Bicyclists--what has MoBikeFed been doing for YOU lately?

What has MoBikeFed been doing to improve safety and access for on-road bicycling in Missouri?

• We send out dozens of letters every year to bad drivers as part of the "motorist contact letter" program--limited only by the fact that more bicyclists don't report more incidents. Based on the responses we occasionally get back from the motorists contacted, this is a very effective program.
   
• We are involved in the Safe Routes to School program because this program is designed to make entire communities safer, friendlier, and more inviting for bicycling and walking. It is designed to get cities, public works departments, law enforcement, and people who support walking and bicycling within a community to sit down and start talking about how to make that community safer for everyone.
   
• We have conducted LCI seminars that more than doubled the amount of League Cycling Instructors in Missouri and are working to encourage a far greater increase in the amount of bicyclist education across the state. One reason for our involvement in the Safe Routes to School program is that it gives us the opportunity to incorporate good, accurate "effective cycling" type bicycle education information in classes taught to students in hundreds/thousands of schools across the state.
   
• We have supported the Ride of Silence in Missouri since its inception. The Ride of Silence has drawn public and media attention to the issue of roadway safety for bicyclists and has helped galvanize support in the bicycling community for making changes for the better.
   
• MoBikeFed has assumed a very active role to call attention to the unequal treatment of bicyclists as road users in specific situations--for instance, after Mike Brady was killed while racing Bike Across Missouri in 2000 and after the murder of bicycle commuter Robert Osborn in 2005.
   
• An effort organized by Federation leaders was responsible for the entire "bicycling" chapter/sections of the official Missouri Driver's Guide in the 1990s--before that time there were NO mentions of bicycling in the guide at all. I personally wrote approximately 20 pages of updates/revisions/suggestions to update the Driver Guide in 2003 and most of them were adopted. This is the driver guide that is used to teach & test people who are receiving a MO driver's license. You can see some excerpts here.
   
• We have been working with MODOT for over 10 years on rumble strip and drain grate issues. Unlike issues like the Katy Trail connection this tends to be low grade and low visibility work--something we're in for the long haul and in which we are able to get one little change here, another two years later, and so on.
  
  
• We have been working with MoDOT, again for over 10 years, to gradually get them to adopt "routine accommodation" of bicyclists on all new and reconstructed roads. Gradually they are getting there. You can see some of the results on p. 21 and p. 24 of this MoDOT policy guide (PDF).
   
• We have worked with MoDOT to develop the first ever Missouri statewide bicycle and pedestrian plan. Almost all of the bicycle side of this plan deals with on-road bicycling (since building roads is what MoDOT does). It addresses all aspects, from education, to enforcement, to policy, to road design, and so on. Again, it is a step in the direction of creating this "sea change" of attitudes. Once this statewide bicycle plan is officially adopted I believe we will see an acceleration of changes that will be helpful for bicyclists.
   
• In the Kansas City area we have worked to adopt the first policy requiring bicyclist accommodation on major river bridges. Before this there has never been an official policy. It will be a model policy across the state and for other situations besides major rivers where there is a "pinch point".

MOBikeFed has been instrumental in passing two major pieces of bicycle safety legislation in the past ten years. These are the only bicycle-related laws that have been passed in Missouri since the early 80s. Passing each of these laws took a coordinated effort and hundreds of hours of work by MoBikeFed members and leaders over the course of years. In addition we have fended off several attempts at introducing dangerous and mis-guided legislation.

• During the 1990s our major piece of legislation repealed the "mandatory sidepath law", which required bicyclists to leave the roadway and ride on the adjoining bicycle path if such a path were available. In addition the law introduced several improvements in Missouri's bicycle law, such as allowing bicyclists to ride abreast when not impeding traffic and requiring bicyclists to ride 'as far right as safe' which is an improvement over the oft-misunderstood 'ride as far right as practicable'.
   
• We stopped legislation that would have required bicyclists to ride against traffic.
   
• We stopped legislation that would have required bicyclists to ride single file.
   
• We stopped an attempt to reinstate the mandatory sidepath law in 1998.
   
• Stopped several other pieces of dangerous or misguided legislation, usually without fanfare and before the bills reached the public eye or created controversy.
   
• Of course one of our major accomplishments in recent years was the passing of the 2005 bicycle safety legislation. It is mainly concerned with on road bicycling. We worked on this legislation for over three years and proposed a number of stronger versions, including jail terms for offenders. After several tries it became clear what had a chance of passing and what had no chance at all (again--that "sea change" of attitude needed). What is left, though, is very good:
  
  - Motorists must pass bicyclists at a safe distance. This has already led to convictions.
  
  - Bike lanes defined in a cyclist-friendly way rather than anti-bicycle way (ie, none of what too many other states have, where bicyclists must ride within the lane, etc.)
  
  - Bicyclists allowed to use shoulder but NOT required to (a legal opinion by MoDOT lawyers had held that under previous Missouri law, bicyclists were not legally allowed to operate on road shoulders).
  
  - Allow right turn to be signaled with right arm - this common and common-sense practice by many cyclists, more easily understood by motorists than raising the opposite arm, is now legal.

See more articles about what MoBikeFed has done for you over the years here.