Jessica Meaney advocates for safe walkable streets.

This interview is part of a series of interviews featuring sustainable transportation advocates, planners, engineers, journalists, sociologists, and other experts working to shed light on best practices and solutions from across the globe. We welcome your suggestions for future Q&As.

As we wrote about last month, communities all over the world celebrated International Walk to School events. We interviewed Jessica Meaney, California policy manager for the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, a national non-profit advocacy group, to better understand efforts and the benefits of getting kids to walk to school in Los Angeles. Based in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood, Jessica coordinates two Safe Routes to Schools networks: one at the state level in California, and one at the regional level in Southern California. These networks (that residents are totally open to joining) bring together advocacy groups, parents and community members, government agencies and other leaders to ensure that Safe Routes to School (SRTS) succeeds in California by leveraging resources and addressing and improving regional transportation policies.

Jessica has also been living car-free in Los Angeles for more than 10 years.

Tell me a little about yourself and how you came to be a SRTS National Partnership staffer.

I’d been working as a Regional Transportation Planner for the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) for over three years. Last October, thanks to a scholarship from APBP and support from SCAG, I was able to attend Walk 21, an international conference on walking.  I came home from that conference totally fired up and motivated. Working on bicycle and pedestrian issues in Southern California can be very challenging at times, and this conference re-inspired me, reminding me that change was doable and was happening all over the world. It made me to want to step outside the realm of a public agency and into a role of advocacy. I’d also heard a lot about the director and founder of the Partnership, Deb Hubsmith. She was someone who really had a reputation for getting things done, and I welcomed the opportunity to work and learn alongside her.

How did SCAG prepare you for your Safe Routes to School work? What has that work been about?

What I’d learned at the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), a public transportation agency concerned with regional transportation policy, made me a marketable candidate for this position.

I’d worked on their 2009 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP)–something the partnership is looking to directly impact. My master’s degree is in sociology, so I’m not trained as a planner, but the years I worked at SCAG gave me hands-on experience in transportation planning processes, not to mention exposure to some great regional thinkers and studies.

My approach to transportation began with looking at the key roles public transit, walking and bicycling play in social cohesion, so the years at SCAG helped me continue to further develop my perspective with hands-on experience and observations on policy development and adoption.

Safe Routes to School is a movement. It’s something everyone can be a part of. It’s about walkable and bike-able communities for everyone, regardless of age or ability. One of my favorite things about Safe Routes is that you don’t have to be a student, a parent or a city employee to care about having a neighborhood where families can live and have their kids go to school safely.

It’s also about mobility and independence–creating spaces we can enjoy walking and biking to with ease. Can kids in your neighborhood run around and have independence? Can they get to school safely? If not, why not? Answering these types of questions are a key priority for the health of our communities.

It’s fun to think about this movement expanding beyond students and schools–a Safe Routes for all. It’s an idea they’re talking about in Sacramento as they develop their regional, long-range transportation plan.

You’ve been working hard on developing a SRTS platform to try to influence SCAG’s next RTP. Why focus on an RTP?

Much of my regional work is modeled after successes gained in the Bay Area, where they were able to have the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the area’s Metro Planning Organization (MPO), dedicate regional funding to Safe Routes and active transportation policies and programs. So now, the Bay Area has federal, state and now regional Safe Routes to School funds. It’s pretty awesome. Communities all over California want Safe Routes funds.  In fact, only one out of five Safe Routes projects in California gets funded. So it’s great to see regional leaders recognize this and address it.

How the Southern California Regional Network works, via Facebook.

In the SCAG Region, less than 0.5 percent of all regional transportation funding goes toward bike and pedestrian projects, yet 12 precent of all trips are made by bicycling and walking. And, worse yet, 25 perecent of all roadway fatalities and accidents involve pedestrians and bicyclists. It is a huge problem that these numbers are acceptable to our policy makers. Safety should be our number one priority for all of our communities, especially for our most vulnerable community members such as kids. All users of our roadways and community space should be safe and protected–not just  for those in cars. The other day I read that according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death for people in the U.S. under age 34—that blew my mind.

Here in California, we are fortunate to have climate legislation that is working to further increase the sync between our land use and transportation investments to reduce car tips (SB 375). Now more than ever, local short trips (40 percent of all trips are less than 2 miles) become great solutions to our regional challenges, and it’s key that our policy makers know this. Many still see the need for big regional infrastructure investment, which in many instances is great—yet we still seem to continue to overlook that creating walkable and bike-able communities offer a great, cost efficient investment to meet these challenges, not to mention the co-benefits that it brings.

We’re lucky in California; we have a lot of great existing legislation and policy for active transportation. We need to now see it implemented.

Everything. I’m really lucky to get paid to do what I love and am continually inspired by the opportunities for change, change towards community wellness for all members.

The concept that transportation change is doable and is in fact happening in communities all over is an exciting story to share and to hear about. Many of our transportation decision makers still value speed and capacity as the key indicators for success of a transportation network. We need a way to help them see that that is no longer the only metric to be measuring our investments by.  Stories from their constituents help do that.

By creating a space to hear about best practices and local stories about how peers are being leaders in their own communities fires me up, and I think that fires up others, too. I also find it really valuable, and in fact, a key part of my work, to be able to then share their Safe Routes stories with policy makers across the state. We need champions all over for this, and we need to celebrate all those who are working so hard, many unpaid for their efforts. This is an issue anyone can relate to and talk about. I’d love to think I am part of a movement that is working to be more inclusive and recognizes all the important contributions of many. To me, working to see transportation policy that truly values walkable and bike-able communities is going to take team effort, and a big team at that.

Anything else?

Thanks for providing me the chance to talk about this. I’d love the opportunity to thank Congressman Oberstar for his legacy of creating the Safe Routes to School program. It is tough to lose such an amazing champion for walkable and bike-able communities. We will all have to work really hard to maintain his legacy.

Also, there are a lot of great resources to get something going in your own community. While the organization I work for has a focus on policy, the National Center for Safe Routes to School, which is funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has amazing programmatic resources. And if you live in California, please join the State and/or Regional Network and get involved. We’re on Twitter, Facebook and WordPress, too. Or, just send me an email to find out more: Jessica (at) saferoutespartnership.org.

A "walking school bus" with Mayor Ron Loveridge of Riverside, California. Photo via Facebook.

The view from my expressway bus trip on the I-10 freeway. Photo by Nate Baird.

Via Streetsblog Los Angeles:

UCLA researchers at their Institute of Transportation Studies are looking for volunteers to help with one of their research projects by creating a photo essay of their travels on transit. The thought is that by analyzing what people choose to highlight in their photographs, they will get a better idea of how the people who ride transit view transit.

I’m really, really hoping they pick me. Above is one my favorite views from the transit trip I take to Cal Poly Pomona several days a week for grad school classes.

After you fill out UCLA’s interest form, please feel free to link to your favorite transit trip views in the comments of this post. (FYI: UCLA is focusing on Los Angeles region trips, but we’d love to see your favorite transit trip views no matter where you live.)

Bikes on Los Angeles County Metro's Gold Line. Photo by Nate Baird.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to make it to the recent TRB conference. But a few colleagues have come back from the conference bearing wonderful souvenirs, DVD-ROM discs packed full with details of the latest transportation research. As a budding bicycle planning nerd and an intern at a major transit agency, I’ve been happily searching through the digitally provided conference materials for bike-transit related research.

Kevin Krizek and Eric Stonebraker’s paper Bicycling and Transit: A Marriage Unrealized summarizes the latest trends on the issue, and reports that several studies suggest that recent growth in transit and bicycling modes may be in small part a result of synergy between the two modes. That marriage, still very much in its infancy, can work via at least five broad possibilities:

1. transporting a transit customer’s bicycle aboard (inside or outside) a transit vehicle (see photo above!);
2. using and parking a transit customer’s bicycle at a transit access (or origin) location;
3. sharing a bicycle (publicly or privately provided), primarily based at the transit access point;
4. using a transit customer’s bicycle at the egress (or destination) location;
5. sharing a bicycle (again), but primarily based, this time, at the transit egress point.

The authors focus on four factors that affect the mode share percentage of cycling-transit users (CTUs): 1) transport mode, 2) location in the urban fabric, 3) egress catchment area, and 4) trip purpose.

Their review suggests that transit services that quickly transport users relatively long distances—30 miles plus—with relatively few stops (i.e. commuter rail or express buses) tend to draw larger shares of CTUs than slower and shorter-distance routes. Catchment areas (the area that a transit stop serves) tend to shrink or expand depending on the speed of the transit mode, with bicyclists willing to ride farther for a faster service. Finally, research confirms the obvious observation that most trips are work- and education-related. As such, CTUs often bypass inefficient feeder systems, to save time, while also preferring fastest, most efficient transit services.

Krizek and Stonebraker round out their paper by naming some considerations for future research, highlighting some interesting case studies of “innovative iniatives to address capacity limitations,” which seems to be a primary consideration in marrying the bicycle to transit, and even  laying out a cost-effectiveness framework that cities can use to help them better understand when, where, and how to promote bicycle-transit integration.

Waiting for service. Photo by Nate Baird.

While TheCityFix has made the case for the pedicab before, it’s always good (but rare) to see a writer from the “mainstream media” lauding the three-wheeled transport option. The Times’ Ariel Kaminar’s sensitive and experiential inquiry provides helpful insight into, and light-hearted goodwill towards, the New York City pedicab scene.

Unfortunately, her exploration of the chauffeured trikes was inspired by titillating Fox News coverage of a brawl that broke out between two traffic impaired men (one had been driving a taxi; the other, a pedicab, both behaving like idiots), and a subsequent City Council ruling to begin regulating the smaller vehicles.  Kaminar, thankfully, gamely decided to investigate pedicabs further when a City Council member carped on the humble vehicles with a little too much vitriol to the New York Post: “Pedicabs have been for too long acting like they rule the streets ahead of any other mode of transportation.”  Questioning whether their three wheels could be so bad, Kaminar then set out then to gain actual on-the-streets experience of pedicabs in NYC, which grounds her story substantially.

Details of a pedicab mural. Photo by Nate Baird.

The whole sequence of events marks how far we have to go before the pedicab is taken seriously as a transportation mode.  While regulation is a necessary step in the right direction, it needs to be done wisely instead of fearfully, and media coverage typically hasn’t been up to the task of presenting pedicabs in a balanced enough light to judge them squarely.

In Los Angeles a few months back, where an instigating brawl didn’t inspire media outlets, LA Times coverage of the development of pedicab regulations was limited to a link to local blog coverage. (Though, the local blog coverage was quite good.  See Gary Kavanagh’s take on the absurd pedicab rules that were under consideration, followed by a similar appraisal by Eric Richardson, which was linked by the LA Times, as well as LA Streetsblog coverage.) Slightly better, I guess, than the scant context they did provide of San Diego’s regulation developments, where they failed to describe whether pedicabs function any more deeply than as a scam attracting “foreign college students” to cheap jobs.

Part of this lack, I suspect, is due to the continuing disconnect between the “mainstream” view of bicycling generally (as an adult male sport for fitness freaks and weirdly clad adventurers) and the growing movement of folks who make use of the bicycle an inspired mode of transport.  See my friend Josef’s blog post (he’s a bicycle shop owner) on how this plays out at bike retailers.  Until this disconnect is addressed, bicycling, and pedicabs, remain quaint forms of getting around.

Need more pedicab links?

• Late July coverage of New York City Council’s adoption of pedicab rules in the New York Times
• And in the New York Post
• And then there’s the documentary film “The Third Wheel”, which does cover the NYC pedicab scene in some depth, and which I sadly missed at the Bicycle Film Festival’s scheduled showing in Los Angeles.  The trailer is still available, though.

NYC bike box. Photo by Nate Baird.

Following all the excitement of Walk 21,  where the advantages of walking and bicycling infrastructure frequently took center stage, it’s a bit sobering to take note of what happens in the absence of such facilities.  BikePortland.com linked yesterday to a somber piece by Bob Mionske of BicycleLaw.com.  Here’s what happened two years ago this past Sunday:

Tracey Sparling was an art student at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, in Portland, Oregon. She had transferred there after her freshman year at Syracuse University, because she was homesick. On October 11, a typical autumn day in Portland, Tracey was on her bike, riding back to school after taking her lunch break at home. As she approached the light at West Burnside and SW 14th, she slowed and came to a stop next to a cement truck. When the light turned green, the driver turned right, knocking Tracey to the ground, killing her within moments of the crash. She was 19 years old.  (Complete article here.)

Mionske goes on to detail a roller coaster of sobering events, including another right-hook fatality, maddening legal shortcomings, police bias, and a community moved to action.  The intersection at which Tracy died now features a prominent bike box, a piece of bicycling infrastructure that puts bicyclists in a better position to be seen by motorists. In the example above, from NYC, bicyclists are put ahead of motorists waiting to proceed straight or turn left from a one way street.  The box provides some insurance that bicyclists continuing through the intersection will be visible to turning motorists.

While the box is not a cure all, used in tandem and systematically with other kinds of bicycling infrastructure, it’s a tool that can help make cities much safer, and encouraging, for bicyclists.  See the latest study from John Pucher, Jennifer Dill, and Susan Handy for more on this (pdf link via Streetsblog and Copenhagenize).  In this light, we ought to continue to advocate for the measures that can prevent the kind of death suffered by Tracey.  For how long must bike infrastructure gains be preceded by tragedy?  Bob Mionske finishes his piece with this update:

Two years ago, a young cyclist died when she stopped where the city expected her to stop. Her death, and the crashes that followed, set in motion changes that have made the city safer for cyclists. And for two years, Tracey’s ghost bike has stood, memorializing her to all who pass. Now, feeling that the time is right, Tracey’s family plan to remove her ghost bike next weekend from the intersection where it has stood for two years.

Dutch bikes in Battery Park, New York. Photo by Nate Baird.

A temporary bike share (courtesy of the Dutch Embassy) was definitely one of the highlights of my recent trip to New York City, which all year has been celebrating the 400th anniversary of Captain Henry Hudson’s voyage to “New Amsterdam,” or modern-day Manhattan. While the New York Examiner’s Meredith Sladek supplied full coverage of the orange bikes some weeks ago, I stumbled upon the free program (now over) quite unwittingly. If you’re in NYC right now for the Walk 21 conference, though, you just might have seen some of the same bikes touring about NYC on Tuesday with the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals members aboard.

Volunteers staff the bike share booth for the Hudson on the Holland (www.ny400.org) festivities. Photo by Nate Baird.

It’s hard to beat the perspective given by bike. While I and my travel companions toured about lower Manhattan, and then the Brooklyn Bridge, it was hard not to imagine a new kind of life style afforded by the orange bikes. Taking part in Walk 21 conference activities yesterday, APBP members seemed to have had a similar experience exploring NYC’s latest and greatest bicycle facilities. From an “E-postcard” to APBP members this afternoon:

. . . Executive Director Kit Keller observed, “It is time to go beyond analyzing design innovations and new approaches on paper to actually experiencing them as cyclists and pedestrians. From there we can engage in a rigorous dialogue about the quality of that experience and the function of these facilities.”

The Orange Ones. Photo by Nate Baird.

According to Sladek, the orange bikes are due to be turned over to the non-profit organization Recycle-a-Bicycle, which “… promotes everyday bicycle use,” and is a apparently a “great place to learn bicycle mechanics” while interacting with “positive, forward-thinking NYC youth.” Their retail shops “are the place to find that city bike you need.”

Need more updates on the Walk 21 conference? APBP members have been twittering highlights all along. One last note: If you haven’t head of the Association of Bicycle and Pedestrian Professionals before, I highly recommend the member organization to professionals, activists, and concerned citizens alike.