Another signature moment came in 1996 when some 20 activists from a dozen local bike groups around the country gathered at Thunderhead Ranch in Wyoming.
Jeff Miller, in his first week on the job as executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, was one of them. “That weekend was absolutely transforming,” he said, as the activists bonded and realized how common their problems were, from city to city. Miller said his member groups had the equivalent of about 10 paid staffers in the late 1990s. Now, there are more than 200 – showing how much more professional the movement has become.
Hubsmith, who is now executive director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, cited two other key events that helped produce a muscular bike lobby.
In the late 1990s, the bike industry – spurred on by John Burke, the chairman of Trek Bicycles – formed Bikes Belong and played a key role in pushing through new funding for biking and walking in ISTEA’s successor, the Transportation Efficiency Act of 1998.
And in 2003, the various bike groups – working as one in a coalition called America Bikes – demolished an attempt by conservative Republicans to eliminate funding for the program that provided hundreds of millions of dollars for bike and pedestrian projects.
Of course, it wasn’t all just sharp lobbying. The revitalization of inner cities around North America helped spur interest in alternative forms of transportation – and many people discovered that bikes were a great way to cover relatively short urban trips. The obesity crisis turned the public health community into cheerleaders for integrating activity into peoples’ daily lives. The new buzzword for biking and walking was “active transportation.” And, of course, peak oil and global warming became common concerns over the last decade. In many ways, the bike movement has started to shift. No longer is it a small group of outsiders meeting in the Golden Temple.
Oberstar, who credits bicycling with helping him recover emotionally from the death of his first wife from cancer, now chairs the House Transportation Committee, and cycling activists are hoping to win big boosts in funding for safe routes to school and other bike programs in the next transportation bill. Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who helped create Portland’s bike network when he was on that city’s council, has stitched together a Congressional Bike Caucus of some 160 members.
Janette Sadik-Kahn, the innovative transportation commissioner for New York City, accomplished more in less than three years on the job than bike activists would have once dreamed possible. Barack Obama became the first US president to include bicycling in his transportation platform. His transportation secretary, Raymond LaHood, told me last year on a trip to Portland how impressed he was with the number of cyclists he saw in the city [see our Portland feature, p. 32]. He also praised the city’s growing streetcar and light rail lines and said the way to fix cities was simple: “Take what you’ve done here in Portland and try to replicate it around America. It’s not that complicated.”
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