Pat Brown was just hoping to hang on in a tough economy. When she relocated her art gallery in 2008, it was the rock-bottom rent that drew her to a still struggling strip of downtown Memphis, TN. “We were just trying to survive,” she said.

Brown (pictured right) was betting on a small core of community members determined to transform Broad Avenue from a fast-moving thoroughfare, where traffic whizzed past boarded-up storefronts at 50 mph (80 km/h), into a bustling arts district. Little did she know that they would hit the jackpot with bicycling.

Shortly after Brown opened T Clifton Gallery, Sarah Newstok walked in. The local nonprofit Newstok led, Livable Memphis, had a vision for Broad Avenue, too. They wanted to build a protected bike lane that would pass right by Brown’s door, creating a vital connection between a popular multi-use trail and the city’s largest park. “We’re a retail business, so any time there’s a concept to bring additional traffic directly by your storefront, it’s very easy to say ‘yes,’” Brown recalled with a laugh.

In 2010, after garnering support from city officials and surrounding businesses, Livable Memphis and the Broad Avenue Arts District rolled out the idea in a dramatic way. They painted temporary bike lanes and crosswalks and invited the community to “A New Face for an Old Broad,” a celebration, complete with live music, street vendors and a kids’ bike parade down the freshly striped cycle track (photo below).

“Until then, the area had been doing art walks once a year and, at best, those were bringing in 1,000 people,” Brown said. “Our goal for this day-and-a-half event, where the street itself would be a sort of theatrical performance, was maybe 5,000 people. We had 15,000 show up. The energy level was incredible. It was a huge tipping point for us – it changed the trajectory of the revitalization efforts.”

The energy didn’t wane once the event was over and bicyclists started taking advantage of the temporary lanes. Since then, the promise of permanent facilities has drawn more than $6 million in private investment. More than 15 new businesses have opened and nearly 30 properties have been renovated. Traffic has slowed, new customers are arriving on two wheels and, suddenly the rock-bottom neighborhood is one of the hottest spots in town.

Memphis isn’t the only city where bicycling is bringing business. Increasingly leaders in the public and private sector are realizing that being bike-friendly makes good business sense, boosting the bottom line and promoting community-wide economic development. Bicycling in the United States is a $6 billion national industry and one study estimates that the spillover effects of recreational bicycling alone could be as large as $133 billion. But that’s just the beginning, barely scratching the surface of the economic impact of transportation bicycling in communities across North America…

Read the full story here!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

With more than 40 years of experience in the field, including more than two decades as an executive at Schwinn, Townley understands the business of bikes. Now a senior partner at the Gluskin Townley Group, which conducts the national American Bicyclist Survey, he also has insight on the other side of the coin — what makes consumers tick.

And his key take-away from the 2012 survey? Women are the new majority… so stop pink-washing!

This year at the National Bike Summit and the Women’s Bicycling Forum, we’re highlighting how Bicycling Means Business — creating jobs, boosting economic development and making our communities stronger. To get you geared up, we’ll explore the “Economic Impact of Women Bicyclists” on our next Women Bike webinar with Jay Townley and Elliot Gluskin on Wednesday, February 27th, at 2 p.m. Eastern.

Click here to learn more and register.

And don’t forget: Online registration for the Women’s Forum and the National Bike Summit closes on Wednesday, too. Sign up today!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

But joining forces with these powerful champions does more than provide a wind at your back — engaging businesses in bike advocacy is critical to building connected cycling networks in any community.

Understanding the importance of cultivating these allegiances, the League will get you sailing in the right direction with a workshop on “Bringing Businesses on Board” at the 2013 National Bike Summit.

We’ll have three very unique voices discussing the best strategies to get businesses on board with your local bike mission.

•  Kimberly-Clark’s Cycling Ambassador Rob Gusky will share what’s worked to get the bicycling program spinning at his Fortune 500 Company and new techniques to make a bike campaign irresistible from one of the most successful corporations in the world.

• BikePGH’s Lou Fineberg will discuss social enterprise bike advocacy and how the organization is engaging more urban businesses while increasing bike parking, car-free Fridays, and their employer-recognition program.

• Zahra Alabanza (pictured) from Red, Bike and Green will share insight from a model campaign in Atlanta to secure dedicated bike lanes in one of the oldest African-American neighborhoods in the country — by building support with local businesses.

Don’t miss this important workshop — Register for the Summit today!

Alison Dewey
League Program Manager, BFB & BFU

Bicycling has an important role in making communities attractive places to visit, live, and work. And we can prove it — with numbers. And we will at the National Bike Summit.

More than ever transportation decision makers and elected officials are open to the argument that balanced multi-modal transportation systems, that include safe and attractive bicycling and walking, have positive benefits for communities. But the message needs to be delivered without hyperbole and with real world examples close to home.

That’s what the National Bike Summit is all about: bringing bicyclists from all of the country to Washington, D.C., to tell stories from their own communities about the power – in this case, the economic power – of bicycling; and to do it armed with latest, local, regional, and national research and data.

Whether it’s in meeting on the Hill or closer to home, the best thing you can do is tell your personal story. Whether it’s about your own shopping habits by bike, a new bicycle business district, or your family’s household transportation savings to buy more locally produced goods, those stories build the credibility of the economic argument and show real-world impacts for the policymaker’s constituents.

But since we also live in a policy climate in which everything needs to be quantified, we need to marshal supporting data. At the Summit we will be hosting a panel, Bicycling Means Business: Getting the Facts Straight, to lay out the latest research on the economic impacts of active transportation, bicycling events, bicycle tourism, and the full range of societal benefits of bicycling.

The panel will be the very first public presentation of new research from:

• Charles Brown, Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center, presenting “Economic Impacts of Active Transportation on New Jersey’s Economy”
• Kristin Dahl, Travel Oregon, presenting “The Power of the Pedal: Economic Impact study of Bike Tourism”
• Jerry Norquist, National Bicycle Tour Directors Association, presenting “The Economics of Bicycle Events”
• Ken Colburn, Symbiotic Strategies LLC, presenting “Analyzing and Quantifying the Multiple Benefits of Bicycling” (with Christopher James)

The results of this new work are on such super-secret lockdown that I can’t even preview them here. But in the meantime you can read all about the economic impacts of bicycling in our Advocacy Advance report. To help attendees with their Hill meetings, each presenter will identify a key talking point or two from their research that attendees will be able to use in the Congressional meetings and at home.

From Travel Orgeon’s Kristin Dahl, here’s an example of how to relate a personal story to a broad economic benefits argument:

This panel alone is probably worth the trip to the Summit, but even if you can’t make it, you can learn more about the Summit and how it will improve implementation of the new transportation bill, MAP-21, by joining our Advocacy Advance National Bike Summit webinar tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. eastern. Caron Whitaker and I will talk about:

• The current political landscape
• Framing the message
• The Summit  theme, the “ask”, and MAP-21
• The outstanding lineup of speakers
• The League’s Women Bike and Equity Advisory Council
• And what you can do in your home district, even if you can’t make the Summit

We hope to have you on the webinar tomorrow and/or at the Summit in March. Let’s build a bicycle-friendly America!

Darren Flusche
League Policy Director

Flusche joined the League in April 2009 and has a B.A. in history from Syracuse University and a Masters of Public Administration with a concentration in public policy analysis from New York University.

First of all, thank you to the many people who shared great session ideas in our call for proposals. We wish we could incorporate all of them — and did our best to include at least some aspect the vast majority of your diverse submissions.

We’ve just released the list of confirmed workshop topics and it’s possibly the most dynamic program yet.

In line with our “Bicycling Means Business” theme, we’ll have specific tracks exploring the economic benefits of bicycling and how to take advantage of federal funding through the new transportation law, MAP-21.

But that’s not all.

We want to move beyond static Powerpoint presentations and engage YOUR ideas, too. So this year, you can role play effective communications tactics to engage your elected officials, sharpen your press strategy with an interactive storytelling workshop and, perhaps most importantly, help us develop a “Bicycling Agenda for 2014 and Beyond.”

The workshops compliment an exciting group of plenary speakers, as well. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) will join Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and other political leaders — and we can’t wait to hear Yolanda Cade of AAA.

Stay tuned for the announcement of more keynote speakers, four exciting pecha kuchas, and the complete Summit schedule later this week.

Register for the Summit today!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

The founder of the first company to manufacture and market bikes built specifically for women, she challenged the very structure and design of the bicycle. Both an entrepreneur and an advocate, Terry dared to follow her passion and ingenuity and grew a basement operation into an internationally known brand.

And on March 4, she’ll be the opening keynote at the Women Bike event at the start of the 2013 National Bike Summit. Register today!

With a theme of Women Mean Business, this all-day event will continue the momentum of the National Women’s Bicycling Summit in Long Beach this fall and once again bring together women from all aspects of the bicycle movement to learn, network and be inspired. And, when it comes to women bike business leaders, Georgena Terry is quite simply a legend.

As Susi Wunsch, founder of Velojoy and Women Bike advisory board member, sums up:

Georgena Terry began to ponder the subtleties of bicycle fit, notably for smaller women like herself, while working as a young engineer in the 1980s. Her fascination with how women’s physiology relates to frame geometry led her to teach herself how to build bicycles in her spare time. “I never liked working for a big corporation,” she says now. “I think I always knew that I would end up doing something on my own.”

That “something” turned out to be the founding in 1985 of Terry Precision Cycling, the first woman-specific bicycle company. At a time when women’s options were still limited to men’s bikes and apparel, Terry listened. She focused on problem-solving for women who, for example, couldn’t clear the top tube of a men’s frame or who suffered neck and shoulder pain from having to reach too far for handlebars. Early on, a male-dominated industry was less than encouraging. But Terry, who considers being called an “absolute maverick” the highest compliment, and who has since been widely recognized with industry distinctions, achieved success by innovating — creating women’s bicycles, saddles and apparel that enhance comfort and performance.

Terry sold controlling interest in the company to private investor Liz Robert in 2009. Today, from her base outside Rochester, NY, she continues to make bicycles, working directly with customers on measurements and specifications and having the classic steel frames manufactured by Waterford Precision Cycles in Wisconsin. “I’ve got no overhead, no rent, I don’t build a bike until I sell it,” Terry says. Perhaps that’s one reason why this petite legend estimates that she’ll log 6,500 miles on her own bike this year…

And the cycling maverick couldn’t be more excited to join us. “The National Bike Summit has a great reputation,” Terry says. “I’m honored to be speaking at the Women Mean Business event — a wonderful opportunity to share ideas and meet new advocates for cycling.”

This event will sell out — sign up today! And stay tuned for more program details in coming weeks!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Atlanta recently broke ground on a Street Car Project that will increase connectivity between downtown and the King National Historic site, a top tourist attraction. While city officials are pushing the project forward, there remains some concern that shuttling tourists from downtown to the historic site would preclude those tourist from spending their dollars with local businesses along the route. Also, as a city crippled by subpar transit, the Street Car provides little benefit to local citizens. So, in order to garner more support for the project the city initially promised to put in bike lanes along the street car route.

After this proposal won the support of local residents and cycling groups the city came back with another proposal that would maintain full bike lanes on one street and leave the other with interrupted bike lanes that are less safe. Well, the street that would be shortchanged is Auburn Avenue.

The mostly black neighborhood has struggled in recent years, while seeing a parallel street become a major bike thoroughfare that has blossomed economically — proving yet again that bikes mean business. Red, Bike and Green — a group focused on encouraging more blacks to bike in their communities — partnered with ABC and SOPO Bicycle Co-Op to host a bicycle tour of Sweet Auburn showcasing this incredible historical gem and gather the support of the community to advocate for complete bike lanes along the street.

Before the tour  though, it was time to get some signatures on our Letter of Support from local businesses and residents. Red, Bike and Green- Atlanta Co-Founder, Zahra Alabanza and I set out walking up and down Auburn Ave for the rest of the afternoon. Auburn Ave is lined with some of the oldest black businesses and buildings in the nation but is in the top 10 most endangered historic places in the country, as well.

The street is no stranger to bike activism either, after a 1890 ordinance segregated the original Street Cars in Atlanta, a group of black citizens and Auburn Ave business owners led a boycott to appeal the law. What was their preferred mode of travel? Bicycles.

Then it was time for the fun part. After gathering more than 40 our new closest friends we headed out from Troy Davis Park to begin Tour de Sweet Auburn: A Community Bike Tour of the Sweet Auburn District.

The group at Auburn Research library

The tour took us to several major historical spots along Auburn Ave. including Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth home; the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (group founded in part by Dr. King); the oldest black barbershop in America; the Peacock nightclub, which, at one point, was the sole venue where black acts could perform; and some major black historical churches Big Bethel, Old Wheat Street and Ebenezer. Zahra provided some history about the area while Atlanta Bicycle Coalition ED Rebecca Serna pointed out the parts of Auburn that would have gotten bike lanes in the original proposal and explained the importance of connectivity to the rest of the city.

RBG-ATL Co-Founder Zahra Alabanza

ABC ED Rebecca Serna

An old ad using stereotypical depictions of black children still on the walls

Street art honoring Civil Rights Hero John Lewis

Community activist Mtamanika Youngblood, CEO at Historic District Development Corporation educating riders about keeping the community affordable for its original residents

After all that riding and learning it was time to refuel and talk about what we’d seen. As part of our outreach efforts a local restaurant welcomed us to dine with them at a nice discount. Oh and DINE we did at Mangoes Caribbean Restaurant! After devouring a delicious dinner it was off to more merriment at the historic Pal’s Lounge. The owner at Pal’s not only committed to having a bike rack installed when he saw all the bikers swarming into his spot, but he also had a drink ready for us in anticipation. If you visit Atlanta and end up at Pal’s make sure you order “The Spoke” and tell them RBG sent you.

Of course, the Sweet Auburn Ride was just my first stop back in Atlanta. Stay tuned for my next post about the Georgia-lina Bike Summit!

Hamzat Sani
Equity and Outreach Fellow

Hamzat joined the League in September 2012 after working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Before working in biking, Hamzat worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s son as a Program Associate at The King Center in Atlanta. A founder of the Red, Bike and Green chapter in Atlanta, Hamzat sees biking as a hub for change on the communal level.

Click here to download the map and here to read the full report.

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

After the dramatic twists and turns of bike advocacy on Capitol Hill this year and last, Congress passed a new federal transportation law that dramatically cuts funding for bicycling. Now more than ever, lawmakers need to hear from dealers that bicycling has a big impact on local economies from coast to coast.

The NBDA is giving dealers this chance.

Dealers who are members of NBDA and first-time attendees of the National Bike Summit are invited to fill out a quick online questionnaire (www.bikeleague.org/nbda12) to be entered to win one of 25 $1,000 sponsorships to attend the 2013 Summit.

“Our members are the premier dealers in the United States,” says Fred Clements, executive director of NBDA. “Perhaps more than any other attendee, dealers are able to directly connect how bicycling affects a congressmembers’s district, and why bicycling means business.”

The League is administering the program on behalf of NBDA, and promoting the scholarships to broaden the applicant and attendee pool. “Having lots of dealers at the Summit each year is a big part of our success,” says Andy Clarke, League president. “We are happy to be partnering with NBDA to ensure 25 dealers join us for the first time this year.”

Click here to apply!

Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director

Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.

Large rides like RAGBRAI support local economies by bringing thousands of riders to small communities (Photo: Christopher Gannon/The Des Moines Register)

Bicycling generates $364.8 million in direct and indirect benefits to the state of Iowa every year, according to a new study, “Economic and Health Benefits of Bicycling in Iowa.” The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, known as RAGBRAI, may be the most visible expression of this, but it is not alone.

“RAGBRAI is a huge event and known across the world.  Communities in Iowa understand the economic potential of the event.”says Mark Wyatt, executive director of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition. “This study shows there is a reason to be encouraging more bicycling everyday.”

The study was conducted for the Iowa Bicycle Coalition by the University of Northern Iowa Sustainable Tourism and Environment Program (STEP).  It was sponsored by a grant from Bikes Belong, Creating Great Places, and members of the Iowa Bicycle Coalition.

The Iowa Bicycle Coalition hopes that this research will encourage the state to increase funding for bicycling. “This study indicates there is a solid return on investment through trails with more than $21 million being returned to the state in the form of sales tax,” says Wyatt. “There is more we can do, in addition to trails, to encourage more bicycling in Iowa.”

This is just further evidence of the economic impacts of bicycling.

Communities welcome RAGBRAI riders (Photo: Christopher Gannon/The Des Moines Register)

Darren Flusche
League Policy Director

Flusche joined the League in April 2009 and has a B.A. in history from Syracuse University and a Masters of Public Administration with a concentration in public policy analysis from New York University.