Executive Director Report, April 2007

This report was presented at MoBikeFed's April 2007 Board meeting ad summarizes some of my activities in February, March, and April 2007.

None of these activities could have been done alone--and the help of board members and others has made most of them possible. Since this is my report as Executive Director I have emphasized my own role, but please keep in mind that everything listed here is a cooperative effort, often among numerous organizations and individuals.

Brent Hugh
29 April 2007

Support from the Board and Members
I have appreciated very much the support from all the board members, especially since our last meeting.

In particular, our ongoing effort to spread more of the work, delegate certain responsibilities, and engage board members to work cooperatively with me on many projects has been very successful. We need to continue to work in this direction and more fully develop our board and our organization to spread the workload so that we can engage more people and avoid overloading any one individual.

I know everyone's ability to contribute time & energy varies from time to time as your situation changes. But I really do appreciate whatever you are able to contribute towards making MoBikeFed work--whether it is a little or a lot. You are the backbone of MBF.

Thank you!

Bike Summit
This was a very good event and makes me think we need to make advocacy with our national representatives a bigger part of our agenda. For one thing, the national people can often carry a lot of weight in helping us with local issues--examples this time around where access to levees for trails and helping with the Katy Trail connection. Representatives from districts affected by these issues were VERY happy to write letters in support of our position.

I am still working to follow up with the people we met (mostly aides) and with some of the things we agreed to do, like draft letters for them, provide them information and so on. The follow up was (and is) a lot of work and is still ongoing.

MODOT Long Range Plan
I have been involved as a "citizen participant" in MoDOT's Long-Range Plan throughout the entire planning process. The final version of the Long-Range Plan has been issued and will soon be approved by the state highways commission.

We had a very good meeting with several people to draft out MOBikeFed's response to the long range plan.

We are going to ask for a meeting with top MoDOT official(s) and basically say, "How can we partner with you/help you to make the vision in the LRTP come to fruition in the bike/ped area. And how can we help you present MoDOT to MO citizens in the best possible light so they will support the changes that need to be made."

MO Safe Routes to School
No progress/no response as yet on our approx. $350,000 worth of proposals to do work on statewide programs for MO's SRTS program. This may come this summer after the (very time-consuming) SRTS grant awards cycle is complete.

The SRTS steering committee will meet in Jeff. City next week to score the approx. 65 SRTS proposals that were submitted.

There is an overage of "infrastructure" proposals and an under-age of "education & outreach" proposals. So for the next round (applications starting in about Nov2007) please encourage people to put in education & outreach proposals for SRTS.

On-road bicycle accommodation vs. sidepaths
More and more we have been seeing MoDOT & local DOTs willing to build paths along roads but not build anything to accommodate on-road bicyclists. In the KC area this has been coming to a head in regard to proposed projects on Hwy 150 & Hwy 45 as well as in regards to decisions about funding priorities for Enhancements & CMAQ funds.

Enhancements & CMAQ funding & local committees
It has come to our attention that local Enhancements committees sometimes have no bicyclists or representatives of organized bicycling groups on them.

In a similar vein, many local Enhancements committees won't consider, or won't seriously consider education & outreach activities for bike/ped (though this is specifically allowed in the federal legislation).
Also the direction statewide Enhancements funding is being spent (100% on "welcome centers") is a continuing issue.

Hiring & project selection
I recently sat on committees to choose the contractors for Columbia's pilot project education & outreach efforts (approx. $2 to $2.5 million award) and to select KCMO's new Bicycle/pedestrian coordinator. The Kansas City bike/ped coordinator hiring decision should be finalized very soon now.

Overall in the past 12 months or so I have sat on committees that have made decisions on spending or awarding grants of value totalling approximately $20 million dollars.

KCMO Citywide Trails Plan
I am on the Steering Committee for the Kansas City "Citywide Trails Plan". This is going well so far. KCMO need an on-street bicycle plan to go with it.
MARC CMAQ Committee & TE Committee.

I have been on the Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality committee for the Mid-America Regional Council and 2 important committee workgroups for about the past year. The committee decided on grants of somewhere over $10 million in that time. This has been an invaluable experience in learning how the CMAQ & TE processes work (and don't work).

I am an alternate on the Transportation Enhancements (TE) committee and just received that appointment. The TE committee will award about $10 million in projects this spring.

Ideally as the representative of the statewide bicycle group I would sit on statewide CMAQ and TE committees. However, these committees currently do not exist! So for now the best way to become
familiar with the issues involved with these primary sources of funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects in Missouri is to be involved with local groups as the opportunity presents itself.

Since there is (essentially) no statewide CMAQ or TE project we as MBF need to become involved with the local TE & CMAQ efforts & then spread what we have learned statewide.

Honestly much of the TE & CMAQ money spent statewide is not spent as effectively as it could. The reason is that (for various reasons) the money tends to be spent on on small, disconnected, ineffective local projects. Without spending ANY more money we could increase the effectiveness of these projects at least 100% if we directed the money towards higher quality projects and put the emphasis on connectivity.

In KC we have been having trouble with many low-quality projects submitted and high-quality projects rarely submitted. Almost all CMAQ & TE projects are trails. Trails are fine but we don't have the right mix of trails vs. on-street projects. It is about 99% trails. It could be more like 50% trails and 50% on-road bicycle projects. The on-road projects tend to have a greate impact because they connect to more destinations and thus receive greater use.

Even worse, about 1/3 of the trails proposals are "sidepaths" that simply are not good projects. These are trail projects that parallel major roadways. In essence they are wide sidewalks. Because of the increased danger at intersections, the wide sidewalk projects are rarely good bicycle facilities.

Also there is not enough emphasis on connectivity. We end up with little disconnected trails segments everywhere. The most important segments are also difficult and expensive, so no one wants to tackle them. In the ideal world, the federal TE and CMAQ dollars would be used to tackle the difficult and expensive but very important connecting points. Then local governments could take the initiative to complete the system by building routine (and far less exp ensive) connections between the difficult points.
Enhancements funds are limited at $500,000/project which severely limits the effectiveness in helping solve the most difficult problems (such as river bridges, freeway bridges, etc.).

In KC we are making incremental improvements to the awards processes that I believe will make substantial improvements in quality of projects submitted and awarded.

Kansas City Climate Project Plan
I served on the transportation committee for KC's new Climate Protection Plan, along with some other MBF folks & several other bike/ped advocates. Several measures important to bike/ped were adopted. This has the potential to have a major impact on planning and priorities in Kansas City over the next decades.

800 Bridges project
MoDOT will soon let a contract to replace about 800 key bridges statewide. This could be very important in improving bicycle/pedestrian connectivity in key areas. MoDOT is working to choose only "noncontroversial" bridges for this project. If a certain bridge has design issues or will need special individualized attention it will most likely be omitted from the 800 Bridges project.

There has been no progress on this issue on our part since last board meeting.

Our next step will be to write a letter to project leaders outlining the bicycle/pedestrian issues with these bridges and asking for information.

Legislation
Rep. Sutherland's bike trails bill was set back by political infighting but is back on track. As with all bills @ this time, whether it passes or not will depend on the schedule plus chaos or its lack, not the merits.

The Tour of MO Month (Sept) proclamation was signed by the Governor.
The Tour of MO resolution was introduced by Rep. Sutherland. This may be passed next week.

Bike Month Resolution was introduced by Rep. Sutherland. It may pass next week.

MO Advocacy Day
This is coming together well for May 14th in conjunction with the Jeff. City visit of John Howard, the "Babe Ruth of Cycling" from Springfield.

Tour of Missouri
I have accepted the position as statewide volunteer coordinator for the tour. This will require making some trips around the state to do the training about 2-3 weeks prior to the tour, then spending the whole week of the tour overseeing the volunteers. Also there is a "grass roots promotion" effort that will go on and I will be involved with it. Details on that are a bit sketchy now.

Kansas City Riverfront Heritage Trail
I am on the board of this and it has turned out to be a very profitable partnership. Darby Trotter, the President & CEO of RHT, has been an invaluable partner in our effort to make bike/ped connections across the Missouri River and other initiatives of statewide importance.

Kansas City Elections
The "Kansas City Coalition for Walking and Bicycling", an ad hoc group that included MBF board members Laurie and Eric and a whole group of other interested people from the community, developed the candidate questionnaires, rated the candidates, and issued candidate recommendations. Several organizations, including MoBikeFed, were represented in this coalition.

I was able to contribute in one small way, by working on election day. I had set aside that day to work for Russ Johnson's campaign, because he worked very hard for us over 18 months or so to get the Paseo Bridge bike/ped issue moving. They ended up needing my help for only a few hours so the rest of the time I worked as a "poll worker" distributing copies of the bike/ped candidate recommendations. I thought this was a very effective thing to do and it didn’t hurt that I met several candidates during the course of the day & they were very interested in what Jonathan & I were doing. Being visibly out there working to educate voters about our issues and bike/ped friendly candidates definitely made an impression.
The benefits of becoming involved in the election like this only became evident after the election was over. We should look at how we can do something similar to this in the statewide elections next time around--perhaps by targeting a handful of key races. As we discussed via email, taking a stand for a certain candidate actually raised our standing both with our recommended candidates and with the others. Far from making enemies, it helped cement the status of the bike/ped community as players in the electoral process. It was win/win all around.

Cooperation with Board Members in Project since last Board Meeting
These projects that we discussed at last board meeting were completed with help and cooperation from one or more board members

#2 Write a letter to Sen. Bond (Eric)
Complete--Eric gave me great feedback & we got this done soon after last meeting.

#3 Spring Safety Press Release (Levi)
We will do this now as a "Bike Month" press release.

#4 Write an annual report for the foundation (Fred)
Complete--very well done I thought. This became part of the application for MO Employees Charitable Campaign. We have not yet heard whether our application was accepted. Fred did a large share of work with respect to the application.

#5 Draft a letter to the attny general (Eric)
This hasn't come to the top of the priority list yet--but soon, maybe towards the end of May we can tackle it. This letter will ask the Attorney General to give some opinions about the interpretation of several laws as they relate to bicyclists and pedestrians.

#6 Chair a committee to draft legislative language for our platform (Eric)
For now Eric is taking the lead on legislative-related things like the Advocacy Day. This is working well from my perspective. As soon as the legislative session is done we need to convene a committee to start developing legislative language for 2008.

#7 Find a calendar editor (Laurie)
Laurie suggested Bob Omer (KC area) and he has been doing a great job so far. This is probably a 1-2 hr/week job, and a very important one. The online calendar is probably getting 20,000 or so "visits" every month.

We should look for more "little jobs" like this--it’s a great way to get people involved with the organization without requiring the larger time commitment of being a board members.

#8 Take charge of Advocacy Event Program
This program has been moving forward, with about 7 or 8 events now online as Advocacy Events that donate $1/rider to us. Now the Mid-America Chapter of the MS Bike Ride will support MoBikeFed as an advocacy event starting in 2008.

#10 Spearhead partnership between MBF/Ultramax (Joe)
From my perspective this partnership has been going very well. Fred with perhaps some help from Caryn will man an MBF booth @ Ultramax's upcoming Race for Sight expo. They will put our info in every goodie bag (about 650).

My impression is, Ultramax is a very good, very well run organization and a very good partner for MoBikeFed.

#11 Find a chair for BikeMo (Dave)
We have worked to identify a chair for BikeMO in 2007 but so far have not found a volunteer. Dave will continue for 2007 as necessary. We ought to look for someone to come in for 2007 to "learn the ropes" then be in a position to take over in 2008. Since we are not a "ride" or "event" driven organization, we should look into the possibility of working with an event organizer, perhaps UltraMax, to operate the "nuts and bolts" of the ride.

#12 Find a person to contribute news & online content
Randy and Eric have agreed to do this. We also have one or two others who we can ask. Ideally we will have several reliable people from different parts of the state contributing to the news and other areas of the web site. That way we maintain a statewide perspective. This is also an easy way to engage people as MoBikeFed volunteers--posting a news story or two each week can take as little as 15 minutes.

Open positions
These are great opportunities to engage MoBikeFed members and supporters to help MoBikeFed and the cause of bicycle advocacy in Missouri. Some of these are small jobs, just an hour or two a month. Others require a more significant time commitment.

1. Vice President
2. Volunteer Coordinator
3. Chair BikeMO
4. News/online content contributors
5. Members of legislative committee

If you are interested in helping MOBikeFed with any of these jobs, or would like to contribute your time in any other way, please contact director[at]mobikefed.org for more details.

Thank you!
Thanks again to all board members and to all members and supporters of MoBikeFed who make our advocacy work possible.

None of the work I have done in the past several months could have been accomplished without the cooperation of many people.