The Council In DC

We are live and we are national. That is right, we just got back from the 2023 National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. during peak cherry blossom season: March 26th-29th. Lot, Joshua, Job, and I met up to give a presentation on where the Youth voice fits into the world of biking. But before I get into that, hi! My name is Nora, one of the newest members on the Council, and I along with the other council newbie–Backwards Brian–will be bringing you blogs every month to discuss Council activities, the world of biking, and more! Brian will be making incredible and fun videos below that will go over what I am writing about but with his own style, which–trust me–gives you a new perspective, that’s what riding backward does.

So nice to meet you, now this is the 23rd National Bike Summit and it is an event where all kinds of commuters meet from around the country to ride, network, and discuss the future of biking. One presentation by Outride focused on the brain and how biking impacts its level of performance in beneficial ways. We even got to see it with a VR headset and a bicycle setup!

One of my favorite presentations was a panel discussion on “Creating Safe Streets for Women” in which the Honorable Jennifer Homendy, Chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, opened up the talk by delving into how biking can be both an empowering and dangerous activity for women, so how do we make it just empowering? Biking serves as a car-free option for women to choose from outside of public transportation–where many women face negative experiences–but more work needs to be done to make public spaces safer for women and all pedestrians who use these public spaces to travel. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Tanisha Sepulveda who is a wheelchair user working to create a cohesive and usable infrastructure for wheelchair users in Seattle, Washington. Tanisha worked to bring attention to the inadequacies of Seattle’s infrastructure by challenging state lawmakers to spend a week free of a car, some weren’t even able to go without a week.

One of the biggest surprises for Lot, Job, and Joshua was running into Yasmine, another youth road-safety advocate. Yasmine was surprised to meet them on one day of the Summit. The shock was so great, it gave us a new friend from Miami and we ended up hanging out all day during the Summit in different presentations.

Joshua, Lot, and Job headed to the Capitol on Wednesday to meet with their representatives and discuss infrastructure needs for the biking community. The three Pennsylvanians chatted it up with staffers from Representative Madeline Dean; Senators John Fetterman and Robert P. Casey Jr. Then they got asked to lobby other Senators because they were doing so well, woohoo! The organizers obviously realized the power of giving the youth a voice. Young people are also out there making change and we got to tell legislatures about that change and what the Council was up to!