Add Your Gift To Our Year End Fundraising Goals

As the end of another year approaches, all of us at Bike Cleveland sincerely thank you for supporting the work we do to make biking and walking safer in all our communities. While progress and change never come at the pace we desire, momentum for safe multimodal streets is building and many key pieces are now in place to sustain it: a new City administration with staff who understand the importance of complete streets, updated multimodal City policies, and a new shared sense of urgency for this work which had been lacking at City Hall until recently.

Over the last year we’ve helped advance several initiatives long in the works, including

• Passage of a stronger Complete and Green Streets policy in June that will ensure that future road projects are more inclusive of all travel modes by prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable road users in project designs. Bike Cleveland was instrumental in conveying the widespread support that existed for this legislation by arranging 8 residents to testify at Cleveland City Council hearings, delivering support letters from 22 community organizations, and collecting 358 signatures from residents urging quick passage of the Complete and Green Streets legislation.
• Establishment of the Transportation & Infrastructure Advisory Committee, the oversight body that will provide guidance for all future roadway design projects, as an early Complete and Green Streets implementation step, with Bike Cleveland representation at the table.
• Adoption of Cleveland’s long-awaited Vision Vero Action Plan, followed by prompt submission of a federal grant to implement key plan recommendations, signaling the City of Cleveland’s genuine commitment to ending serious injury and fatal crashes by the year 2032.
• Installation of several dozen concrete pedestrian safety enhancements at intersections and crossings on the east side of the city, including concrete curb extensions and pedestrian safety islands and launch of a Speed Table Pilot program at ten locations where speeding is prevalent.
• City-sanctioned resident-led and resident-installed projects such as small sections of protected bike lanes and painted crosswalks to enhance bicycle and pedestrian safety at the neighborhood level which, hopefully, will evolve into permanent installations. Bike Cleveland staff even got their hands dirty helping residents install bike delineators and street paint!

As advocates, we have capitalized on this momentum by adding specialized staff members who have established several Better Streets Committees and vastly expanded Educational Programs for youth and adults of all experience levels and abilities. The number of neighborhood rides has increased, as have collaborations with new bike, pedestrian, and transit partners. Our events, including the Fundo, as well as partner events such as Slow Roll have seen record-breaking attendance demonstrating the enthusiasm and passion that exists for bicycling in our region.

Pledge your support for biking in our region by making a donation to Bike Cleveland today.

In response to your pledge to us, our pledge to you is that we will continue to work relentlessly to increase the safety and comfort of people who bike and walk in Cleveland and throughout our region. We will continue to advocate for projects that connect our bike network with low-stress facilities like protected and buffered bike lanes. We will continue to build partnerships to grow our education and outreach programs. We will continue to advocate for policies and funding at the local, state, and federal levels to make it easier and safer to bike and walk.

To use a cycling analogy, it feels as though we have finished the first of a series of long uphill climbs and are beginning to see glimpses of how sweet the road ahead looks for bikes and pedestrians in Cleveland on the downhill. But our work remains far from done and we will not stop until Cleveland is firmly on the map as a world-class city for biking and walking.

We cannot get there without your support.

We can’t do it alone. You’re counting on us to be vigilant in our advocacy and education programs, and we’re counting on people like you who share our vision and are willing to put some skin in the game to achieve it. Please become part of the movement by making a tax-deductible donation at BikeCleveland.org/donate. Your contribution will help us further our mission to create a region that is sustainable, connected, healthy, and vibrant by promoting bicycling and advocating for safe and equitable transportation for all.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Jacob VanSickle, Executive Director
Bike Cleveland