MoBikeFed meets with Senator McCaskill's office

Since the National Bike Summit in March, MoBikeFed has been making a more concerted effort to maintain contact with Missouri's 11 representatives and senators in Congress.

Our Congressmembers and their staff have proven to be extraordinarily helpful in moving forward initiatives related to bicycling and walking--local, state, and regional.

For instance, we met with Representative Cleaver's staff and talked about several topics, including access to levee areas for trails. Rep. Cleaver's staff wrote a beautiful letter to several levee districts that has been instrumental in opening a dialogue with them. MoBikeFed has been working with Senator Bond's office on the issue of access across the Missouri River, and Sen. Bond has been able to arrange (and later, defend against attacks on) funding that will help create the first safe bike/ped crossing in the Kansas City area.

Last week, MoBikeFed Executive Director Brent Hugh met with Senator McCaskill's Deputy Regional Director, Kimiko Gilmore.

Gilmore moved to Missouri from New York and so she understands how important walking and bicycling is to the urban fabric--and the many problems that result when we build our cities to be unfriendly to walking and bicycling, as is too often the case in Missouri.

In a 90-minute, wide ranging meeting, we discussed these issues:

• The upcoming vote on the Energy Bill and how walking and bicycling issues could fit into the scope of energy conservation and energy independence
  
• The national Complete Streets amendment that Senator Harkin will certainly re-introduce in the near future.
  
• The Conserve by Bicycle bill
  
• The Bicycle Commuter Act
  
• The issue of bicycle and pedestrian access on major new projects
  
• Trails access on levees (Congress has just acted on a new funding package for numerous levee projects, and congress members have tremendous leverage with levee districts because of the funding these districts need from Congress)
  
• The recent advances in the movement to 'Complete the Katy Trail' from state line to state line

This was a very productive meeting and sets the stage for more cooperation between Missouri's congressional delegation and the Missouri bicycling and walking community.