One Street News

December-January 2018

Vol. 11, Issue 1

  1. Bosnia, Puerto Rico, and DR Congo Tap High-level On-call Support
  2. How Washington, D.C., Built a Bike Boom
  3. Resources - Designing for All Ages & Abilities: High-Comfort Bicycle Facilities
  4. Resources – Use Fallen Leaves to Show Better Road Design
  5. Hot Topics - Think Biking with Kids Is Reckless? You're Brainwashed.

Bosnia, Puerto Rico, and DR Congo Tap High-level On-call Support

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

One Street’s On-call Support program invites leaders of bicycle organizations around the world to contact us for assistance with their initiatives and organizations. Most ask brief questions easily answered with a particular resource. Every once in a while I am contacted for much more intensive assistance such as conducting trainings or guiding organizations through restructuring. Recently, I’ve been assisting with three such intensive efforts at the same time.

I’ve worked with our colleagues at the Center for Environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina for many years, including offering resources for their successful repeal of their national mandatory bicycle helmet law. Recently, I’ve been working with them to develop a workshop series we hope to conduct later this year if the project is funded. This project will be much like our workshop series in Eastern Ukraine in 2016, which guided leaders of twelve sustainable transport campaigns through a multi-day training followed by site visits in their cities. Watch a slide show about that project here. We’ll hear back about our funding proposal in May. Fingers crossed!

In Puerto Rico, I’ve been working with our colleagues at La BC Kleta for several years, helping with their creative advocacy efforts and offering advice. But when Hurricane Maria hit the island, we began working on ways they could tap that disaster for long-term change in transportation policy. The upcoming Velo-city conference, to be held in June in Rio de Janeiro, is an extraordinary opportunity for La BC Kleta to tell their story of bicycle advocacy struggles before and after the storm as well as connect with new partners. With electricity down, I worked with them through spotty emails and Facebook messages to piece together their abstract and submit it on time. Just this week we received word that their director, Julio Santiago, has met all deadlines and is now officially part of the program. Now we just have to help them raise the funds needed for Julio to attend! If you have ideas, please contact me at sue{at}onestreet.org.

Last summer, I was contacted by the founder and president of Organisation Humanitaire pour l'Éducation et le Développement (OHED) in DR Congo for help with their bicycle program. We started with some organization development tasks and I am very proud to say, OHED will launch their first website soon! They are a phenomenal organization. Between 2014 and 2017, they have helped over 9,000 Congolese out of poverty and through other struggles associated with the turmoil in their country, without any help from outside organizations. Their more than 500 members and 3,000 volunteers have done all the work to this point. Once their website is up and their story is posted for the world to see, we can circle back on finding ways to grow their bicycle program. It’s been a long journey with them, but such a rewarding one.

The requests for help from these three organizations to One Street’s On-call Support program shows clearly why this is our core program and the best way we have found to assist leaders of bicycle organizations. All they have to do is ask!

How Washington, D.C., Built a Bike Boom

Cycling has taken off in the American capital. Nearly 17,000 cyclists regularly rode their bikes to work in Washington, D.C. in 2016, according to Census estimates, which is about 5 percent of the city’s commuters. That’s nearly triple the “mode share” it had in 2006, putting it in second place on the list of top biking cities in the U.S., just behind famously gear-friendly Portland, Oregon. Read more in this recent CityLab article.

Resources - Designing for All Ages & Abilities: High-Comfort Bicycle Facilities

Too often, transportation departments cut corners when adding bicycle facilities to their projects. They see them as “amenities” or “enhancements,” not actual transportation infrastructure. This new design guide from NACTO here in the U.S. does a great of showing why high-quality, high-comfort bicycle facilities are necessary in order to invite the most vulnerable cyclists to choose to pedal for their journeys: Designing for All Ages & Abilities.

Resources – Use Fallen Leaves to Show Better Road Design

Last fall, residents in a Toronto neighborhood took road design into their own hands (and rakes). Using only chalk and leaves to pinch the 28-foot-wide road, they revealed a surplus surface area of 2,000 square feet, which could be transformed into a parklette, new sidewalks, and safer crossings. Read their story and see the cool photos here.

Hot Topics - Think Biking with Kids Is Reckless? You're Brainwashed.

In less enlightened countries than the Netherlands and Denmark, parents who dare bike with their kids find that the greatest danger they face is accusations of recklessness from people they pass. If you have suffered such attacks, you’ll find some great comebacks in this sharp tongued, but insightful article from Bike Snob.