Last month, I had the opportunity to head north to Minneapolis and present at the National Safe Routes to School Summit. This was my fourth time attending and fourth time presenting. This was the first time the summit was close to home so I threw my singlespeed and a toothbrush into the work van and started driving. As I drove north through Iowa, I stopped a few times to explore some bike trails. But I’ll write about that later.
Accustomed to small towns, gravel, and corn, I found driving around Minneapolis exhausting. Instead of navigating multi-lane one-ways I parked at the hotel and did not move the van until it was time to leave. I spent the first night walking around the immediate area to get my bearings.
The first day of the conference was great, with a lot of getting acquainted with colleagues by seeing people in person who had only been seen previously via webcam. It is fun to attend talks by other SRTS practitioners to learn new ideas to take back to our home states. The first session was a great networking and walking session. Dave Cowan of the National Safe Routes Partnership led us on a walking tour around town. He pointed out the infamous Mary Tyler Moore statue, which I appreciated but mostly resulted in blank stares from the younger audience. I ended up using the statue as a navigational landmark the rest of the trip. It was fun to stretch our legs, walk to the river, and meet like minded people all working towards a more active future.
At the end of the first day I joined representatives from Wisconsin and Georgia on a guided bike tour from Michael Wojcik, Executive Director of the Minnesota Bike Alliance. With everyone saddled with an ebike, and me with my singlespeed, we pedaled over 20 miles around Minneapolis and saw the incredible investment in infrastructure that makes biking around the city seamless, fun, and comfortable. I was most impressed by the different ways the city separates the car traffic from the bike traffic from the foot traffic. After the ride I headed to the Safe Routes Birthday Party, where we all celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Safe Routes to School program.
The second day was stacked with great presentations, including my own at the end of the day. This day also had a field trip to Richfield, a suburb to the south. There we borrowed the high school’s bike fleet and got to enjoy the infrastructure improvements around the schools in Richfield. I was impressed that Minnesota really pushes for changing the environment to promote active transportation to school and not just ringing the education bell over and over. After lunch I co-presented with Katie Heuser Selkirk on bike rodeo strategies and evolving a bike rodeo to be an effective avenue for change.
The final day included talks and a walk with MN DOT as they showed us their bike and pedestrian counters set up on bike lanes around downtown. It helps record how many people are walking by and counts bicycles using the bike lane. The bicycle counter also included the direction they were biking to see if they were going with the flow of traffic or pedaling like a salmon. The conference ended with a two hour networking session which provided a great opportunity to meet and share ideas with other Safe Routes enthusiasts.
I deemed the conference a rousing success, said my goodbyes, and started my long drive south back to Eastern Iowa.
