One Street News

April 2009

Vol. 2, Issue 4

European Whirlwind
Resources Highlights – >The Bicycle: Vehicle to Health and Social Equality
Hot Topics – Messages That Cause Change

European Whirlwind

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

On Friday, May 1st I will start my annual trip to Europe, this time lasting just two and a half weeks. I usually like to spend at least a month in Europe to ensure I connect with as many partners as possible. But this year, with so much going on with One Street, I realized I needed to cut my trip a bit short. I also have the luxury of connecting with many of our European partners in one place – at the Velo-city conference in Brussels May 12-15.

Before Velo-city, I will travel to Prague and Budapest to meet with our partners who are interested in starting Social Bike Business programs in their cities. Both of these cities have topnotch ingredients for forming a Social Bike Business program – profound lack of affordable, quality transportation bicycles; few bike shops that serve the needs of disadvantage people; and a diverse group of partners eager to tackle this problem.

I will be back in the office on May 18th plugging all of these connections into our programs so that all of our partners can help each other exceed their goals for increasing bicycling. I hope to see many of you at Velo-city. Stop by the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) booth to track me down. I’ll be helping distribute buttons and brochures for their campaign against the dangerization of bicycling through helmet promotions and mandatory helmet laws.

Resources Highlights – The Bicycle: Vehicle to Health and Social Equality

With One Street’s Social Bike Business program taking hold around the world, we thought a fitting resource to point you to this month is this paper by Dr. Paul Simpson who reveals disturbing concepts associated with the compromised status of cyclists: http://www.onestreet.org/pdf/Bicycle_Vehicle_to_Health_Social_Equality.pdf

Hot Topics – Messages That Cause Change

Over the last several months, one of the most common issues we’ve tackled with organization leaders who call or email us for assistance has been defining their message. As professional advocates for bicycling we have learned that we must know our subject down to the finest details, be able to cite the exact study and author that shows those details, and argue for bicycling’s place in a complex political environment. That’s all well and good when the right ears are turned our direction. But too often, those ears are deaf to our cause and bombarding them with facts and data will clog them even more.

So, how do we grab the attention of those who can make the changes that will increase bicycling in our communities? First we must know what resonates with our audience.

One campaign we worked with this month was for improved bike parking on a university campus. The campaign leaders had been using a message based on the effect of the existing, badly designed bike racks on bicyclists and their bikes. But through our discussions we found that the university administrators were reacting to the results of the bad bike racks by banning bikes from buildings. In other words, the officials with the power to make the change saw improper bike parking as the problem, not the bike racks. The campaign leaders changed their message to show that quality, well-built bike racks will cause bicyclists to park their bikes properly.

Another call for assistance dealt with refining a campaign message that had become overburdened with factoids. One of the campaign leaders was scheduled to appear on a radio talk show to present the latest successes with bicycle advocacy in their area. During our discussion we realized the best outcome from this radio show would be that listeners would learn that requesting bicycle and pedestrian improvements was easy and that they would make these requests to their officials. The audience for the message was the general public. That meant that all the jargon about government agency roles, the differences between paths and lanes, and the maze of funding potentials had to go. The message became why bicycle and pedestrian provisions must be provided for the 30% of residents who do not drive, that such provisions are a right within the public right-of-way, and that citizens can find all the details for making a request by calling this phone number (repeated several times during the interview).

But not all campaigns can be packaged into a slick message. Another campaign we worked with this month involved no fewer than three government agencies in charge of where the bikeway would be built, each of which had a different concern for the corridor. In such cases, you may have to get creative with your message delivery.

For instance, the campaign One Street has been helping ECF with against the “dangerization” of cycling through helmet promotions and mandatory helmet laws strikes at numerous imbedded misconceptions that ignite emotions. Also, the campaign is combating brilliant, though false messaging, so it is automatically at a message disadvantage. Our solution has been to allow our message to be more complex and informative by inspiring people to at least question helmet propaganda. We realized one of our best opportunities for an audience comes from uninformed people who like to taunt helmet-less cyclists. We’re tapping that tendency at Velo-city with buttons that read: “Ask me why I cycle without a helmet” and brochures that include the in depth arguments against shock-horror helmet propaganda. Stay tuned to find out how this unusual campaign messaging effort turns out.