Wednesday at the National Bike Summit

The National Bike Summit continued today in Washington, D.C. As I mentioned yesterday, Missouri has its largest contingent ever. We got a definite count today: 11 Missourians representing these organizations:

Missouri Bicycle Federation, St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation, Great Rivers Greenway, Let's Go KC, PedNet Coalition, Parkland Cyclists, KanBikeWalk, and the City of Kansas City, Missouri.

Also I found out, there *is* a representative here from Kansas--Dan from the Sunflower Bike Shop in Lawrence.

Tomorrow we are going to visit the congressional offices.

One of the bills we will be talking about is the newly introduced "Complete Streets Bill" that has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Harkin. Coincidentally, our Missouri Complete Streets Bill is coming for a hearing before the Parks and Waterways committee tomorrow as well.

A few interesting tidbits from today's sessions:

* On average it takes 7.5 years between the time a bill is introduced and when it is passed (if it does pass, of course)

* The 535 members of Congress receive 500 million communications each year--phone calls, emails, letters, or faxes from citizens

* Exactly zero bills introduced so far this year in Congress have used the word "bicycle" (this dry spell ended when the Complete Streets bill was introduced last week).

One of the bills you may have heard about from previous years (it's maybe 2 or 3 years into its "7.5 years") is the "Conserve by Bicycle" bill. It is a bill that allows employers to include bicycle commuting benefits as part of an employment package, similar to the way they can know include transit, carpool, or vanpool benefits.

The Commute by Bicycle bill was stripped from the Energy Bill that recently passed. But it is still alive--as an amendment to a new energy tax bill that is making the rounds.

Much more in depth coverage of the National Bike Summit 2008 on the BikePortland web site.

More photos from today: