Next question is from @meganL about national cycling advocacy organizations:
Q3. What advocacy item would you like the League of American Bicyclists (or whatever your national/local cycle advocacy group is) to add to their lobbying agenda?
@ascentale@meganL#BikeNite: A3. As a utilitarian cyclist (newbie) the things I see right now most missing in our community are multi-use trails/paths/shortcuts between neighborhoods, and bicycle racks. No idea if organizations are advocating for them... I just know it's annoying there's not a way to get a bicycle from point "A" to point "B" in many places without fighting some busy streets, where even bicycle lanes are iffy. (mostly, we have a lot of long straightaway roads in our suburb where cars are going 55-60mph 😬 -- even with a painted bicycle lane it's not very safe.)
@ai6yr@ascentale@meganL oooh, yes, bicycle parking is a good one! Almost no business around here has a bike rack and I'm always shocked that when they're developing new shopping malls and stuff they don't just take one car parking space and fill it with racks so you could get like 10 bikes in there plus a few cargo bikes spaces on the ends. Having someone advocating for municipalities to include this in the requirements to get development permits would be amazing.
@ascentale A3. Among things I DON'T see them already doing, it would be that all cycle infrastructure has to be beyond bare minimum ADA accessibility, and that all mobilityshare programs have to have accessible cycle options offered accessibly.
But to do this well, we need cycle advocacy orgs to make themselves accessible and for disabled cyclists within these orgs to be actively invited into leadership (and more disabled cyclists to find orgs welcoming accessible places to join).
A3 #BikeNite it seems like every politician and even most drivers "support bicycling" but what's lacking is the connected low-stress infrastructure to get people of all ages and abilities from all points A to all points B by bike. DOTs' bike plans are being built on like a 200-year timeline and #CompleteStreets are never going to happen before the climate extincts us unless we do #TacticalUrbanism and network-level reprogramming of space that's effectively reserved for cars
It doesn't have to be expensive, just trim cut-thru car traffic out of segments of the 10x-redundant carway network until there's finally 1.0+ bikeway network that actually works for kids riding to school, moms biking to groceries and errands, grandmas on trikes, bankers on the way to a meeting, and whatever other "indicator species" you can imagine of biking-as-normalcy that's missing from the current ridership.
A3. (Oof, sorry about the hashtag typo in the original post)
I'd love it if they could convince more elected officials to ride. Not just for a recreational ride, but to get get to work, run an errand, etc. I feel that it would help them make better decisions if they could understand better a lived experience.
@ascentale@meganL A3: I'd personally like all cycling safety orgs to advocate for safe and well-connected cycling infrastructure, and to NOT advocate for anything that promotes vehicular cycling. It is a fine line because some of the VC techniques, such as taking / releasing the lane, are necessary to ride safely in much of North America where cycling infrastructure is scarce, but I believe those can be taught as safe cycling techniques without mentioning VC. #BikeNite
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