Thunderhead Alliance Releases First Benchmarking Report

The Thunderhead Alliance has released its initial report from its North American bicycling benchmarking project for 14 states and 15 cities. Thunderhead is the first to take on the daunting task of a comprehensive data collection process for bicycling mode share, crashes, funding and organizational capacity. As the national coalition of state and local bicycle advocacy organizations, Thunderhead completed this report, with support from Planet Bike and the National Bicycle Dealers Association, as part of their 50 States/50 Cities Project. Results from the project will help Thunderhead focus their resources in areas where their work is needed most.

State and local bicycle advocacy has reached a level of sophistication that requires leaders of Thunderhead organizations and their partners to understand where their achievements and struggles fit in comparison to the rest of the continent. Leaders of Thunderhead organizations assisted with this first report and are in the perfect position to not only help to gather data, but to deliver results back to their transportation officials and request better performance for bicycling and data collection.

Never before have we had at our fingertips comparison data that can guide our efforts, said Sue Knaup, Executive Director of the Thunderhead Alliance. We can now develop our trainings and materials in a way that sets bicycling environment expectations to the highest level achieved and then work to raise the bar even higher. The benchmarking project also collects organizational data so that Thunderhead can focus their resources for high standards of effectiveness and sustainability of their member organizations.

The next goal for Thunderhead s on-going benchmarking project is the compilation of data sets from all 50 states and the 50 top population U.S. cities. Thunderhead is actively seeking funding and partners to assist with this next big step that will set the baseline for the evolution of this project. The next report will also contain pedestrian data sets as well as refinements as partners step forward to offer their expertise and assistance.

Find the report at: http://www.biketraffic.org/benchmarking. For more information on the Thunderhead Alliance, visit: https://www.thunderheadalliance.org/.

For more information or to offer assistance, please contact Sue Knaup, Executive Director: 928-541-9841, sue [at] thunderheadalliance.org