Advocacy 101: How to take on MoDOT and win--or at least, not lose (Part II)

This article is part of MoBikeFed's Advocacy 101 series, with tips, ideas, tactics, and best practices for bicycle and pedestrian advocacy.

Part II:

In Part I, I talked about the "triangle" of support needed for real consideration of bicycle and pedestrian elements in a MoDOT project: engineering judgement, local elected leaders, and citizens.

When you start, probably none of these elements are on your side. So how to you go about changing this?

First off, get your local bicycle, walking, running, hiking, or parks advocacy group on your side if you can. Talk to them, explain the situation. See if it is something they will formally or informally support. Even if they won't or can't formally support your idea (some organizations just don't or can't do advocacy), they still may be very willing to spread the word among their members when you need help with certain steps (see below). And leaders of these organizations may be personally interested in the issues--potentially among your best allies.

Here are the steps:
 

1. Get 3-5 people to write actual paper/envelope letters in support of the project. Preferably these are people who will actually use the project, they are from your local neighborhood, city, work in the city, walk or bicycle in or near the project, etc. Another option is local bicycle, running, triathlon, hiking, or other similar groups. Organization leaders may be able to write a letter on behalf of their organization, or perhaps just as individuals. Either way, they are likely to be supportive of good projects.
    
2. Have these people send a letter to 3 or 4 people: Your local city council representatives (usually in Missouri each city council district has two representatives), your local mayor, and the MoDOT contact person for this project. The letter can be essentially the same to each person. Personal calls are also effective, perhaps as a follow-up to the letter.
    
3. Then also have maybe 20-30 people email those same people (local politicians plus MoDOT project manager) AND/OR take a petition around the neighborhood and get about that number of people to sign it, then send (or, better, present the petition in person) to those same politicians and MoDOT project manager. Most helpful is to be able to get people to email who can to say, I live close to this, I use it, it is on my route to somewhere (as opposed to people who live 50 miles away and just support the idea in principle). Of course, the more the merrier--if you can get 200 or 2000 people to sign on in support of your project, it can only help. But you can get the ball rolling with even 20 or so.
    
4. Now (or some time during this process) call your local city council rep. and talk on the phone or (better) get a meeting. With this many letters/emails/petitions signed it starts to become easy for the city council member to be on your side. Your council member's job is to represent the people in the district, and that is you and your neighbors. So if you can mobilize citizens in support you are likely to find the council member becoming supportive.
    
5. Of course you are better off if you could get BOTH your council reps on board. Now, to MoDOT, it starts to look like a united front.
    
6. If your first council member isn't that helpful you might move to the second, or the mayor, or another council member from a nearby district. Other possibilities are your state representative and senator, county commissioners, parks board members, etc. If you know that politics of your local government you may be able to first approach a known bike/ped supporter who has influence with other council members, and then that person can be very helpful in talking with colleagues and getting them on board with the proposal.
    
7. Have those council members and/or other supporters write a letter to MoDOT supporting the idea of the project and also call the MoDOT project manager and verbally express support. They do this all the time so they know how. However you can help them a lot by sending them a sample letter template with the basic information, facts, and figures, that they can personalize and adapt.
    
8. Figure out who represents your city in your region's Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) or Regional Planning Commission (RPC). Your council member should know that. Get your council member to help you get this person on board with the project (more meetings and/or phone calls may be required). Now have this person (city rep on the MPO or RPC) write a letter & call MoDOT expressing support for the project and also start working within the MPO's or RPC's process to build support for your project.
    
9. You might even have to go as far as having your city council member get the city council to pass a resolution or take some other formal action in favor of the project.
    
10. At this point, anything can happen. You are starting to have 2 out of 3 legs of the triangle leaning toward your side of the issue. You may or may not get the project in the end. You might end up with some kind of "compromise" solution that is better than what you have now but not really as good as what you wanted. But at least you have opened up the gate that, previously, was shut up tight.

Most important of all, keep in mind that advocacy is about building relationships--that's why you need to work to get those community members and community leaders on your side. Yes, you'll need those facts and figures, too, as well as a lot of humor and a little humility.  But all the facts and figures in the world won't do you any good if people in the community, and community leaders, don't support the idea.

Gradually build up the web of people in the community supporting bicycle and pedestrian facilities, and you'll see MoDOT--or any other similar agency--change direction, sometimes dramatically.

It takes time and effort, but in the end it does work and it does pay off.

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Photo credit: Waiting for MoDOT by zaskem on FlickR, under a Creative Commons license.