To prepare advocates and agency staff for the application process, Advocacy Advance - the Alliance's partnership with the League of American Bicyclists - held a webinar about the new round of grants and showcasing tips from successful past applicants. We heard lessons from successful projects from Sahar Shirazi from the USDOT's Office of the Secretary, Darla Latourneau from Bike Walk Lee, and Erik Frisch from the City of Rochester, NY.
Missed the webinar? No worries - watch the video recording and see the presentation slides below.
There's no doubt that bicycling, walking, and public health all go together. But how can biking and walking advocates better engage with the health community to bring robust biking and walking networks to our communities?
On a recent Mutual Aid Call, stakeholders from the public health community shared how advocates and agency staff can communicate, collaborate, and partner with health stakeholders to increase physical activity and wellness.
Over a picturesque sunny weekend, nearly 50 advocates gathered together for the Alliance’s Winning Campaigns Training in Oakland, California hosted by Bike East Bay.
Bike East Bay – winner of Bicycling Magazine People’s Choice Award – is no stranger to winning campaigns. Just last year, Bike East Bay and San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and Bikes on Board received a major win and convinced the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) System to allow bicycle access on trains. Bike East Bay also undertook a major campaign during the November 2012 election to win a local ballot measure – which required two-thirds of the vote to pass – to institute a penny sales tax to win $7.8 billion for transportation in Alameda County. That local ballot measure, unfortunately, fell 700 votes short from winning.
February and March has been a busy month with Advocacy Advance. In addition to all of the great energy at the National Bike Summit and fun at the Alliance’s Advocacy Awards, Advocacy Advance has been on the road. We recently held our first two Navigating MAP-21 Workshops in 2014: the first in Orlando, FL; and most recently in Concord, NH.
Orlando, FL
Advocacy Advance facilitated its 20th workshop in Orlando, FL, with Florida Bicycle Association and MetroPlan Orlando. Harold Barley, Executive Director of MetroPlan Orlando, welcomed the crowd of nearly 50 attendees and emphasized the importance of transportation investments in the Orlando region. Attendees included a diverse audience—representing planners, engineers, advocates, business owners, and local elected officials from cities in the region.
Top: Harold Barley, Executive Director of MetroPlan Orlando, gives the welcome address. Bottom: Attendees walk and roll during the morning's walking break, observing street conditions and applying knowledge about funding programs to improve safety.
Common themes emerged throughout the day. Attendees were concerned about bicycle and pedestrian safety, trail and commuter connections (including to transit), and the nuts and bolts of how to fund and implement a bicycle master plan. The diverse backgrounds of the attendees allowed for spirited group discussions and forming new connections and partnerships among attendees.
The Concord workshop featured great support from elected officials, including a welcome letter from Governor Margaret Hassan, a recorded welcome address from Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and a keynote from Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter. Congresswoman Shea-Porter spoke about her family’s experiences riding a bicycle and walking in their neighborhood and along New Hampshire’s beautiful trails, and the important need for safe infrastructure. Together, the Governor, Senator, and Congresswoman echoed the message for the need for safe and accessible infrastructure for people who bike and walk.
“Expanding opportunities for biking and walking as both transportation and recreation options requires a broad coalition,” said Tim Blagden, Executive Director of BWANH. “By working with partners we will increase awareness of the strong economic and health benefits of these types of projects. BWANH will continue to reach out across the state to involve more businesses, towns, organizations and individuals as we build a state that makes multimodal transportation safe and convenient.”
Where Next?
Advocacy Advance is hitting the road over the next few months, so stay tuned for more recaps and observations from our Navigating MAP-21 Workshops around the country. We hope to catch you at one of our upcoming workshops:
Welcome to the Alliance's weekly roundup of state & local biking & walking advocacy news. Every week, we crawl the blogs of our member organizations and bring you the most interesting tidbits.
SAVE THE DATE for the 2014 Alliance Leadership Retreat, September 5-8 in Laurel Highlands, PA (outside Pittsburgh)
Welcome to the Alliance's weekly roundup of state & local biking & walking advocacy news. Every week, we crawl the blogs of our member organizations and bring you the most interesting tidbits.
Those dollars aren't in Kansas any more: This Kansas city returned a federal grant that was supposed to be used to extend a local trail. And your little dog, too!
Speeding is down more than 90% on streets where Chicago has installed speed cameras.
A new study from Victoria, BC shows that about half of people shopping downtown arrived on foot or by bike. People who biked or walked to shops spent about as much as people who drove or took transit - findings that are consistent with similar past studies.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that North America is going through a walking and bicycling revival.
Prolific bicycle researcher John Pucher and colleagues declared a “bicycling renaissance” back in 2011, but it wasn’t until recently that biking for transportation really gained momentum in the public consciousness. Citi Bike’s bright blue presence in New York is perhaps the most notable example: the new bike sharing system has caught and held the attention of mainstream media, the fashion industry, and television writers.
As a coalition of state and local organizations working to make walking and biking safer and more accessible for everybody, we find these trends pretty exciting. Especially because, in all of specific cases I mentioned above, local advocates played a big role in pushing elected officials and public agencies to make changes to make walking and biking better.
By Liz Murphy, cross-posed from the League of American Bicyclists
Facebook is the place to be if you want to boost your advocacy efforts and build a network of supporters.
Yesterday, the League and the Alliance for Biking & Walking hosted the first in a series of webinars focused on using social media as a way to connect with your communities and bolster your campaigns. First up: Facebook 101.
We defined the basics -- what is a "share" vs. a "like"? -- and we also looked into more complex ways to build your network (creating image memes, for example). We also had a great Q&A session, so thanks to all of you who tuned in live!
Here are all of the slides [PDF], which you can feel free to use and share. Below is the video recording of the webinar. If you missed it, take a look!
Twitter is useful for fueling engagement with your supporters and getting the word out about your issues. But it can also be a helpful tool in another communications arena: media relations.
On a recent webinar with the League of American Bicyclists, we shared tips on how biking and walking advocates can use Twitter to connect with reporters and get active transportation issue in the news. This was the fourth session in a series of social media webinars we're doing together. For background, check out Twitter 101; Facebook 101; and Vine, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr 101.
Check out the recording below, and keep reading for some key takeaways and insights.
A blasphemous idea is taking hold in media relations work: press releases are terrible. See Chris Cassidy’s excellent Prezi for more on this, but the gist is that reporters get so many press releases that may or may not be relevant to their work that the mechanism has become all but useless.
So what’s a communications person to do?
Forget the properly formatted press release blasted out to a thousand media contacts. Instead, focus on relationships. Twitter can help.
Before you even need to blast something out, get to know the reporters who cover the issues you work on. This involves good old-fashioned press tracking, good ol’ email, and Twitter.
I use Talkwalker to track press mentions of the Alliance and Advocacy Advance, then compile them in a spreadsheet that looks like this:
Note that I keep track not only of the article, but also of the author, their email, and their Twitter handle. When a reporter writes a story about our issues, I add their Twitter handle to the Alliance’s private media list – a list I maintain within the Alliance Twitter account. This list is close to the front of my Tweetdeck and I look at it often to see what reporters are talking about and connect when stuff in our wheelhouse comes up.
When you’re pitching something, it’s ideal to have an existing relationship with the person you’re approaching. Be a known quantity to the reporters who cover issues your organization cares about. Introduce yourself – maybe on Twitter! Make plans to grab coffee and ask more about what they’re interested in. Liz had a great suggestion, gleaned from a reporter for an alt-weekly in DC: offer to take a journalist out for a bike ride or walk in a particularly problematic area.
It can help, too, to make it clear to a reporter that you’re sharing their articles. When a story comes up about your organization or your issues, tweet it to your followers and include their handle in the message. This shows the journalist that you’re paying attention and that their work is resonating.
Chris also suggests having a separate press list where you track contact with individual reporters:
Creating press lists is something I end up doing last minute when we have something to release, but it’s certainly smarter to track systematically.
Then, when you do need to release something, consider writing a blog post instead of a press release. Use real-person-speak to write it, not stuffy press release language and odd formatting. Write about the issue the way you would explain it to a friend.
Share the blog post with reporters in your network on Twitter. And do use email – just not a giant, faceless blast. Use language from your blog post to assemble a short email explaining the issue, then customize that message for each of the reporters you want to reach out to. Include a reference or two to their latest work so that they know you’re listening.
This isn’t to say that press releases don’t have a place. Sometimes you need to send out a big, un-personalized email to a lot of press contacts. But those moments should be few and far between. Unless you have a huge report, individualized outreach will probably serve you much better. And even when you do send a big release, breaking out of the press release format is never a bad thing.
What are your tips for using Twitter in media relations? Share them in the comments.
Last year we launched Citi Bike, the largest bike share system in North America, in New York City. Weeks before the system opened to the public, thousands of members had already signed-up, and eagerly awaited the chance to be among the first to take a spin on one of the big blue bikes. Less than a year since Citi Bike opened, our system has seen over 6.7 million trips; during the summer and fall we saw an average of 31,000 trips every day.
Citi Bike has proved a big success in New York City. Photo courtesy NYC Bike Share
There’s no one single thing that guarantees a successful bike share program. Many factors play a role: political leadership, decent bike infrastructure or the commitment to building it, sponsors or charitable foundation support, and an experienced operating company that can be nimble and adaptive are all important.
But having a strong local non-profit organization that is invested in making bike share a success is a crucial piece.
Welcome to the Alliance's weekly roundup of state & local biking & walking advocacy news. Every week, we crawl the blogs of our member organizations and bring you the most interesting tidbits.
Advocates from Bike San Diego, Transportation Alternatives, Bike East Bay, WABA, and WE Bike NYC added 8 pounds to their luggage by winning Alliance Advocacy Awards on Monday night.
On Tuesday, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto publicly nominated Bike Pittsburgh's Scott Bricker to the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission.
The U.S. Department of Transportation recently 
There's no doubt that bicycling, walking, and public health all go together. But how can biking and walking advocates better engage with the health community to bring robust biking and walking networks to our communities?
