News ::: NashvilleCyclist.com

I hear quite often from folks about how cool our organization is and that my job must be so much fun. To tell you the truth, it is fun (for the most part). I love it. Creating more livable cities in my greatest passion and I fully believe the transportation network of a city has so much impact on livability. I’ve had the pleasure of working and living here in Nashville for about 16 months, and I’d like to thank all of you for being so welcoming and helping me to make it home.

Here’s the deal—my job isn’t always fun. It’s not easy, as you can imagine, tackling the world of car culture with a message of creating more bikeways and sidewalks, and ensuring a solid network of the same is envisioned and implemented in a way that can lead us to a city more conducive to and encouraging of active, healthy living. In fact, there are bumps and setbacks along the way and it is my passion that keeps me working.

Recently, Nashville had a bump in the road—a little boy in east Nashville lost his life while riding his bicycle. He was struck by a motor vehicle. It made me so sad. This incident reminds me why I do what I do and brings to everyone’s attention the importance of safety and sharing the road. Every day I hear of accidents such as these happening all across the country, yet I know they are becoming less frequent because of the work of organizations like ours. We all are responsible for the safety of others when out on the road. When we are riding our bicycles, we must be aware and follow the traffic laws. When we are driving we must be aware and follow the traffic laws. When we are walking we must follow the rules and guidelines and be very aware because drivers of motor vehicles are not looking for us, they are looking for other cars.

I come to you asking for your support in making the greater Nashville area a more walkable, bikeable, livable community. We need to turn out at the upcoming public meetings set to update Nashville’s Strategic Plan for Sidewalks and Bikeways. We need to get out there and ride our bikes and walk whenever possible, because the more of us out there, the more visibility we gain, and that is a giant step in making our community safer. Ask yourself what is most important to you in your city and think about the impact those issues have upon your lifestyle. It is only through getting involved that we can make a change…please consider volunteering or making a donation to Walk/Bike Nashville so that we can continue our efforts.

Walk/Bike Nashville is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating a more walkable, bikeable, livable Nashville.

If indeed we all want a more walkable, bikeable Nashville, then we must make it our duty to attend at least one of these remaining public meetings to discuss the Strategic Plan for Sidewalks and Bikeways:

We urge all Walk/Bike Nashville members to attend at least one of the upcoming strategic plan meetings to ensure the walking and biking community is well represented. We also encourage you to take into consideration our recommendations for Metro when attending these meetings if you have an opportunity to speak. Our board of directors has put great thought and effort into developing the following four priority recommendations for Metro:

We encourage and recommend Mayor Dean to appoint a Bicycling and Pedestrian Advisory Committee with representatives from various neighborhoods and appropriate community groups. This committee would periodically review the Strategic Plan and project priorities, as well
as traffic incident reports involving serious injury to cyclists and pedestrians, neighborhood needs, and citizens concerns. Based on these reviews, the committee would then make recommendations to the appropriate Metro departments and the Mayor's office.

We encourage and recommend that Metro work toward including bicycle parking in all public parking areas. We also encourage them to provide pedestrian-friendly access from parking lots, and to create a bicycle parking ordinance.

We encourage and recommend that Metro establish the Music City Bikeway, a designated network of bike lanes, bikeways, and greenways crossing Davidson County to connect Percy Priest Lake to the Warner Parks.

We encourage and recommend that Metro establish locations for high-quality crosswalks with raised surfaces and lighting to improve pedestrian safety.

Since the plan’s beginning in 2003, the city has added and repaired 124 miles of sidewalks, 94 miles of bike lanes and more than 7,000 wheelchair-accessible sidewalk ramps. For more information, please visit www.nashville.gov/sidewalks. If you’d like to provide feedback, e-mail us at info@nashvilleplan.org.

Music City Moves Kids! is scheduled to visit Eakin Elementary and East Academy in March. This will be our 4th time out to Eakin and our second time out to East Academy. We’ve been working with East Academy to establish a school zone and have made great progress. We’re now poised to see an official school zone created, but need to raise some funds to pay for signage since East Academy is a private school.

Music City Moves Kids! rolls in to Williamson County! We’re very excited to announce our program will be implemented at Heritage Middle School thanks to a Safe Routes to School grant from the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

We’ll also be rolling in to the city of Cleveland. How can that be, you ask, we’re Walk/Bike Nashville, right? Well it seems our program has gained some attention across the state, and when Cleveland was awarded a Safe Routes to School grant the city contacted us because they wanted to contract the services of a professional organization to conduct pedestrian and bicycle safety education. How could we say no to the children?

There is even more news on Music City Moves Kids! This program is truly becoming a success and we’re very proud to announce that we’ve teamed up with Metro Nashville Public Schools and Metro Nashville Public Works to complete and submit three proposals to the Tennessee Department of Transportation for Safe Routes to School funding. Grants were submitted on behalf of Thomas Edison Elementary in Southeast Nashville, Una Elementary in Southeast Nashville, and Tom Joy Elementary in East Nashville. It is thrilling to think about our little program becoming a staple in physical education curriculum for Davidson County and we know it takes teaming up with these agencies to make that a reality.

The 5th Annual Tour de Nash has been scheduled for May 17, 2008. We are soon to finalize promotional materials and update the site (http://www.tourdenash.org/) and look forward to launching registration in March. We’ll be sure to send you notice of open registration. By the way, we’re always looking for volunteers to help make the Tour de Nash a great success.

If you’re interested please email our volunteer chair, Christine Ward at christinehward@yahoo.com.

Did you know revenue generated by the Tour de Nash goes directly into our education programs, allowing us to continue our efforts to get more kids walking and biking to school and to offer adult bicycle safety clinics so that those interested in cycling more have the knowledge and skills to be safer on the road. The more sponsors we recruit to support the Tour de Nash, the more money we put into our programs, which means we reach more people with a message of safety and health. Help us make this the most fruitful year for the Tour de Nash: tell your favorite businesses you’d like them to support the event or contact Shannon Hornsby (info@walkbikenashville.org) if you’d like to sponsor the event…individuals and businesses are welcome to sponsor.

On Saturday, January 19 we held a bicycle safety clinic at East Community Center in response to recent bicycle fatalities in the east Nashville area. The clinic was a great success, thanks to the support and assistance of super volunteers from the east Nashville community. We gave free bicycle helmets to the children who participated, thanks to support from Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and the Tennessee Department of Health's Traumatic Brain Injury Program. There were some parents who received helmets too - they asked if we happened to have their size because they want to go out and ride with their kids. That is super! Parents riding with kids and setting an example by wearing a helmet are helping to reinforce the knowledge and skills the kids gained at the clinic.

The Friends of Warner Parks has announced that their annual Bike Tour will be held on Saturday, March 29 with registration at 8:00 a.m. at the Warner Park Special Events Field at Old Hickory Blvd and Vaughn Rd (across from the Steeplechase). The Pedal the Parks and Parkway tour offers a 25 or 50-mile ride and includes roads in the Park as well as part of the Natchez Trace. The event is open to the public $20 pre-registration fee and $25 the day of the event. Pre-registration deadline is March 12.

News from Walk/Bike Nashville