| What should League members get in return for their dues? Well, for one
thing, the League should be reflecting members' concerns in its advocacy efforts in
Washington. Increasingly in recent years, decisions on League programs, policy and
promotion have been determined by a marketing vision that disregards the League's mission
statement and member concerns.
More and more, the League's advocacy on the national level has merged into the work of
a coalition of interests including the bicycle industry, rail trail advocates,
environmentalists, government bicycle planners and fitness advocates. The other members of
the coalition are concerned with promoting bicycle sales, increasing bicycle use, and
getting separate bicycle facilities built. League members, on the other hand, are
primarily avid adult cyclists and cycling families with concerns about good roads, rights
of access, good laws, bicyclist education, and sound engineering when separate bicycle
facilities are built.
The League is now increasingly taking direction from the other interests rather than
from its members. The advisory panel for the League's Bicycle Friendly Communities
program, for example, is drawn largely from these groups rather than from rank-and-file
League members. The League has placed its stamp of approval on communities whose
engineering and ordinances are faulty.
What is the League's proper role in advocacy?
Over the years, League advocates have played central roles in all of the following
efforts, at the state, Federal and international level:
Revision of the Uniform Vehicle Code to include a list of exceptions to
the "ride as far right as practicable" rule; enactment of the modified rule and
removal of mandatory sidepath requirements in several states;
Intervention to insert a "liability exclusion" in helmet
laws so a helmetless bicyclist can not be held liable in a crash caused by someone else.
Requirements that Federally-funded bridge and highway projects
accommodate bicyclists.
Defeat of many bad proposals for state laws including proposals that
bicyclists be required to ride on the left side of the road, and bicycle bans that would
make it impossible or illegal to use bicycles for transportation and recreation.
Formulating the national guidelines for bicycle facilities design, the
AASHTO guide.
Elevating international standards for bicycle lighting.
Contributing to the establishment of international dimensional standards
for compatibility of bicycle components.
Let me name some names here of people who were instrumental in these
efforts at the national level: Ralph Hirsch. Ed Kearney. John Forester. Fred DeLong. There
have been others too many to name, mostly volunteers working in their states and local
communities.
What needs to happen now?
Now, more than ever, the League's voice is crucially needed in the interest of the
members and of national, state and local transportation policy.
Bicycling is different things to different people, but bicyclists understand it best.
Increasingly, other organizations and other interests besides the League have a hand in
advocating bicycling -- or in discouraging it.
Highway engineers and government officials have discouraged bicycling
with conversion of highways to limited-access; traffic signals which do not turn green for
bicyclists; and other examples of discrimination. Now, the traffic engineering profession
is beginning to pay more attention to bicycling, but most traffic engineers still have a
weak understanding of bicycling issues. As traffic volume has increased, bicycling has
often not been taken into account in the redesign of the road network.
Beginning with the upsurge of environmentalism in the 1960s and fuel
crises of the 1970s, the League faced a challenge from people who were advocating
rather than discouraging bicycling. Environmentalists' promotion of bicycling rested on a
weak understanding of bicycling issues, and was excessively colored by fears of sharing
roads with motor vehicles. Mostly, the result in the 1970s was the construction of
separate paths, some successful, but others impractical and/or unsafe. Over the years,
design standards improved somewhat, largely in response to pressure initiated through
League advocacy.
A somewhat different focus has been that of rail trail advocacy, which
has gained momentum over the past two decades. Rail trails serve pedestrians, equestrians,
cross-country skiers, snowmobilers and inline skaters as well as bicyclists, and are
generally better designed than the early bicycle paths, but many trails supporters don't
have any larger perspective on bicycling than that of riding up and down the rail trail.
Safety advocates have been promoting bicycle helmets since the late
1980s and have succeeded in enacting helmet laws in a number of states. Major voices in
this type of advocacy have been the Safe Kids Coalition and the Harborview Medical Center
(Seattle). Helmet promoters are concerned about reducing injury but have shown little
interest in general bicycling issues, or in unintentional side effects of helmet
legislation -- reduction in bicycle use, presumption of fault in crashes.
Advocates for physical fitness and health, in particular, the Centers
for Disease Control, have begun to promote bicycling in the interest of health and
fitness. The difference in attitudes toward bicycling between doctors who promote fitness
and those who promote helmet use makes for an interesting contrast. I do consider doctors
to be a promising ally for bicyclists in the long run, because doctors have a very strong
commitment to good scientific research, and have a long tradition of testing their
methods.
Since the enactment at the Federal level of the Intermodal
Transportation Safety and Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1992, there has been much more Federal
funding for bicycling-related projects. Local and state governments have taken a greater
interest in such projects. Increasing numbers of public officials now have
responsibilities related to bicycling. These officials' need to please the non-bicycling
majority population sometimes leads to programs which look good to the average person, but
have technical flaws in terms of both safety and practical usefulness. The quality of the
projects funded by ISTEA depends heavily on the sophistication of local officials, and on
input from the bicycling community.
Thanks to ISTEA, local and state advocacy groups have gained somewhat in
influence, and have built a national network, the Thunderhead Alliance. However, the
central focus of many local and state advocacy groups is transportation reform rather than
bicycling as such. And many bicycling advocacy groups are willing to overlook technical
issues in the interest of encouraging bicycle use. Bike lanes are being promoted widely as
a one-size-fits-all solution, and installed where they are not appropriate. Some advocates
vehemently oppose helmet promotions because they consider that the helmet carries a
message that bicycling is dangerous.
The bicycle industry, which had long been apathetic about advocacy, has
in the past few years come to understand advocacy as a way to build a customer base and
increase sales. Most of the industry's efforts have been focused on promotion and funding
of trail projects and on reauthorization of the ISTEA legislation.
A relatively new initiative, Safe Routes to Schools, is attempting to
get children bicycling and walking to school again. As with the other initiatives, the
quality of the results depends heavily on the quality of planning.
What role should the League be playing among all of these different and sometimes
contradictory interests?
I strongly believe that the League should work with other advocates, but very
importantly, the League must maintain its own voice. Only the League is in a
position, on the national level, to bring the perspective of the competent adult cyclist
to bear. Only the League can bring the credibility and expertise of a national
bicyclists' organization into discussions of legislation, project design, helmet
legislation and other issues at the state level.
If the League does not do this, nobody will. But representation must occur at the state
level, not only on the national level -- and so it also requires an outreach effort -- see
next page.
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