Local Bike/Walk Summit Featured in National Press

The Second Annual Harrisonburg & Rockingham Bike Walk Summit was featured in the League of American Bicyclists Magazine, “American Bicyclists.” SVBC Board member and Bike Summit organizer Rich Harris wrote about the importance of hosting the local summit to bring together advocates, government and agency staff, along with local politicians. We look forward to the 2014 Summit and are excited to continue acting on the action items from the last summit. You can read the full report on the 2013 Summit on the SVBC Website

HARRISONBURG, Virginia By Rich Harris

What does a bicycle friendly community look like and how do you get there?

Lots of colored paper means lots of productive work!

How do you get all members of the community to understand and value this? This is a question our Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) has been actively pursuing and making a reality for many years. But it’s not easy when there are multiple jurisdictions and levels of commitment.

Our community is located in the Shenandoah Valley 100 miles from Washington, D.C. It consists of the City of Harrisonburg surrounded by Rockingham County, and includes two universities,James Madison University (JMU) and Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), which, combined, host more than 22,000 students.

How do you get all these folks on the same page? For the past two years we’ve held a day-long Community Bike Walk pedal progress Warsaw, Missouri AMERICAN BICYCLIST 21 Summit that brings diverse members of the community together. This has been an effective approach for relationship building, educating key decision makers, increasing communication across jurisdictions, coordinating joint efforts, developing new ideas and developing specific community goals for the coming year.

In 2012, the Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Coalition received an Advocacy Advance Rapid Response Grant for a facilitated workshop. We brought together nearly three dozen city and county elected officials and staff, nonprofit agency staff and bicycle advocates to learn how to better coordinate the bicycle development efforts of the entire community. The workshop was responsible for the development and funding of two master bicycle plans (James Madison University and Rockingham County) and the submission of three (JMU, EMU and Rockingham County) Bicycle Friendly applications and recognitions. There was an overwhelming response to continue this Community Summit approach on an annual basis.

James Madison University President Alger gives the opening address

For 2013, SVBC decided to plan, develop and fund the Summit ourselves. We partnered with the Harrisonburg and Rockingham County Metropolitan Planning Organization and the City of Harrisonburg, Rockingham County and James Madison University were sponsors. Based on the previous year’s success, there was great interest and over 60 participants representing the same diversity of groups attended.

The morning session focused on understanding what a bicycle friendly community looks like and what has Harrisonburg and Rockingham County done to get there. While valuable for all participants it was particularly geared towards city and county elected officials and staff. The afternoon session focused on small group sessions to identify the strengths and weakness of the community development towards the League’s 5 E’s of a Bicycle Friendly Community — and to develop specific steps that could be taken to improve each area. The Summit concluded with summarizing the next steps and having participants commit to joining action groups to work on these goals during the coming year. To make sure we’re continuing that collaboration and moving forward, we created a Summit website to house the program, yearly goals and a Google document to aid in the follow up and collaboration. Learn more at https://svbcbackup.dreamhosters.com/bike-walk-summit/

Rich Harris is a SVBC Board member and Chairman of the Harrisonburg Rockingham Bike Walk Summit Planning Committee.