The fifth annual Oregon Bike Summit on June 4th brought together over 180 bike advocates, educators, and elected officials from across the state and nation. Participants shared stories, facts, statistics, and challenges as everyone focused on the coming year of bike advocacy in Oregon.
Read BTA staff highlights below or skip to the bullet points.
Active Transportation: Our Future Depends On It
Roger Geller, Lake McTighe, and Gerik Kransky shared information and resources to help advocates create a road map to funding victories. Local and regional communities face a chronic underinvestment in active transportation networks, making it difficult to win funding victories even when transportation agencies understand the value of bicycle projects. As advocates, we must organize ourselves, set goals for what we want to achieve, and start recruiting support for the work ahead to increase funding federally, statewide, and locally for bicycling.
Become an Effective Advocate: Download the Advocacy Toolkit (PDF)
2011 Legislative Agenda
With the 2011 Legislative session looming, now is the time to hone our message and prepare our agenda. The BTA took the main stage with Board Member Doug Parrow and Statewide Advocate Susan Peithman to share a broad and inclusive message about how we plan to craft a community based legislative approach to improving health and safety in the next 18 months.
Connect with the BTA about our legislative priorities: Download the legislative presentation slides (PDF) and stay tuned for details about an open meeting with the BTA legislative committee and other opportunities to take action.
Biking and Walking for Public Health
Jonathan Nicholas of OBS and Dr. Phil Wu from Kaiser Permenente gave compelling presentations about the public health benefits of biking and walking. They warned us that in a society built around inactive lifestyles, all of us will bear the burden of increased health care costs, growing obesity rates, greater risk of disease, and shorter lifespans overall. Biking and walking are important tools in the battle against inactivity and obesity. With health care reform having passed in Washington DC, now is the time to get Oregon’s Legislature and Transportation Commission to commit funds to active transportation projects.
Seven Bullet Points From One BTA Staff Attendee
The Oregon Bike Summit…
-Reminded me why we do this work: for the health and safety of our communities;
-Informed me about how we plan to accomplish those things: through our legislative agenda;
-Offered me tools to use in my daily work: Dr. Wu’s health statistics, social media techniques, and bike business skills;
-Reassured me that we’re not alone and there is a national conversation going on as well;
-Reminded me that Portland is not a state;
-Gave me an opportunity to network with like-minded folks from around the state;
-And finally, inspired and encouraged me for our next, more grand chapter.
I think that BTA should consider that air quality is as much a “health & safety” issue as hardscaping streets. Those cars can hurt us without running us over. Oregon’s DEQ has embarked on a program called the Portland Air Toxics Solutions, because the state’s regulatory authority recognizes that the air shed is a danger to citizens, exceeding federal limits for many toxics including benzene, known to cause cancer. The bike community should join other public health advocates to ensure that the state protects us in the urban toxic hot spots, many of which are popular bike routes. In the pursuit of “health” people are unwittingly exposing themselves to a dangerous cocktail of neurotoxins and carcinogens. Will you join Neighbors for Clean Air, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and hundreds of other concerned citizens, by signing our petition for better safeguards for public health against toxic air pollution? http://www.whatsinourair.org/current-petition/