San Francisco Bike Blog

This has been something that’s been on my mind since I attended the Austin Bicycle and Pedestrian Summit earlier this year, put on by CAMPO. Linda DuPriest, former bicycle program coordinator for Austin, suggested - somewhat controversially, it seems - that Austin needed a new organization to unify the various movements that were going on in town. I don’t believe the term ‘livable streets’ was used, but that was part of the concept, as far as I could tell. She suggested that there wasn’t a single, unified voice speaking for bikers and walkers in Austin — and this was the first Bike/Walk Summit in Austin.

Linda herself had come from a racing background, and mentioned that Austin had a very strong walking and running and triathlon culture. There was a lot of money flowing around those type of events and participants. Those athletes had to dodge cars just the same way regular bicycle commuters did, so why shouldn’t they be involved in advocacy efforts, too, or at least help fund it? I immediately thought it was a great idea.

And it may not be a great idea, but the sentiment is worth considering. There are really two aspects to this idea: 1) Building a large enough organization that you can really pool resources in an effective way and actually move public policy, and 2) Attempting to bring some of the more athletic/sports-minded (non-commuter) folks into the advocacy arena. I suspect both would be nontrivial efforts.

[I actually floated 2) to a running club I used to be part of, and got mixed reactions. Some folks loved the idea, but others were afraid that politics would enter the club and mess things up. I left it at that. For the rest of this post, I'll concentrate on 1).]

From what I remember, the Texas Bicycle Coalition representative was angry at what he saw as a slight to his organization - and he let us all know, from his seat in the audience, and again when it was his turn on stage. I didn’t really see it that way - didn’t see it as a slight, but when funding is so scarce, I could understand his frustration. The problem is, if you have an idea like this, it’s difficult to voice it without potentially stepping on some toes. In the long run, in my view, if you want what is best of your town, you have to speak up. Be as gentle as you like, but speak up.

To this day, I still don’t know if Austin has a pure bicycling advocacy organization, or a bike/walk advocacy organization, though I know there was talk of this.

When I first got to Austin I was working a bit with the Austin Cycling Association (ACA). I met the best people, and they were busting their butts, but it seemed like resources were so limited. Staff member Laura King helped introduce me to the bicycling world - she’s a fantastic person and a fantastic advocate — which is why I’d like to see her organization get a lot more money to work with. But to do that, they might have to either adjust their mission slightly, or maybe their marketing, or somehow figure out a way to combine forces with other organizations, so together than can corral more resources. [And I don't think I've shared this highly non-expert opinion with Laura yet, so I hope she doesn't get angry with me.]

I had done activist-type work in the past, so I was used to working with next to nothing, but I also knew how much money flowed around cycling - I couldn’t figure out how more of it wasn’t making its way to an organization that was doing so much good for the cycling community. Slowly I started to learn what has probably been obvious to lots of folks for a long time - that even small nuances in the written objectives and philosophy (or marketing) of an organization could affect funding and participation, and ultimately, effectiveness. The ACA’s membership rolls are not small, but their overall ‘message’ seems a bit ambiguous to me, and I think that will ultimately translate into less public policy influence. For instance, is the ACA a sports cycling club, or a bicycle transportation advocacy organization, or both? I think it’s both, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to be both - in this particular mix of interests, the ‘lifestyle cycling’ and ’sport cycling’ themes combine to dilute each others’ message, as opposed to strengthen or reinforce each other.

So, what does that mean for San Francisco, if anything? Well, The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) is probably the largest metropolitan area-based transportation cycling advocacy organization in the United States. They’ve been tremendously successful at doing any number of things that benefit transportation cyclists all over the city, and their stature is growing daily, locally and nationally. And then we have organizations like Walk San Francisco (WalkSF), who I know little to nothing about - and that doesn’t seem right, because I’m a big walker, too, and I’m a big believer in the Transportation Hierarchy. I know at least anecdotally that WalkSF works closely with the SFBC, but is that enough?

I almost asked this question at the last SFBC Board Meeting - which I sat in on just to get a feel for what was going on at the organizational level, but I didn’t have the guts, and I wasn’t anxious to offend anyone. As I saw down in Austin, these topics can be touchy, with good reason. I wanted to say, “Should the SFBC change its name, and maybe combine with WalkSF to, you know, do more stuff and be more effective and stuff…or something?”

Of course, this might not fly with the membership of either or both organizations, but I’d be interested in reactions from both. I would expect the primary objection to be one of ‘dilution of message’, thus dilution of effectiveness, but the purpose of any ‘combining of forces’ would be to try to become more effective. If we don’t believe that we would become more effective together, then we should not formally/explicitly combine forces - simple.

This message of ‘getting to a size that makes you effective’ was further driven home when I was reading more of the famous Jane Jacobs book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In it, she argues persuasively that it’s important to organize into big-enough coalitions that you can actually affect policy at the level of government you need to affect. It sounds a bit obvious, but I feel like many organizations don’t reach out and form these large coalitions just because organizing is tough. Brutal, even. It’s energy-intensive and it could all be for naught. It’s why I respect the work of community organizers so much. Incidentally, the SFBC does seem to be very willing and able to organize large coalitions of organizations to make big policy things happen - so if they did decide to make a big change like this, I’m confident they could pull it off.

So, to reiterate, I’m not sure combining the SFBC and WalkSF is the right move, but it’s interesting to me, and worthy of some consideration. The SFBC is a ‘bike’ coalition, and WalkSF is a ‘walk’ coalition - are our goals really that different? Can we be more effective, possibly much more effective, if we organized as the SFBWC - the San Francisco Bike and Walk Coalition? Could this help organizers from both groups communicate more effectively? Could this help activate more members and citizens to both causes? Could we come together to create the most powerful constituency in San Francisco?

The message to folks not in San Francisco is the same - can you re-organize, combine forces, adjust your name and/or marketing, to have more influence politically and culturally? For instance, could the forward-thinking Atlanta Bicycle Campaign combine forces with Atlanta’s pedestrian rights group, PEDS, to form an all-powerful constituency that could really move public policy?

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