One Street News

Spring 2022

Vol. 15, Issue 1

1. Ukrainian Colleagues Charge Ahead with Bicycle Initiatives
2. Velo-city Presentation on Bosnian Project Inspired by Ukraine
3. Resources – How the Philippines Built 500km of Bike Lanes in Less Than a Year
4. Hot Topics – The Good and Bad of Bicycling Life in Bogotá, Colombia
5. Hot Topics – Texas Business Owner Suing Against Parking Requirements

Ukrainian Colleagues Charge Ahead with Bicycle Initiatives

We’ve been following the Facebook posts of our Ukrainian colleagues since the start of the war and every day we are uplifted by their enthusiasm. Even their initial posts, shadowed by shock and horror, included ideas for rebuilding. Now, their visions are coming true as local governments gear up to create better streets and neighborhoods than they had before.

Just prior to the war, U-Cycle, the bicycle association for Ukraine, had completed their three-year strategic plan. Three weeks into the war, one of their leaders posted that after victory, and adjusting their plan a little, they are looking forward to rebuilding the greatest country in the world.

One week ago, on April 26, U-Cycle signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine to integrate bicycle safety education into Ukrainian school education. You can read their article on their website here.

Talk about inspiration! Now, when any of us hit difficult times with our bicycle initiatives, we’ll know we have nothing to complain about.

If you would like to help the Ukrainian war effort, U-Cycle has also listed recommended places to donate here. For U.S. donors, the first one, Savelife, might be the easiest because they accept credit cards.

Velo-city Presentation on Bosnian Project Inspired by Ukraine

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

On June 14, during the first breakout sessions of the Velo-city conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I will tell the uplifting story of our project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Starting with the cautious idea, developed with our Bosnian colleagues at Center for Environment in 2017, I will show how the project carefully engaged community and environmental activists in this war-battered country. Through our campaign planning training, these activists found the steps they needed to succeed with positive change.

That first training, in 2018, set the stage for Phase II in 2021 when our trainees far exceeded our expectations. As of this writing, I am pondering how to capture the depth of this project’s story, which was originally inspired by our campaign planning project in Eastern Ukraine in 2016.

If you will be attending Velo-city, you can email me to ensure we connect: sue{at}onestreet.org. Or catch me at my session.

Resources – How the Philippines Built 500km of Bike Lanes in Less Than a Year

The Philippines was not the only place where people took up bicycling during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it might be the place that responded best to these new cyclists. Commuters and others made the shift in order to avoid crowded public transit. In less than a year, advocates and government agencies partnered to build 500 kilometers of new bike lanes to encourage them to keep riding. Read how they did it here.

Hot Topics – The Good and Bad of Bicycling Life in Bogotá, Colombia

Our colleague, Chris Morfas, former executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, spent the past seven years in Bogotá, Colombia. Read his reflections as a bicycle activist in this often-referenced bicycling city.

Hot Topics – Texas Business Owner Suing Against Parking Requirements

Parking requirements have destroyed more land than perhaps any other land-use policy. In the United States, they are based on archaic and never-proven guesswork by traffic engineers in the 1950s resulting in the oceans of empty asphalt seen from the air above any U.S. city. Bicycle and community advocates often campaign to override these unfounded policies, but rarely succeed because the mindset of forced free parking is so entrenched. This spring, an unlikely advocate, might just gain the traction needed to turn the tide.

Azael Sepulveda is suing the city of Pasadena, Texas over its requirement that his auto body shop add 23 parking spaces he insists he doesn't need and can't afford. Read the rest of the story here.