and biking as we were trying to work with the city to put in sidewalks and bike lanes, and wanted to address a couple of oft-repeated concerns that parents have about their children walking to school–mainly traffic danger and stranger danger.

If you do an analysis of those two things, you’ll find that the number of kids walking to school was about 50% in the 1960s, but now it’s more like 15%. That’s a pretty dramatic change in behavior over just one generation. One of the main differences is that there’s a lot more traffic on the roads today, and these roads are not designed with the pedestrian in mind, let alone children.

If you design a program so parents have faith in it, it is well run, and volunteers are trained, responsible, and reliable, then parents are extremely happy that their kids are walking to school because they get out and get exercise in the morning and in the afternoon. It’s more like when the parents were in school. My generation was among that 50% walking to school so it’s sort of a throwback. We developed our program in Columbia by recruiting adults, many of them college students. We designed the routes, advertised the program, got parents to sign their kids up, and took the volunteers through the walking routes to survey them. It’s become very popular in Columbia. Last school year we had about 500 kids participate.

You mentioned that prior to SRTS there wasn’t federal legislation in place to support this concept, and funding was hard to come by. What was the process of getting that legislation in place?

There were advocates at the national level, and Deb Hubsmith was really a leading light working in Washington DC with Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota, the chair of the House Transportation Committee who was primarily responsible for the federal SRTS Program. Deb worked very closely with other national advocacy groups and they made a very good case for the health benefits, academic benefits, safety, and congestion benefits of Safe Routes to School. As a result, more than $600 million was provided for the program in the 2005 Federal Transportation Bill.

Most school districts don’t provide busing for kids who live less than a mile from school. Before we started the program, we did a survey in of parents that live within a one-mile radius of a randomly selected group of schools and found that of all the kids living within that radius, only about 25% of them were walking to school. We realized if we put in place a robust Walking School Bus program, we would eliminate a tremendous amount of traffic around these schools. Congestion and air pollution would be reduced as well.

We were able to present these benefits to parents, and the people and advocacy groups mentioned before were able to present them to legislators. There was broad support for the idea of allocating federal funds to promote walking to school through programs like the Walking School Bus and through engineering investments like putting in sidewalks, slowing down traffic, and adding crosswalks in school areas. The idea was that this would hopefully move us back toward 50% of kids walking to school again.

500 children participated in Columbia’s Walking School Bus program last year / Photo: MoBikeFed via Flickr

Can you speak to the benefits, and in some cases the necessity of coordinating with various organizations to make these programs a success?

Certainly for SRTS, having a strong and diverse partnership of stakeholders and organizations from different sectors has been extremely important. As an independent, non-profit organization, PedNet had to reach out and partner with the school district. While we weren’t asking the school district to implement the program itself, but we wanted their support, and the support of the parents. The district has been a really important partner, and in some parts of the country school districts are heading local SRTS programs. We’re trying to achieve that in Columbia and transfer the program to the school so that they run it with our help.

Other important partners have been the Public Health Department and the University of Missouri. We’ve worked very closely with the health department for a dozen years, not just on walking to school, but on building more accessible communities, trails, and promoting bus use. The University of Missouri provides around 200 volunteers, most of which are students. We work closely with professors in the university to promote the program and they often offer students credit particularly in the health and education program.

We also work with other city departments, such as transportation and planning, to promote the targeting of infrastructure dollars toward streets around schools. Elected representatives play a big role in making those decisions as well as school board members. A diverse partnership has allowed us to promote the program widely within the community, as well as get some tangible help in the way of funding and volunteers.

How replicable are PedNet’s programs? How and where do you see them working in other cities around the US?

My colleague Robert Johnson is our Director of Consulting, and he has been promoting different kinds of workshops and trainings and technical assistance services to other communities, sharing what we’ve learned around the country. We have an all-day Walking School Bus workshop, which is designed for a single community with a group of around 15 or 20 leaders from that community. We gather teachers, parents, and city officials and take them through a six-hour training on how to establish a Walking School Bus program in their community, and give them the tools to get started. We also include the PowerPoint presentation that we use to train new volunteers. We try to give these communities a whole package so that they can get their own programs going pretty quickly.

So far, we’ve led about 70 or 80 these workshops in the last two years. I did one two weeks ago in Longmont, Colorado, and they had very good representation from across the community. I’m very confident that their program will really take off.

What are some of the new and exciting things that are going on with PedNet right now?

We’ve been running a pilot program for the last couple of years where parents that live further out (say five or ten miles from their children’s school), can still benefit from the Walking School Bus. We do this by setting up a staging post about half a mile to a mile from school where the parents and the school buses can drop kids off, and they walk under the supervision of our volunteers from that location to the school, and then back again in the afternoon. The schools have benefitted by having less traffic around, and they’ve been very supportive. The Columbia School Board is very actively looking at not just bringing the Walking School Bus under their own operation, but expanding the staging posts so that multiple schools can enjoy this benefit. This also helps to promote advocacy for physical improvements around the school so that more kids can walk.

We’ve done a lot of work with middle school kids teaching them the League of American Bicyclists Safety Program. It’s a lot more intense to run a bike to school program because there’s equipment involved, and safety concerns are greater. The kids really have to be well-trained in how to interact with traffic and the volunteers that lead the bike brigade have to be highly trained. In our program, they are all certified instructors who do a three-day training with the League of American Bicyclists. But it’s hard to grow that quickly.

Another component is teaching teenagers how to use the public transportation system, if they have access to one. We have a very underfunded bus system in Columbia, and that’s one of our policy campaigns: to increase public funding for the bus system so that it provides better options for everybody. But with teenagers, if they start learning and using the bus early, they will really enjoy the increased freedom in getting around town.

Is there one obstacle in particular that you often see causing trouble with programs that are getting started or trying to grow?

The way that rural communities and suburbs are built, often with everything very spread out, can make starting a Walking School Bus program very difficult. I don’t know that we’re ever going to see sidewalks on every rural highway, or lane, so there will always be some sectors that don’t convert to active or public transportation, where the car makes most sense, and that’s probably OK. I think that there needs to be a balance. I would like to look to Copenhagen, where approximately one-third of all journeys are taken by walking or biking, one-third by public transportation, and one-third by private car. I think that’s a really nice balance for a city to aspire to. In most American cities, it’s more like 80% private car, 10% public transportation, and 10% walking or biking.

Note: Ian will be stepping down as Executive Director of PedNet in January 2013, and the position will be filled by Annette Triplett, who has been working in Missouri for several years in promoting healthy food in schools.

Volunteers use bikes to transport donated goods to hard-hit areas like Red Hook and the Rockaways after Superstorm Sandy / Photo: Brennan Cavanaugh via Flickr

On Thursday following Superstorm Sandy, when much of New York City was still without power, the number of bike riders on the East River bridges rose more than 130 percent. The substantial increase in ridership, according to a study by NYU’s Rudin Center, showed that walking and biking commuters were, on average, the least frustrated commuters compared to those who drove, or used the bus or subway. While non-bikers experienced double or triple their pre-Sandy commute time depending on where they lived, walkers and bikers added only nine minutes to their commute time on average!

The volume of biking commuters was observed and counted by volunteers from Transportation Alternatives. They stationed themselves in four locations around the city to record the swelling number of cyclists and by their estimates, there were approximately 100,000 people commuting to work by bike between Wednesday, November 7^th, Friday, November 9^th, and the following Monday and Tuesday. Observers covered a lot of ground during morning, afternoon, and evening shifts from 2^nd Avenue, to Times Square, and up on 138^th Street in the Bronx.

Although strained (perhaps beyond capacity) by Sandy, New York’s bike infrastructure provided a much-needed transportation alternative when subways were down and the automobile network was stymied by traffic light shutdown. Even with approximately 300 miles of protected bicycle paths, exclusive bicycle lanes, and shared bicycle lanes available in all five boroughs, riders still experienced frustrations when traveling during the storm’s long aftermath. Brooklyn resident David Pimentelli, told The New York Times, “I’m scared to be going back to Brooklyn right now,” traveling the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan. “People are running red lights, very agitated, they don’t care.”

Many PPSers are cyclists who bike to and from our HQ in Manhattan’s East Village. In the office, I’ve heard several colleagues comment on how difficult it was to pass slower moving cyclists, with traffic slowing and compressing at points. “I couldn’t believe the congestion,” said Transportation Associate David Nelson. “It was a Level-of-Service D equivalent. If [the East River Crossings] had been a highway, engineers would argue you’d have to add more capacity.”

PPS Associate Casey Wang, a resident of Brooklyn, did not travel into Manhattan during the week after the storm, but as a regular bike commuter, she knows and understands the world of cycling in NYC. Her experience that week was one of relief in owning a bicycle. Had she not, she says she would have felt “trapped.” Although cycling didn’t mean commuting during that week, she was thankful to be able to carry out her day-to-day activities in Brooklyn even though her trusted trains were down, including the L, which only resumed service the week of the 12^th.

Commuting aside, the bicycle’s role during Hurricane Sandy proved to be truly life saving. Many residents in the Rockaways and Red Hook suffered the loss of their homes, and had to rely on crowded, inadequate shelters and the generosity of friends and family—many without electricity or heat, themselves—and attending to basic needs quickly became an issue. Volunteers at Bicycle Habitat in Park Slope and Affinity Cycles in Williamsburg loaded their bicycles with panniers full of donations, including flashlights, diapers, blankets, and coats, and headed for the Rockaways. Using bicycle power allowed volunteers to bypass gridlocked traffic, nimbly move around donation centers and churches to make their drop-offs, and survey damage.

Occupy Sandy organizers demonstrated democracy in action by making use of bicycles as well. Rev. Michael Sniffen of St. Luke and St. Matthew on Clinton Avenue, an experienced Occupy Wall Street advocate, opened the church to Occupy Sandy, allowingmore than 2,500 volunteers to participate in relief efforts, including moving donated goods via bike and car. Rev. Sniffen told The Local: Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, “We’re neighbors helping neighbors, on a fleet of bicycles. It’s an image of community at its best.”

The number of NYC residents who cycle has risen considerably in the past few years. According to NYC DOT, bicycle commuting doubled between 2007 and 2011 from an average of 27,000 riders to 48,300 entering and leaving the Manhattan core each day and it aims to triple that number by 2017. Sandy has highlighted the resilience of NYC’s residents, the bicycling infrastructure’s ability to support that population, and the need to expand that infrastructure to accommodate the level of ridership seen during the storm on a permanent basis. Indicators recorded from Sandy present a strong case for the DOT to meet its 2017 goal.

To see photos of residents, commuters, and volunteers weathering the storm, visit Transportation Alternative’s Flickr page here.

For a New York City Cycling Map and information about NYC DOT’s cycling plans and initiatives click here.

The Long Beach Convention Center, site of Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place 2012 / Photo: PPS

It is hard to believe that it has already been six weeks since we convened Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place 2012. The conference inspired a multitude of ideas, forged new partnerships, and reinforced existing ones. The tone was mostly upbeat; however, owing to the frustration of those who have been calling for change for years if not decades, sometimes the messaging took out their frustrations on engineers and transportation professionals.

Reprinted below (with permission) is an email sent to me by Bryan Jones, one of the professional engineers in attendance at the conference, expressing his concerns over how some of the advocates who spoke at PWPB Pro Place engaged in what I would call engineer-bashing. After spending 40 years as a transportation engineer myself, I empathize with Bryan (who works, for the record, as the Deputy Director of the City of Carlsbad, California’s Transportation Department). As an engineer, I too have often borne the brunt of folks frustrated with the direction of transportation over the last 50 years.  

I felt that Bryan’s email was worth sharing, not so much in an effort to defend my profession, but because I know that Bryan is 100% correct in pointing out that when advocacy unleashes harsh and personal rhetoric, it not only distracts us from the path to change, it deepens the barrier that we have to cross to engage the transportation for change. Bryan’s remarks about the reaction in some quarters to our disappointment with MAP-21 also resonated with me. Stomping our feet over what could or should have been will do no good.

I hope you will enjoy Bryan’s observations as much as I did.  –Gary Toth

—————————

Dear Gary;

I wanted to take a moment after Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place to share that I really enjoyed the conference. There were many great sessions and featured keynote speakers. For me, it was about connecting and reconnecting with people and fostering relationships. It was about hearing what others are doing in their organizations whether in advocacy, government, private business, or non-profits, at the local, regional, state, or national level. The 2012 organizers did a great job bringing the Pro Place theme into the conversations. I was fascinated and inspired by people from Project for Public Spaces like Fred & Ethan Kent, and advocates like Victor Dover. They brought a great new language and conversation to the Pro Walk/Pro Bike movement. Their messages resonated with me as their work results in creating streets, places, and communities where people want to be. And that means jobs, new businesses, and thriving and safe communities. The City of Long Beach and the host committee also did a fantastic job. Well done Charlie Gandy and team!

While the host committee reached out to organizations like the Institute for Transportation Engineers and AASHTO, there was an undertone throughout the conference that these organizations and their members along with a certain political party was to blame for society’s current problems. So the reach out was one step forward, but the undertone might have been two to five steps backwards. In fact, some of the speakers did not even make it an undertone. When speakers attack certain professions such as Traffic Engineering or political parties such as Republicans, it does not create partnerships or unity for a movement but furthers polarization and a greater divide. Most engineers at this conference felt unwelcome if they could not overcome or look past some of the speaker’s attacks.

The speakers were good, and their message could have been delivered without attacking or blaming. I heard it during keynote speeches and in break-out sessions. A good analogy would be a comedian’s or musician’s talents that get lost or unheard because of their curse language that prevents some from attending or listening. However, many of the speakers spoke to the choir and audience present rather than connecting with, welcoming, and reaching out to these new organizations which could be our partners now and in the future. In fact, I heard from many engineers that they felt unwelcome, which is definitely not a feeling we want them leaving with because we need them as partners and collaborators. I have been working closely with advocacy organizations for most of my career, and I feel my collaborative experiences with them have allowed me to be a better engineer and planner. I always encourage my colleagues in the engineering and planning professions to proactively engage advocacy organizations in a collaborative manner.

We can dwell on the perceived setback of MAP-21 and become victims. It is an easy position to take. However, our reality is in our thoughts and we can focus our thoughts on all the great successes that have been accomplished and how to foster more of these successes. We can focus on what we “CAN” do rather than what we “CAN’T” do. Blaming others or specific groups for our built environment accomplishes very little and, as I remember one of my mentors saying, when you point blame on others there are three fingers pointing back at you. We have to be careful throwing rocks in a glass house. We live in a democracy so our built environment is the responsibility of all of us…now and in the past and future. And it has caused unintended public health, environmental, and mobility costs to name just a few of the consequences.

I might suggest that we can focus on changing to a culture of Active Transportation by changing the language and conversations. We need to identify and LISTEN to what our allies’ and perceived enemies’ objectives are. We should not just be talking, but SHOWING how effective our alternatives are through implementation—even at a small scale—with consistency, which can build a lot of momentum. However this requires us to CONNECT PEOPLE. A title I might suggest for 2014–I heard this “connection” discussion in April Economides presentation about her team’s success in Long Beach with Bicycle Friendly Business Districts. She changed perceptions by changing the language and conversations with people that were against bikes. While her passion is green stuff, she understood the passion of many of the business owners was also “green” $tuff! She spoke with them about the pro$perity of welcoming bike riders into their business districts, and did a lot of listening to their concerns and objectives.

Just so you know a little about me, this was my first Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference…although I called it Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place. I  am a Traffic Engineer, but also a Professional Transportation Planner; a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners; a League-Certified Instructor from the League of American Bicyclists; an advocate for Bicyclists and Pedestrians; a Complete and Livable Streets Implementer; and a local government public administrator/ leader. I have also had success with implementing Complete and Livable Streets in two jurisdictions (Fresno and Carlsbad) that were fairly automobile-focused when I started in their organization and community.

Neither of these communities has really been on the radar of most in the nation, as we didn’t accomplish change through policies and processes but rather through leadership, making connections, fostering relationships, and focusing on results. A lot of the success in these communities has come from aligning projects with community values and partnering with others like regional MPO’s, advocacy organizations, public health organizations, and our local business community. These two jurisdictions also both happen to be fairly conservative in political climate, so this movement does not have to be about one political party against another. These two communities might be great examples to further explore how political support was gained from a political party that is perceived by many as the enemy or surpressor of progress in transportation.

In my advocacy, I take time to encourage, empower, and enable engineers and planners to be leaders by evaluating and questioning their standards, policies and process and to determine if these standards align with community values and result in the outcomes where people want to walk and bike. We need bold transportation professionals that bring ingenuity and creativity to our profession; the world is ever-changing, and our profession must keep up. I want to also encourage the Pro Walk/Pro Bike organization to continue to utilize those of us in the transportation profession that “get it” and are your allies. We can help bridge the gap and create and foster the necessary relationships and connections with our fellow colleagues that might be slow to adopt the new active transportation system.

We have seen the innovation that has occurred in the telecommunication industry over the last fifty years. It started out with community phones with operators, then private phones, rotary phones to digital push button to wireless. Later the cellular phone was invented and first came with a briefcase size battery and as innovation occurred in the batteries and technology we went through flip phones, phones with keyboards, phone with lots of buttons and we now have the popular iPhone with one button. We are all waiting to see what comes next to help us connect with each other.

We have also seen a change in perspective with storm water regulations in California from quantity to quality. What would it be like if we experienced a change in perspective with transportation from quantity (freeways and wide thoroughfares with expectations of Level of Service C and D for peak hours) to quality.

However, change does not occur as quickly anymore from the Federal or State government. They are too big and remote to serve the people very efficiently and effectively or change course quickly. I am a firm believer that building quality streets, neighborhoods and communities starts with local governments. 85% of Americans lives within these cities. So in 2014…Pro Walk, Pro Bike, Pro Place, PRO PEOPLE! We could even add Pro Business and Pro Jobs! Or Pro Prosperity! or as this article suggests Pro Community Thrive! Just some thoughts on how the messaging could be better received by potential partners of tomorrow that maybe perceived by some as enemies of the movement today.

Bryan D. Jones, TE, PTP, AICP, MPA
Deputy Director
City Traffic Engineer
Transportation Department
City of Carlsbad

The Urban-to-Rural Transect allows for a much wider variety of street types than many road design guides.

“Street design manuals and land use plans are the moulds that our cities come out of,” noted Ryan Snyder during a presentation on the Model Design Manual for Living Streets at the Congress for New Urbanism’s Transportation Summit, which took place last month in Long Beach, CA. “What we need to be asking right now is: What could our manuals give us? … Streets are the majority of our public space. Why do we only let the engineers design it?”

Snyder’s question was at the heart of a discussion that stretched across the back-to-back CNU Summit and Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference (PWPB). Among the hundreds of active transportation advocates, planners, designers, and enthusiasts gathered in Long Beach, there was a core group of engineers who were grappling with new federal legislation, shifting funding structures, and public trends—and how these rather dramatic changes would affect the future of their field. Within this group, everyone seemed to agree that design guides and tools like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ (AASHTO) Functional Classification System, Level of Services, and Green Book are being misused to block change rather than to build smarter, safer roads that serve their communities.

Fortunately, that’s getting more difficult in an era of fiscal constraint. As AASHTO director John Horsley explained during a panel at the CNU Summit, “We can’t build [roads] in the old way because we can’t afford [to build enough highway capacity to keep up with the] land use pattern of sprawl. My guys work for the governors. You can’t do it the same way anymore because if you look at a 10-year fiscal sustainability timeline, you just can’t get there from here.”

This is something that many people, both within and from outside of the transportation field, can no doubt understand and relate to. Economic recession and the resulting fiscal constraint are forcing people in every field—particularly those where the public sector is involved—to re-consider how they do what they do. We’re re-assessing our priorities, getting more creative about financing, and questioning our sacred cows. As many have already pointed out over the past few years, a recession, while undeniably painful, can be energizing in how it forces organizations and industries to innovate.

For Placemakers and New Urbanists (plenty of overlap there), in a way, the timing of this recession is fortuitous. Just as many Americans are waking up to the mounting problems arising from the way that we’ve built our cities over the past fifty years of auto-centric policy-making, the money for the capital-intensive model of yesteryear is disappearing. The Placemaking movement has grown significantly over the past few decades, and offers a robust model for tying citizens more directly to the decision-making process around the way their communities are shaped. Seen through this lens, public engagement isn’t a necessary evil that designers and engineers have to deal with on the way to pushing through new roads, but an opportunity for building a broad base of public support that can be leveraged to fund future solutions, many of which could avoid building costly infrastructure.

Now, as the money available shrinks and public awareness of the importance of Place grows, the time is ripe for the development of new design guides that offer more flexibility in the possible outcomes that they can produce, and for highlighting the flexibility that already exists in guides like the Green Book. As Snyder argued above, these guides play a crucial role in how our world is organized; streets are places, and they must be treated as such. This means involving many more people than just transportation officials in determining how to measure the success of a given roadway. “Traffic engineers are doing what the public has trained them to do for decades,” argued PPS’s Gary Toth during a discussion at PWPB. “They’re problem solvers, so if you want new solutions, give them new problems.”

Great streets are entirely within our reach--as long as we're asking engineers the right questions! / Photo: PPS

By necessity, transportation engineering is a hyper-professionalized field; we certainly don’t want average citizens in complete control of how roads are designed. But there is more room for people to work with engineers on the roads that do come through their neighborhoods. Current design guides oversimplify the types of communities that our roadways serve—the Functional Classification System goes so far as to divide all roads into two types: urban and rural. By contrast, the New Urbanist Urban-to-Rural Transect includes seven different types of land use patterns.

“Part of our problem,” Horsley stated, “is that we live in a siloed world. Our guys think of themselves as street, road, and highway designers, not [community builders]. The Placemaking concept that PPS advocates is an alien concept to them. Somebody needs to link what needs to be done at the community level to what our guys do when they plan the networks. Part of what we need to do is give permission to the transpo guys to look at a broader array of issues…We need different vocabulary for the same objectives.”

If the crowd at the CNU Summit and PWPB is any indication, that new vocabulary is evolving quickly. Guides like Snyder’s Model Design Manual for Living Streets, which was created to guide how roads are designed and built in the infamously auto-centric city of Los Angeles, explicitly builds people and Placemaking into the design process. “Our streets are public space, and they impact so many areas of our lives,” Snyder explained. “We wanted to look at equity, look at things for all ages, all modes, connectivity, traffic calming as part of the design; we wanted something that connects people.”

Connecting people is what roads have always done, in theory, but for too long we’ve been thinking of that connection purely across long distances. We connect from home to work, or from our neighborhood to our friends across town. Today that logic is clearly shifting. Our streets must be designed to encourage human connection within neighborhoods: out on the sidewalks, in the bike lanes, along leafy boulevards, and in public squares lined with lively local businesses. What should our design manuals give us? That’s a question that Placemakers—not just engineers—need to answer, and now.

The right performance measures can make great streets for all users as ubiquitous as the American arterial highway / Photo: karmacamilleeon via Flickr

The new transportation bill, Moving Ahead with Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), became law in the US on July 6th. Since then, MAP-21 has spawned a series of mini-riots in cyberspace.  Every group of professionals and advocates seems to be able to find their reasons to gather up and start lobbing rocks at the metaphorical DOT riot police just trying to hold the line with what Congress gave them. Frustration is a natural and understandable reaction to a major change like this, but the fix is not to holler about the new Federal policy; now is the time to look inward and change what needs to be changed in our own cities and states. This doesn’t mean that we at PPS believe that MAP-21 is not problematic–just that we think it is now time to determine where the real problems are and start working with DOT and AASHTO to fix them.

For the next few days, we have an opportunity to stop throwing stones and participate in a constructive discussion about the future of transportation in the United States. The Department of Transportation has created a website for a National Dialogue on Transportation Performance Measures to inform the implementation of a performance-based system under MAP-21. The site will be accepting public input through this Sunday, September 30th. While some may be skeptical as to whether U.S. DOT will listen, at a minimum, this will allow the transportation reform movement to crowdsource priorities to be addressed.

Principal arterials like this one are currently evaluated mostly on Level of Service and Speed / Photo: Tony Case via Flickr

The Project for Public Spaces has long advocated for silo-busting, both within the transportation policy world and between transportation and other agencies. While the loss of certain dedicated funds, programs, and policies is surely unnerving, the move towards a more holistic transportation planning, design, and evaluation process should be the long term goal. MAP-21 can be seen as a stepping stone towards that future, because a move towards a performance-based system allows for a wide range of objectives and values to be seamlessly integrated into the decision making process. For example, instead of using dedicated funds for sidewalks and bike lanes to retrofit a dangerous roadway, the vision is that multimodal safety and accessibility metrics will lead to a balanced design in the first place.

FHWA has high hopes for performance measures, too:

“Under MAP-21, performance management will transform Federal highway programs and provide a means to more efficient investment of Federal transportation funds by focusing on national transportation goals, increasing the accountability and transparency of the Federal highway programs, and improving transportation investment decisionmaking through performance-based planning and programming.”

With the Sunday deadline fast approaching, the number of ideas has skyrocketed from 29 last Monday to 192 by Wednesday afternoon. The voting system gives each idea a score.  Voting for the idea adds one point to the score. Voting against subtracts one. You can retract and/or change your vote after the fact, as well.

The Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT) currently has one of the top ideas with 90 votes.  They write:

“Performance measures should be defined and measured in ways that reflect all of the benefits of an integrated, comprehensive system based on the movement of people, not vehicles. In particular, this means performance and unit costs for passenger travel should include a mobility and accessibility component such as a passenger mile basis rather than solely a vehicle mile basis.”

However, commenter Dan Kaempff thinks that miles traveled isn’t a good enough metric, arguing that “[g]reater emphasis should be placed on better linking good land use decisions with transportation investments.”

Other comments run the gamut from detailed tracking of bicycle and pedestrian crash rates to indexes of pavement conditions to the spatial and temporal extent of transit coverage.

While numerous individuals have cited the general connection between land use and transportation, relatively absent from the discussion are the core concepts and principles of Placemaking. Streets are places–or at least they should be. Placemakers should be adding to this discussion to make sure that metrics for ensuring quality of place and community engagement get a fair shake. Tools already exist for street audits and evaluating the access and linkages to multi-use destinations. Could these be used to evaluate the national transportation system?

An understandably less popular comment from Sarah Lowery of the Washington State Department of Transportation highlights the fact that some agencies will face difficulty implementing the national measures due to budget constraints. However, Sarah’s point is an excellent one. It highlights just how important it is to make sure that the measures agreed upon in this go-round are useful in the long term so that the next transportation bill, set for two years from now, won’t have to impose a similar burden on local agencies. All the more reason for Placemakers to participate now.

Tedson Meyers

I recently had the opportunity to chat, via Skype, with Tedson Meyers. Tedson is the kind of person who has accomplished so much, and been involved with so many organizations, it’s hard to introduce him without feeling like you’re going to leave out all of the important parts, no matter how hard you try–so I’ll keep this intro short & let you get on to the good stuff.

In addition to stints with the Peace Corps and the Marines, Tedson served on the City Council in Washington, DC, before the establishment of home rule in 1973. He was also one of the founders of the Bicycle Federation of America, which has since become the National Center for Bicycling and Walking, the host organization for this week’s Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place conference in Long Beach, California. You can see Tedson tomorrow, when he delivers opening remarks and introduces PPS President Fred Kent at the conference’s breakfast plenary.

So now, without further ado…

I hear you have some interesting stories about your time on the DC City Council. You were appointed by Nixon, is that right?

Right; the council had to be balanced both in party and race, and at that moment they were looking for a white inner city Democrat. His staff had come across the fact that I was a successful crime fighter by leading my neighborhood, which was mixed black, white, and Latino, to take back our street after two dead and two wounded in eleven months. We did simple things like floodlight the street, which sent a message. We presented ourselves to the absentee landlords and said we could do a better job managing the property than their absentee agents and they agreed. That quiet little community effort that we never thought would get anybody’s attention not only made the two local newspapers but also the three American television networks, the BBC, the German national television, and a spread in Look Magazine.

What was enchanting about it all is that I had been sent up to run New York state on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. I’d been a Hubert Humphrey speechwriter as a volunteer before. We came up eight points and beat Nixon by four points in New York by changing the public relations policy to a get-out-the-vote campaign because that’s the only way New York Democrats get results without killing themselves. I had come down from New York earlier to live in Washington. According to people who heard the tapes, he said something like, ‘He beat me in New York?’ They said yes, so he said, ‘I want him on the City Council.’ Of course I was immediately terrified by the thought, but I went to talk to the Democratic National Committee people who knew me and they said, ‘Oh Lord, please do it.’ So there I was. This was in ’72. It was a very different city from the one we see today.

And it could have been even moreso: you were involved with thwarting the effort to push a freeway through downtown DC, correct? There must be an interesting story there…

We had a highway director, Tom Arris, who was an awfully good man and very professional, but he’d never met a blade of grass he didn’t want to pave. He had the very bright idea of bringing I-66, which ends at the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, into DC and—Brace yourself!—down the National Mall as a covered trench: a four lane highway parallel to Ohio Drive on the river side of the Mall with a grilled trench on top. Then it would dive under the Tidal Basin and the Potomac River, come up on the other side, and join I-295.

Tom had gotten as far as the City Council; we were the last stop. Well, the Marine in me just turned blue. I quietly called a friend of mine who was the Chief of Police, and I said ‘I’d like to borrow a helicopter.’ He said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ So I went up with a very skilled pilot, and we hovered over the district end of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. I did some counting with a clicker and a pair of field glasses, and it was perfectly clear that the traffic was not going to go where he said it would. It was all going north. I prepared a report, but then thought better of it, and I asked the Chief if I could borrow the chopper on another day so that I’d have two complete reports. The results were the same. The City Council met, and I shared my report with everybody. I also suggested the awful consequences of putting a highway down one of the most cherished scenes in America. They voted unanimously to kill it.

It turned out that Tom was so sure he was going to win that he’d already had the red, white, and blue signs painted. What I had not known is that half the highway department detested the idea including his deputies. He knew it, but he was a good man and if they disagreed, fine. They called to ask if they could visit me and they came with one of the signs. They said, “Councilman, here is your war trophy.” That sign hung in my home for years and now it hangs in the backyard in Fairhope, Alabama.

The Freeway that Never Was

What does the sign say?

It just says “I-695 DC.” The highway that never was! Once, when it was hanging in my home, some police officers had reason to be in the house and one of them said, ‘Hey, that’s government property.’ I said ‘Well, yes, it was; but it was a gift.’ And he said ‘But there is no I-695.’ And I said, ‘do you know why?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, you’re looking at the reason!’

That, alone, is a pretty significant contribution to keeping DC bike and pedestrian friendly—but you’re also one of the founders of Bicycle Federation of America (now the NCBW).

Yes. While I was on the City Council I tried to find ways to affect the legislation of the city to ensure more bike paths and pedestrian safety. I spent a day in a wheelchair with two paraplegic war veterans followed by television cameras showing the public how hard it was to get around DC in a wheelchair. The result was those curb cuts at every corner in downtown for wheelchairs, baby carriages, etc. But I failed miserably to really make serious progress. My term ended in ’75 on the City Council, and home rule came. David Clarke beat me in the election for my seat, and I was glad that he did. He went on to become City Council Chairman, but died far too young.

The unfinished business of bikes and safety and the streets got me thinking, and I called together the crew that was helping me before—Katie Moran, Bill Wilkinson, Noel Grove—and said I’m ready to back this but we need an Executive Director, and they suggested Dan Burden, who’d just lead the Bike Centennial ride from the Pacific to the Atlantic. We met at the Golden Temple Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue in DC, and there was born the Bicycle Federation of America.

Within a couple years it was clear that we should be having conferences. Dan’s term ended because he had an opportunity to take over and lead Florida in the biking field. Katie Moran became the next Executive Director. We had our first bi-annual Pro Bike conference in Asheville, North Carolina, with 200 hard-eyed advocates. Before the recession, my recollection is we reached almost 800 in Seattle. What’s fascinating is the nature of the attendance. The hard-eyed advocates are still there, and God bless ‘em, but it has come to a point that is ideal, I think, for where PPS wants to take it, to re-frame biking and walking as a way to create livable, healthy communities with new options for getting around.

It does seem like this year could be a real turning point, in terms of driving cultural change around the country.

We last noticed that the fastest-growing professional group in attendance is traffic and transportation engineers—and believe me, we didn’t see one of them when we started. Part of the problem was an unexpected consequence of a blessing. The blessing was the Eisenhower interstate highway system, which beautifully lifted the economy, allowed people to visit family and friends where they never could easily before, and moved goods and services like we’d never had—but it also raised a generation of transportation engineers who thought there was nothing wrong with bringing it downtown.

What we’re up against is reversing a trend and an attitude in what’s important in moving people around, which has so relied on the automotive industry, and finding ways to restore alternative means of getting around. One of the biggest problems is that that wonderful highway system allows our living world to sprawl far from our working world, which means people need to travel extensively. I just came back from an AARP study in South Dakota. City people probably have no sense of this, but as small towns disappear or the businesses in them fail and have to close, the distances people have to go just for groceries could be 50 miles one way. As someone said out there, “We go 50 miles and we’re not halfway to the middle of nowhere.”

It’s going to become something we ought to talk about at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place. We need to recognize that non-emergency medical transportation in some parts of this country are absolutely imperiled, so badly that in South Dakota, and neighboring communities and states, many women are electing mastectomy over chemotherapy because they don’t want to travel 300 miles three days a week. It’s a growing problem of epic proportions and very much a result of decentralization. The reverse of that process can be seen in the Pennsylvania Avenue plan in DC, where a plan for upgrades made sure that just one to three blocks north of that corridor, residences would be built so that people could come back to the community and walk to work. That is happening. We’re only at the bottom rung of the ladder but hopefully these conferences will start to become an important factor in addressing these issues over the next years. The nicest thing about all this for me is that we got it started.

"The Eisenhower interstate highway system...raised a generation of transportation engineers who thought there was nothing wrong with bringing it downtown." / Photo: Matthew Rutledge via Flickr

Can you tell me a bit more about your work with AARP? You were talking earlier about going out on the street with a wheelchair and actually seeing how difficult it was for people with disabilities to navigate the city.

You know, one of the most astonishing things I learned in that wheelchair—and nobody seems to speak of it—but because our sidewalks and slanted towards the street for rain runoff, if you’re making your way in a wheelchair parallel to the street, your outside arm has to be working twice as hard as your inside arm or else you’re going to roll off into the curb. There are so many factors we don’t even consider, in terms of how our street design impacts people with physical disabilities. That’s just one example.

As for the AARP, well, folks down here in Baldwin County, Alabama, learned I founded the Bicycle Federation; the next thing I know, I’m helping to write and get lobbied into law the Alabama Trails Commission Law. Then I joined a group of tigers, the Baldwin County Trailblazers, who are building the area’s bikeped system. That led to my being on the board of Smart Coast, which has interest in two fields: one is health, safety, and livable communities; the other is sustainable businesses. Someone from the AARP happened to be in the room when I was doing some work, and asked me to join the Executive Council of AARP Alabama, and to apply to be on AARP’s 25-member National Policy Council. That’s a group of marvelous people who are selected from around the country—one, an ex-ambassador, one who used to be mayor of Pierre and head of the highway patrol out there—just a great variety of men and women with an excellent representation of women, especially in leadership.

The Policy Council is divided into three subcommittees: health, economic affairs, and livable communities. You can guess which one I’m on! What intrigued me is that Dan Burden is currently under a national contract with the AARP because livable communities is a critical topic since there are so many 50+ people who need to have the availability of services, alternative means of transportation, an ability to get amongst other people, and have active lives. If they’re living somewhere in a suburb, that’s often impossible to do. The Policy Council is not the advocacy side of the AARP—we recommend which of the policies should be the subject of focus; the Board of Directors decide which shall be the focus of advocacy in any given year. The overall policy decisions of what AARP stands for in any of those three fields—livable communities, economics, and health—that’s written by the Policy Council. That’s what we’re doing, and this is my first year.

What are you looking forward to at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place this year?

On the one hand, the familiar faces—and on the other hand the new ones! The sustainability of this event has been amazing. Even in hard economic times, it seems to attract people—as it should. One of the things I love is that a number of organizations that are now healthy and long-lived began because people first met at Pro Bike and kept coming back. This is the 17^th biannual conference of people who have been gathering, devoted to this subject. It’s become the expected place to meet and throw ideas into the pot, the return two years later to report on how it all worked out. I’m so delighted now that Fred Kent’s on top with Gary and Mark. It plays into the PPS dynamic just beautifully.

Kit Keller

Kit Keller, Executive Director of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) chatted with us recently about her organization’s presence at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place, the vital role that women have played (and continue to play) in the bicycle movement, and how walking and bicycling advocates can make the most of the new federal transportation bill. Whether you’re attending the conference or following it online, Kit shares what’s special about this year’s conference and the exciting things to expect from the National Women’s Bike Summit immediately following it.

Do you think this Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place will be different than past conferences?

This is an exciting year for the conference. By adding in Placemaking, it emphasizes the importance of walking and biking to livability and good community planning. All too often, we see very over-engineered dead space facilities where there’s no sense of place and no people because there’s no destination. To integrate Placemaking into the conversation about biking and walking is brilliant.

Locating the conference in Long Beach is also interesting, because they really work on being innovative in this area. To have the leadership in the city be so visibly supportive before, during, and presumably after the conference is wholesome and hopefully will inspire more cities to become engaged in walking and biking issues. Long Beach’s mission to be the most bicycle friendly city in America is pretty exciting and is a great example. Go Long Beach! By envisioning our goals, we can make stuff happen. Hopefully we’re entering into a period of the Olympics of walking and biking for city governments.

What will the APBP be doing at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place?

The APBP views the conference as akin to our own conference, in that we make it a point to hold our annual meetings at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place. We provide the opportunity for members to get together at booths and we hold our in-person board meetings there. We will also be presenting the APBP Lifetime Achievements Awards, the Professional of the Year Private and Public Sector Awards, and Young Professional of the Year Award. In addition, we will present our board candidates, as we will be having our board member election following the conference. We have eight candidates running for four board positions—and five of those candidates are women. I think this reflects the growing interest of women in our field.

Why is women’s bicycling such a hot topic?

It’s a hot topic everywhere, it seems. At conferences like the National Bike Summit, people want to talk about getting the number of women riders up. Women currently are about 24% of the ridership compared to men. The conversation got started a couple of years ago with a survey APBP did on women’s cycling that grew out of the International Scan on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety and Mobility. We saw so many more women cycling in the cities that we visited outside of North America than in the States, so we set out to figure out why that was. We imagined our survey would only be answered by a few hundred women but it went viral and we got 13,000 responses.

Women are changing the landscape of bicycling advocacy / Photo: Sustainable Flatbush via Flickr

What we learned is that women are very worried about safety issues on the roadway, and that many of the facilities that are suitable for a more recreational or more assertive and experienced rider aren’t inviting to new riders or riders carrying children with them who are just looking to have a pleasant ride to work or other destinations. So the conversation is one you see not only in professional and advocacy circles, but you see it in the industry as well. Older male cyclists are becoming a diminishing part of the market. The bike industry needs to be seeking new markets, and women’s cycling is quite natural.

At Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place, we’re excited about a visioning session on doubling the number of women who ride bikes. The session will be small group discussions exploring how to break down the barriers that cause women to not ride, or not ride as much as their male counterparts. We will utilize real world scenarios in order to look at some of those issues. The aim is to offer new perspectives to people so they can take action in their own communities in an effort to double the number of women riding. The National Women’s Bike Summit will directly follow Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place on Thursday, September 13^th, and we’re thrilled that it will be presented by APBP and the League of American Bicyclists. Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place is very supportive and has offered space for that discussion to happen.

The keynote speaker for the summit on Thursday is Leah Missbach Day, co-founder of World Bicycle Relief, an organization that has captured the imagination of a lot of people to empower women and girls in developing countries. The WBR works at getting these women bicycles to help them get to school to get an education, and to work toward improving their lives.

We’re going to do six break-out sessions with a variety of facilitators and speakers on health, recreation, racing, women who have children who cycle, and women who are running programs to encourage more women to cycle.

Can you talk about the impact that women have had on the active transportation movement over the long term? 

Women are very concerned about the health of their families, and children, and their broader communities so it seems natural to me that more women would be coming into the planning and engineering field seeking to build a career around making communities more walkable and bicycle-friendly. I think just from the sheer amount of women who have received APBP awards in recent years, it really indicates the growing importance of the role of women in our field.

What can planners and engineers do to make the most of MAP-21?

It seems to be a point of collaboration across people working in public health, safety, sustainability, Placemaking, and all types of professions that resonate with complete streets. APBP has been working closely with the National Complete Streets Coalition. We’re taking MAP-21 and utilizing all possible avenues for funding bicycling and walking, not just through the transportation alternatives aspect, but also through all of the other transportation funding. Obviously, congress was not thinking about Placemaking when they created the opportunity for states to opt out of spending federal money on bicycle and pedestrian projects. The most important thing that professionals in our field can do right now is to work with their states’ Departments of Transportation to make sure that they don’t opt out.  Since available funding is going to drop under MAP-21, our job is to make sure every penny that is available gets utilized effectively.

What can planners and engineers do to improve the next transportation bill?

We need to start ourselves, and take our policy makers on bike rides or walks through our communities to show them what was funded, and what else needs to be funded. We have to show them how people are walking and biking to school, work, the library, and the grocery, and to socialize. People are utilizing the facilities that have been put in place, whether they’re trails, cycle tracks, or protected bike lanes, and policy makers need to see that. Get them out to see that people who are too young or old to drive, if they can get around a community and if the community is safe for them, then it’s likely to be safe for people of all ages. The young and the old (their children and their parents) count on being able to walk and bike for transportation and for health.

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For those of you interested in learning more about how to foster great streets and communities, register today for Pro Walk/Pro Bike® 2012: Pro Place, North America’s premier walking and bicycling conference, taking place September 10-13th, 2012 in Long Beach, CA. Join more than 1,000 planners, engineers, elected officials, health professionals, and advocates to gain the insights of national experts in the field, learn about practical solutions to getting bike and pedestrian infrastructure built, and meet peers from across the country.

Bicyclists fill a street during a Critical Mass ride in Vancouver / Photo: David Pritchard via Flickr

In 1980, the very first Pro Bike conference was convened in Asheville, North Carolina. At the time, the movement to carve out more space for bicycling on North American streets was young, and the first conference was attended by around 100 people. Thirty-two years later, the Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place is expected to draw a thousand active transportation advocates to Long Beach, California. The expanded conference title reflects the dramatic transformation of bicycling advocacy into today’s active transportation movement, as more and more people have begun to realize the importance of thinking of streets as places that tie communities together.

Recently, PPS’s Gary Toth and Brendan Crain had the opportunity to chat, informally, with Dan Burden, Andy Clarke, and Charlie Gandy, three friends and advocates who have played very active roles in this transformation. The following is a transcript of that conversation, looking back over the past three decades and reflect on lessons learned thus far.

Brendan: Can you each start out by talking about how you got involved in advocating for active transportation?

Dan: I started with advocacy around 1962, by promoting some biking events. Then very quickly folks like Charlie Gandy and I started working through the American Youth Hostels to put on even bigger events. Charlie, I don’t know what time you entered the scene, probably the mid or late 1960s?

Andy: Are you kidding? He wasn’t even born in 1960! [Laughter]

Charlie: Geez you old coot, what are you talking about? I showed up, and you and I met, in about ’85 or ’86, through Youth Hostels.

Dan: Back then, it really was the AYH playing a huge role. It was a concurrent evolution. The League of American Bicyclists had started up just about that time in the early 1960s, although the real advocacy started with recreation. The active transportation side, the health side, and the bike commuter side probably didn’t get a good launch until the early 1970s.

At the first Pro Walk/Pro Bike—actually, back then it was just Pro Bike—we honored Bob Cleckner. Bob was the first full-time paid professional in America to go around and really try to drum up interest in this stuff, starting with bike lanes; he was my inspiration. He was getting paid to go around the country and get adults to stop thinking of bicycling as something that was just for children. He worked for what was then called the Bicycle Manufacturers Association. We shared offices with them back in those early years when we started the Bicycle Federation of America [which later became the National Center for Bicycling and Walking].

Andy: As Dan said, the League was re-formed back in the mid-60s. They’d been absent for about ten years, and it was because of the support of Schwinn and the bike industry that the League got back on its feet. By the early 1970s, we started to work more on advocacy issues. The oil crisis in 1973 was a defining moment. One is always bitten in the ass by history because you think you’re doing something for the first time and it never turns out that you are. But I would be so bold as to say that the renaissance we’ve seen in the last 4-5 years in bicycling is probably the biggest boost we’ve seen since that oil crisis and the explosion of interest in cycling . Communities realized again that perhaps we shouldn’t have completely thrown cycling away.

When I moved here from the UK in 1985, the state of bike advocacy was such that we were able to convince the Immigration and Nationalization Service that letting me in here to be the League’s government relations director would not be taking a job from anyone else who was an American in the country. In 1988 there literally wasn’t anyone doing that. I think the Rails to Trails Conservancy was probably three years old? There was no America Bikes, no Bikes Belong. A lot of the groups that we work with now weren’t around yet. In the intervening 25 years we’ve seen things come a long way.

It’s very interesting—you can chart the progress of where the inspiration for advocacy was coming from and where groups were formed, particularly at the state and local level, by just looking at their names. In the 1970s the League was the only show in town, and we were doing a lot of advocacy on getting the legal status of cyclists straight. Groups that were formed in the wake of that are groups like the League of Illinois Bicyclists. Then in the 80s the Bicycle Federation took over and groups that formed became Federations. Charlie Gandy led the way in the 90s and started the Coalition movement with the Texas Bicycle Coalition (TBC). In the 2000s, groups started using declarative titles like Georgia Bikes! or Bike Delaware. Now folks are forming Alliances, and many are formally adding walking to their names as well. It’s uncanny how that catches on, and you can tell when a group was established by the title they give themselves.

Charlie: Going to Copenhagen back in ’76 and riding a bike really opened my eyes to the notion of a bicycle being a respected and valuable tool in an urban place. That stayed latent for me until about 1990, when I formed the TBC with a bunch of other interested cyclists that were looking for political respect and power. That put me in contact with Dan Burden, who was one of the first bike professionals within a state agency, at the DOT in Florida. He came to Austin, and I put him up as an expert in this field in front of our state DOT leadership. Our tactic was to get bike coordinators at the state and local level within the DOT—this was ahead of ISTEA mandating it—and Dan convinced them that it would be smarter to fold their hand and just do that, rather than take us on. It was really a powerful lesson for me as a political organizer to see Dan’s ability, as the guy from out of town, to be effective at moving an agency to do something very tangible.

That started my learning about how we could turn the crank at the state and local levels and improve conditions for cyclists, organizing to give them a cohesive voice. I started attending Pro Bike in the early 90s as the Executive Director of the TBC. Then in ’94 I went to work for Bill Wilkinson at the Bicycle Federation, with Andy and Dan. Andy and I were protégés of Dan’s, and Wilkinson was pulling the strings. I remember going to my first Pro Bike and thinking what an incredible learning institution and networking opportunity this thing was.

Gary: I think we should get Charlie talking about how he did the first Walk Audits for FHWA in the mid-90s.

Charlie: In about ’96, Wilkinson comes out with his hand up in the air barely holding onto this piece of a proposal and he says “I’ve got something here related to walking, does somebody want to take this?” At that time, both Burden and Clarke turned their heads and walked away. [Laughter] Nobody wanted to do walking stuff. But I was working on my first million frequent flyer miles, and I jumped at the opportunity to go around to Grand Rapids, and the Bronx, and Snowmass, and a bunch of other places. “Pedestrian Roadshows,” is what they called them.

Dan: Actually, walk audits really started in the 80s. When I came back from Australia after doing some work on bicycling there, I realized that the real answer to reactivating and re-energizing cities was in the walkability side. So starting around 1981, at the Florida DOT, we changed my job title instantly. And that was the origin of the first ped-bike coordinator! I was having trouble with my engineers, when they would design intersections; they were getting them completely wrong. So I said we need to go out and walk around them and understand. It was later, when Bill saw what I was doing, that he realized that there was funding that could be secured for this, and later developed the Pedestrian Roadshows.

Charlie: That was back when they were referring to the sidewalks as “auto recovery zones,” right?

Gary: So the pedestrians were impact attenuators?  [Laughter]

Dan Burden leads a walk audit in Linden, Michigan / Photo: Michigan Municipal League via Flickr

Dan: But looking even further back, there are a few people that I’d be remiss in not bringing up, who were critical to the formation of the bikeped movement as we know it now. These people did things that nobody was doing. The first is Dr. Paul Dudley White, who was the heart surgeon for Eisenhower that really launched biking as an adult activity. He got the attention of the press, and he did it by pushing the idea that people needed exercise. Way before the modern health movement got going, he realized that benefit. He was probably doing his work starting around 1959, but he really was starting to command serious press until 61. This was around when I was starting to realize this is what I wanted to do with my life, so Dr. White was a hero of mine.

Another name that should not be lost to history is Dr. Clifford Graves, a surgeon in San Diego who started the International Bicycle Touring Society and got big-name adults to go on bicycle tours in Europe and the US. He also started bicycle clubs for teenagers in the California area, and all of those preceded anything going on with the League. Fred DeLong was an engineer that worked for one of the big battery manufacturers out of Philadelphia, and his work preceded John Forester‘s Effective Cycling program, by about four years. DeLong helped raise awareness about the technical side of adult bicycling—how to brake, how to turn, how to set up your bike—he really put the science into it.

Brendan: The idea that just getting adults to ride bikes was seen as broadening the constituency is so radically different from how we think of bicycling now. Bikeped advocates have been very good, historically, at drawing new people and new groups in, and that’s clearly been important in terms of this going from something that was very informal, driven by zealous nuts, to creating a contemporary movement that’s very broad and formal, with so many people dedicating their careers to bicycling and pedestrian issues. Just thirty years ago, there were only two or three people doing this work full-time!

Andy: It’s been really interesting to see how the bike movement has provided the passion and fuel for the Safe Routes to Schools movement, which has taken us into uncharted territory in terms of constituencies that now care about Safe Routes and the issues around that. The same is true of Complete Streets. The walking movement is such a more prominent issue for the broader public today; it’s more marketable, immediate, and unimpeachable. But without bicyclists at the start of that, there wouldn’t be the walking movement or the active transportation movement or the Complete Streets or the Safe Routes movements that we have now. It’s important that we’ve been able to, in certain cases, sort of let go and let these branches grow off.

Charlie: I’d like to build on that because, as the bicycle movement has become more mainstream, it has made sense for us to broaden the perspective and to partner up and to see the value in the coalition with pedestrians and a realization that what we’ve been talking about is Placemaking—and I remember learning early on from Dan about how instilling that vision of the place puts bicycling in context. We self- identify as bicyclists and we’ve organized a political voice around that, and we’ve found through coalition that we have more of a mainstream voice. Today, it’s the health people and women bicyclists that are really emerging, at least in the US, as fresh voices within the movement.

Gary: It seems like a lot of this type of advocacy starts with biking first and then branches out to walking and related activities; why do you think that is? And why did the bicycling movement emerge so many decades ahead of the walking movement in the first place?

Dan: A bit of historic perspective on that: the pedestrian movement was actually occurring as bicycling was emerging, but cycling came out more strongly, I think, because it had technological side to it that adults could get into—where a lot of people, even to this day, think of walking as, well… pedestrian! That it’s something you try to get away from as an adult.

I think we should keep in mind that there was a pedestrian movement that was growing up simultaneously, and it wasn’t as though the bicyclists branched out and created the pedestrian movement, although many are reaching across the aisle now. There used to be a small annual pedestrian conference in Boulder, Colorado back in the 80s and 90s; it was the only place where people were really talking about these issues for a long time. Those went on for 12 -13 years before the city council finally stopped funding them. Even a few years before that, Donald Appleyard organized one of the first meetings to talk about traffic calming, in Seattle. Looking at these early strings, we can see where they finally stitched one another together.

Once they become good advocates for bicycling, an issue they care so much about, they begin to realize they’re not the only ones that are being overlooked. So they get into the pedestrian side, and eventually they start to realize, well, we need destinations and places to go for this stuff to work, and then it broadens out from there.

Andy: This is absolutely true of Complete Streets. For the longest time, we banged on about what was then called “Routine Accommodation,” and how we wanted bicyclists and pedestrians to be routinely accommodated in all projects. We almost got that principal written into the transportation bills in ’91 and ’98, but it just wasn’t resonating. Finally, in the early 2000s, Martha Roskowski of America Bikes convened a phone conference with bunch of smart marketing people, and that was where the phrase “Complete Streets” was coined, I think by David Goldberg, from Smart Growth America. Almost overnight, Complete Streets started to carry a tune. This was something we’d written about with different names for years! [Editor's Note: The term "complete streets" has been attributed to several people in different accounts, including Martha Roskowski.]

A Complete Street is a street where everyone feels comfortable, whether they're in a car, on a bike, or on their own two feet / Photo: Complete Streets Coalition via Flickr

Brendan: Looking back over the past few decades of advocacy, what are your thoughts on how the movement has evolved, broadly? Did you expect to be this far along, or think you would be even farther? And what impact would you say PWPB has had since the first conference in 1980?

Dan: I discovered recently, while having lunch with Richard Killingsworth, that it was a presentation at a PWPB conference that totally turned around his attitude toward his work at the CDC. He went back and said ‘Folks, it’s not about curing diseases anymore, it’s about preventing them.’ But no one would listen to him. And he worked for a year and finally got folks like Richard Jackson, Andy Dannenberg, and Howard Frumkin to take a different approach. Not long after, he got funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2001 to leave the CDC and start Active Living by Design, and over time Frumkin and Dannenberg moved out to Washington, and Richard Jackson went to UCLA where he’s still advocating for Healthy Places. So if we stop to think about it now, there are billions of dollars now being focused on health through active living, and that started at a Pro Bike conference. There wouldn’t have been a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation putting money into this if it wasn’t for Richard Killingsworth realizing that there had to be a new approach for the CDC.

Andy: Looking at the movement, in terms of the numbers—specifically the number of people involved, the number of staff in advocacy groups and government—the movement has come an enormous way. It’s like night and day. It’s been extraordinary to see that and be a small part of it. But on the other hand, 30 years is a helluva long time. In terms of outcomes, it’s hard to be too optimistic about the impact that we’ve had because we’ve still seen 30 years of really awful community development in the majority of communities across the country. It’s a really big ship to turn. We really have to step up our game to make a much bigger change in outcomes—not in the next 30 years, but the next three years if we’re going to have a legacy we can all be proud of. We can’t wait 30 years to have another incremental step up in the number of people walking and biking.

Dan: There’s an enthusiasm that you don’t see in other professions and other trades that is a hallmark of what the walkability and the bicycling movements. If I were to project forward about what’s coming, we have to get the vast majority of people who come into the movement to realize that it’s the Placemaking—the creation of places for social exchange—that’s the missing piece. We’ve got to get away from just thinking of it as active transportation and think of it as rescuing our cities, redesigning our cities for people, and building the economy around the scale of the human foot. Until we do that walking can’t work, and bicycling can’t work.

I agree with Andy: we can’t wait 30 years; three years may be all that we’ve got. We’re talking about a totally wrecked economy, one where we keep trying to go back to building things that cannot be sustainable, cannot even be maintained; if we keep doing things the way they were done in the past, the US is at risk of becoming a third-world nation. There’s more at stake here than just giving ourselves a nice place to ride a bike or to walk.

Charlie: One of the identifying characteristics of this group is its collaborative spirit. I’ve noticed in my travels that that’s a fairly unique thing. Throughout the past few decades, there’s been a whole lot of innovation and invention going on, and guys like Dan, Andy, Pete Lagerway, and so many others have been freely sharing these ideas. I think that’s true at PWPB as well as one on one, and I think that’s a unique element of our success.

Andy: I would absolutely echo that; that’s a really important thing to identify. You see, from one consulting firm to another, people just want to help each other get the right answer, and just want to get a good outcome. That is pretty remarkable, I think.

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You’ve read about the past thirty years of bikeped advocacy–if you want to become part of the next crucial three, join us in Long Beach this September 10-13 for Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place. Remember–standard registration ends at midnight on August 10th, at which point registration rates will rise, so click here to register for the conference today!

CNU's John Norquist

Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place keynote speaker John Norquist, who currently serves as the President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, spoke with us recently about the role and responsibility of decision makers, what urbanists need to learn, and what CNU’s 2012 Transportation Summit—immediately preceding Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place on September 9-10 in Long Beach—means for the conference this year. Before joining CNU, John served as the Mayor of Milwaukee, WI, from 1988-2004; in 1998, John was named one of Governing magazine’s Public Officials of the Year.

Following the interview, we’ve put together a list of related PWPB:PP panel discussions. This year’s conference will take place in Long Beach, CA, from September 10-13. Early registration rates are available through this Thursday, July 12th—so don’t delay!

How does biking and walking contribute to, and fit into a great street?

You can’t have a prosperous neighborhood where people can engage in social interaction and converse if they have to drive everywhere. If you can accommodate biking and walking, you’re much more likely to have social interaction, social equity, and a high performing real estate market — it all comes together. If you have a walkable environment, people that aren’t wealthy and those who are, actually end up in the same proximity. They interact, and it strengthens the culture, the economy, and the outcomes that you get.

Can you tell us some of what was happening when you were Mayor of Milwaukee?

The Functional Classification System needs to be entirely reevaluated. In certain rural contexts, it makes sense, but applying it to urban contexts doesn’t. For example, Greenwich Village is rated F (lowest) based on congestion. It’s congested with people who want to be there! They’re buying stuff, and creating jobs, and creating art. It’s a completely non-context sensitive classification that rates Greenwich Village an F. And that’s what gave rise to the CNU/ITE jointly-produced Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach. It’s a recommended practice that illustrates how to implement mixed-use streets.

As mayor, John pushed for the removal of Milwaukee's Park East freeway spur, which is now being re-developed as a mixed-use neighborhood / Photo: Paul Hohmann via Flickr

How can we help the development and real estate sectors recognize the return on investing in Active Living by Design?

Mixed-use walkable communities are performing much better in the real estate market right now than communities that are auto-centric. The return on value per acre is much higher in walkable urban environments. We have a lot of land in the United States, but land that’s convenient to where the people are is a limited commodity. For developers, it’s a natural fit for them to be able to have more intense development in urban real estate. If everyone’s relying on cars, you have to accommodate all those vehicles by using up land with parking facilities, and surface lots that are not only expensive, but ugly. Developers have a lot of reasons to embrace a more walkable development pattern but it’s hard for them because many government policies obstruct them.

The Functional Classification System that is still the core of the AASHTO Green Book and DOTs all over the country encourages oversized roads and auto-centricity. Then there are Federal policies including those issued by the Federal Housing Administration that are pushing separate use zoning through their mortgage and capital programs that assign high risk to buildings that include both housing and retail. [Editor's Note:  John notes that Shaun Donovan and HUD are aware of this and are trying to make changes.] That really undermines the ability of developers to produce the kind of urban walkable environment that people increasingly want. What can be done on a small scale to shift that? Make a case to local officials that neighborhoods with both housing and amenities such as retail create a stronger tax base for local governments. Compact, well-connected neighborhoods with sidewalks are great for bikers, and even those who don’t ride bikes benefit from stronger communities.

At Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place we are aiming to broaden how people think about biking and walking by bringing together architects, urbanists, and people in transportation. Can you talk about the collaboration between these disciplines and what you hope for the future?

Whether you’re an architect, engineer or designer, you should aim for the triple bottom line where you have environmental, economic, and social benefits. Block sizes and intersection density, these are some of the issues that have a profound effect on these benefits. If you have a well-connected grid of streets, you’ve created an environment where somebody who needs a job has a much better chance of connecting socially and economically; whether they’re working a great job, or marginal job, at least they’re around money.

But when you have a disconnected, auto-centric grid like the one they’ve created in Detroit over the last 60 years…you can see the outcome. The city’s transit system is almost nonexistent.  If you look at the poorest neighborhoods in NYC, in the Bronx, because of a fabulously well-connected city grid and transit system, someone living there can be at Wall Street, the district with the highest job density per acre in North America, in just 35 minutes for a $2.25 transit fare. The money’s in the middle instead of being dispersed out in enclaves, and that gives people chances. This type of street grid and transit also fosters walking and biking.

What do you think New Urbanists need to learn?

They need to embrace and appreciate bicycling more and more. Bicycling is an important catalyst to move communities toward an urbanism that is ecologically sound and economically productive. The bicyclists are the ones who often bring pressure for change in transportation the more they take over the more the good things happen. Those interested in cities need to appreciate them more as bicycling is very compatible with everything that is urban. We ought to promote it even more than we already do.

What is a message you’d like to promote at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place?

The Functional Classification System needs to be entirely reevaluated. In certain rural contexts, it makes sense, but applying it to urban contexts doesn’t. For example, Greenwich Village is rated F (lowest) based on congestion. It’s congested with people who want to be there! They’re buying stuff, and creating jobs, and creating art. It’s a completely non-context sensitive classification that rates Greenwich Village an F. And that’s what gave rise to the CNU/ITE jointly-produced Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach. It’s a recommended practice that illustrates how to implement mixed-use streets.

Some environmentalists blame the road lobby for selfishly seeking financial gain by supporting highway expenditures and opposing money for bicycle and transit infrastructure. Actually, all contractors have to be a little selfish, or they would go out of business. What the road lobby needs to realize is that can make money by building lots of streets, alleys and sidewalks. Did you know there are more miles of streets in metropolitan Chicagoland than the whole interstate system? The idea that somehow the road building industry should be appalled by being asked to design streets to include cyclists is strange. There’s a lot of pavement to be laid for bus and bike lanes. Pavement is ok as long as it adds value to the community where it’s placed. That’s what the road builders need to learn.

Can you tell us a little bit about the plans for CNU’s 2012 Transportation Summit this year?

We have some of the most forward thinking transportation experts who are really serious about challenging the norm in transportation. We’re not interested in talking about this stuff forever; we want to change the system now. It’s not about changing a legislature in Congress that changes a funding budget; the goal is to fundamentally change transportation so that it becomes about adding value instead of just moving vehicles.

I think the Summit being held at the same venue as PWPB:PP will lead to a really effective cross-fertilization that leads to a higher level of achievement. Our goals are to change the functional classification system, that’s too focused on creating capacity for motor vehicles. Any road built in a city should accommodate walking and biking. Period. We all need to raise our expectations, and demand more. We need to push, and we can win!  No more car right of ways in cities that don’t have accommodations for bikers and walkers!

Suggested PWPB:PP Panel Sessions:
(For the full list, click here)

Panel 1: Advocacy Campaigns for Better Bikeways

Learn how advocacy campaigns at Chicago’s Active Transportation Alliance and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition are educating and organizing residents and allies to move bikeways projects forward

Panel 4: Innovative Public Engagement for Pedestrian and Bicycle Planning: Engaging the Community Using New Technologies, and Sustaining Momentum

Learn how to engage oft-underrepresented community members in the planning process, utilize cutting-edge engagement tools and mobile workshops, and foster public dialogue about the role of walking and bicycling in a community.

Panel 18: Times Change, People Change, Needs Change

Learn how designers must continue to update their conceptual approaches and their detailed designs to reflect current values, new techniques, and the discoveries of recent research.

Panel 21: Bikeway Design Details: Small Facilities, Large Issues

In this session, a qualified panel of experts will describe some of the unique problems they faced in bikeway design, their approach to finding solutions, and will share their knowledge and procedures with others.

Panel 42: The Power of the Performance Metric–Getting your Jurisdiction Back on Track

This session describes a collaborative effort to calculate new metrics for the City of Los Angeles. The process sheds light on how complicated and multidimensional the transportation system is, and on the power of outsiders to change it.

Panel 44: Congressional Action on Transportation: What it Means for You

Learn the latest developments in Congress on the transportation bill, the impact on bicycling and walking on the ground, and lessons learned about effectively communicating the benefits of bicycling and walking.

Mobile Workshop 68: Improving Bicycle and Pedestrian Access to Transit

This session will explore ways in which improved multi-modal access to transit has helped reshape communities regardless of their size or local economic conditions.

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For those of you interested in learning more about how to foster great streets, register for Pro Walk/Pro Bike® 2012: Pro Place, North America’s premier walking and bicycling conference, taking place September 10-13th, 2012 in Long Beach, CA. Join more than 1,000 planners, engineers, elected officials, health professionals, and advocates to gain the insights of national experts in the field, learn about practical solutions to getting bike and pedestrian infrastructure built, and meet peers from across the country. Register before Thursday, July 12th, to receive the discounted earlybird rate!