To show your support for Safe Routes to Schools, follow the instructions below and go to the National Partnership’s Dear Congress Campaign page for more information.

Write a letter, and ask everyone you can think of to write their own Dear Congress letter on SRTS. These should include children (we’d love letters in crayon with drawings!); parents; crossing guards, school principals, nurses and teachers; mayors, city councilmen and county representatives; engineers; health professionals; and SRTS coordinators and volunteers. Basically—anyone you can think of that is involved with Safe Routes to School in some way. You could even do this as part of a class project in your local school to get children to participate.

The salutation of all letters should read “Dear Congress,”. Scroll to the bottom of this message for some very broad bullet points for different audiences for the content of the letter. But, it’s best if these are from the heart letters, in your own words.

Make sure that each of the letters includes a mailing address. If you are sending a group of letters from a school, you can use the school’s mailing address. Letters from individuals should have work or home mailing addresses with zip codes. We will match your letters with the Congressional district so we can share them with your Representative and Senators.

Send your letters to Margo Pedroso with the Safe Routes to School National Partnership by September 24, 2009. You can scan and email electronic versions to margo@saferoutespartnership.org.  Or you can mail letters to: Margo Pedroso, Safe Routes to School National Partnership, P.O. Box 442328, Fort Washington, MD 20749.

Please do not send your letters directly to your Members of Congress.  We want to bundle the letters so they have a greater impact, so it’s important that you send them to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.

Pass the word to other individuals and organizations you know. Please post this call to action on list-servs, e-newsletters, and bulletin boards. The more letters we get, the bigger impact we can have on Congress and the future of the Safe Routes to School program.

~Darren Flusche, League Policy Analyst

Go to http://maps.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=suggestions.cs, scroll down to Route Information and click “Suggest it” next to “Add bike trail information and biking directions.”

After a long hiatus, the League of American Bicyclists’ blog is back. As before, the blog will feature contributions from the whole staff. Unlike before, the League now has two policy analysts to keep the blog up to date on the lasted national and notable regional bicycle news, policy and politics.

In fact, now is a good time to re-introduce the blog to the world since we’ve been busy responding to a report by Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain criticizing non-highway and -bridge projects in the transportation bill. First, we posted an update to the Trash Talking page of our website. Our position was then reported in an article in the subscription-only online publication, GreenWire:

Biking advocates say the senators’ accusations that bike and pedestrian projects have depleted the fund are baseless, considering how little the government has spent on them over the years.

Flusche said data from the same GAO study show that the government has spent less on bicycle and pedestrian projects over the past 18 years than the $7 billion Congress approved last week to patch up the highway fund.

“These modes of transportation are actually underfunded in proportion to how we use them,” Flusche said, suggesting that lawmakers look for better ways to finance the fund.

The story was picked up by BikePortland.

As the debate over the re-authorization of the transportation bill continues, we are likely to hear more spurious attacks on bicycle and pedestrian funding. We will cover them and the arguments in favor in this space, as well as many other topics.

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The size of the report itself is equally impressive at several hundred pages, 125 MBS complete with minority statements, addenda and the whole nine yards. The main recommendations appear in the 54-page Volume 1, and that’s where I’m going to direct my few cheap shots. The Commission took 20 months to listen to input (and yes, we did submit comments) and weigh options for creating a bold new transportation future – and in the 54 pages the word “highway” appears 128 times. Rail comes in second with 106 mentions, freight weighs in at 96, with transit a distant fourth on 57. The words bicycle, bicyclist, bike, pedal cycle, and pedal cyclist combined are mentioned just one time, on page 24, in the same sentence as the only mention of pedestrians, walking and other foot-based derivatives. Is it fair to judge a monumental report on such a trivial word search…maybe not, but it kinda tells you something nonetheless.

I looked up the various policy issues in play. “Climate change” warranted three mentions along with nine “greenhouse gas” references. “Environment” got 55 plays…although at least a dozen were in reference to the need to speed up project delivery by reducing environmental reviews. Congestion was a big issue (54) along with safety (47) energy (44) and the economy (13). Health issues, just 8 mentions. Obesity, not a peep. Mobility (transport as an end in itself) was addressed almost twice as often as Access (transport as a means to an end; the ability to actually get somewhere).

You can see where I’m going with this. The transportation future envisaged by this panel does not appear to include bicycling, nor is it yet ready to hold the transportation sector accountable to other national policy imperatives. States, and our beloved state DOT’s, were addressed ten times as often as “city” or “cities”.

The final superficial count I made: the pictures. What do the photos tell us about the direction of the report? Funny you should ask. There are 137 pictures in the 54-page report. Just 22 have any people visible in them, and of those eight are people sitting in cars and five show emergency services personnel at a crash scene, or researchers in lab coats. There is just one bona fide picture of people walking in the street; there’s one deer; one duck; and not a single person on a bicycle. Maybe you can’t read a lot into the photo count, but when bicyclists don’t even rise to the level of attention given to ducks and deer, it sure tells you something.

I grew up in the heart of New York City where even going outside alone before the age of ten was pretty impossible. I can’t relate to the often-mentioned freedom that bicycles offer children or the youthful memories that cycling supposedly digs up. What I do remember is being very intrigued by the idea that kids in other parts of the country could bike to school. When I got my first bike in seventh grade I would often walk with it well out of the way to school so I could get to an avenue with low pedestrian traffic. I would cycle on the sidewalk for as long as I could, and then walk the remainder of the way. On the weekends when the loop road in the park was closed to vehicles I would trek there with my bike to get in a few miles of solid riding. It wasn’t until I moved to Maine for college that I could bike regularly, and I haven’t looked back since…nor have I moved back to New York.

This winter, however, I felt a new sort of connection with the city I sometimes forget is my real home. I hope this is the first of many new projects the New York’s transportation commissioner will explore to make the streets and the city a more livable place for cyclists and pedestrians in the future

It was about 30 or 45 minutes before total darkness, with the sun already below the horizon, and I just got off the freeway.  (This is the freeway exit closest to my house and one I use all the time.)  At this exit, there is a traffic signal if you want to turn left and if you want to turn right, you’re sent into a right turn lane that comes to a yield sign.  Regular users of the right turn lane tend to first look left to see if there’s any oncoming traffic from the left, slow down or stop if there is, but keep going if there’s no one coming.  That’s what I did, but just as I turned my head to the right before going out into the street, immediately in front of me was a guy on a bike.

I’m not sure about the guy on the bike who was stopped frozen in front of me, but I know I was scared out of my wits when I noticed him at the last split-second.  He had a helmet on and was pretty much dressed to ride.  What made things even more disturbing was that he had an adult riding partner and a couple kids in tow right behind him.  There was a whole family of people going up the wrong side of the street on a sloping hill where cars are barreling down at 45 to 50 mph, if not faster.

This experience reminded me of when I was first learning to drive, and my father telling me to always look both ways before turning into a one-way street, because according to his explanation, there always the chance that some not-too-bright person was driving the wrong way down a one-way street and you would crash into him.  While my dad’s lesson may not be quite the same situation as cyclists riding on the wrong side of the street, I’m going to have to pay attention to cyclists coming from unexpected directions not just for my own sake but the folks riding on the wrong side of the street.

And yes, for those of you who are curious, I did caution him in a friendly way that he should be riding on the other side of the street.  He looked at me like I was crazy.

On December 3, Mr. Lynch appeared in court, where the original traffic violations were dismissed.  But, that is not bad news, because a couple weeks earlier on November 15, a warrant was issued for his arrest, on four felony charges: 2 counts of Aggravated Battery, 1 count Leaving the Scene of an Accident Involving Personal Injury, and 1 count Reckless Driving. He made a court appearance on November 26 and was subsequently released on a recognizance bond. His next court date related to the felony charges will be December 11 on procedural matters and the victims and witnesses are now being contacted by the State’s Attorney’s staff as they continue to develop their case.

When we first learned of this incident, the League’s executive director Andy Clarke wrote a letter to the Lake County State’s Attorney urging him to vigorously investigate and prosecute this case. Our collective voice has been heard. Thanks to all of you who also wrote Lake County State’s Attorney Michael J. Waller, who seems to agree that this was not simply a minor traffic violation but a very serious offense.

Updates on this case will be provided as we receive additional information.

An unapologetic driver taking off on me was the right combination of factors to report the incident to the local police as a hit-and-run.  Luckily the driver behind her saw the whole thing, wrote down the license plate number and gave it to me.  I need to mention here that the driver had a temporary license plate on her car.  I called the Montgomery County Police and reported the incident.  The indignity of getting hit by an arrogant driver was about to be made worse.  The officer told me that they can’t trace temporary license plates back to a specific driver.  I asked if he was going to file a report, and he said that he “could” if I made the request for it but it probably wouldn’t lead to anything.

I didn’t get hurt.  I didn’t even have any damage to my bike.  But I consider hit-and-run to be a serious offense, and according to the law, it IS a serious offense.  Now that I think about it, I probably should’ve filed the report just to press the issue with the police officer and so that I would have something on the record.  If I had suffered serious physical injury as a result of the collision or had been killed, would the officer been a bit more determined to find the offender?  This is just a wild guess but if a Montgomery County Police Officer had been injured or just struck by a hit-and-run driver, I get the feeling that somehow, they would track down the owner of the vehicle if all they had was the temporary tag number.

In explaining how he caused the collision, he first said that he thought that that a bicyclist had punched his truck.  He later explained that he braked suddenly in front of the bikers to avoid hitting a squirrel.

The driver of the truck has been charged with improper lane usage and failure to provide aid and information, both misdemeanors, and was initially ordered to appear in Lake County court on October 29.  I’ve been in communication with one of the cyclists who was involved in the collision, and he tells me that Lynch’s court appearance date has been pushed back to December, but that the Lake County Sheriff has called back several of the people who were involved for more detailed statements.  We are grateful for the work of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department for thoroughly investigating the facts of this incident, and particularly Deputy Sheriff Alan Burns, the deputy on the scene who took this matter very seriously and professionally as he investigated and recorded everyone’s statements.

This was not an “accident.”  This was an act of violence by a driver forcing himself against law-abiding bicyclists with the weight of a pickup truck weighing thousands of pounds.  He fled the scene.  His account to the authorities of what happened is ridiculous and shows blatant disregard for the safety of others on the road.

The League of American Bicyclists is watching this case with great concern.  League executive director Andy Clarke has written to Mr. Michael J. Waller, the Lake County State’s Attorney, urging him to vigorously investigate the case and where appropriate press charges to the fullest extent of the law.  A copy of Andy Clarke’s letter to the State’s Attorney Michael Waller can be viewed here.

More articles on the story:
http://dailyherald.com/story/?id=46661
http://dailyherald.com/story/?id=47086
http://www.chicagoaa.com/news/xxxcrash07news.html

I encourage you to contact the Lake County State’s Attorney and let him know that cyclists locally, regionally, and nationwide are watching this case, and that a message needs to be sent to drivers like Thomas Lynch that they do not own the road and they are not at liberty to commit acts of physical violence to others on the road, motorized or not.

State’s Attorney Michael Waller’s contact information:
Michael J. Waller
State’s Attorney Office
18 North County St., 4th Floor
Waukegan, IL 60085
Phone: 847-377-3000
Fax: 847-360-1538
Email: StatesAttorney@co.lake.il.us