Tag Archives: Ken McLeod

Registration open as the 2020 Alaska Walk and Bike Conference goes virtual and free

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(Thank you to everybody who participated in this year’s virtual conference. If you missed any of the presentations, their slides are posted on our Agenda link.)

The 2020 Alaska Walk and Bike Conference is going virtual, and now it’s free. It will take place from 9:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday through Friday, June 9-12. Click this link to register for the conference.

Each day’s agenda will open with a specialist discussing the science and evidence of that day’s theme, followed by another speaker who will feature an Alaska example. There will be an opportunity for attendees to ‘chat’ and share information after each day’s events. (NOTE: Presentation slides are posted on the Agenda link.)

The themes and speakers for each day are:

Some of our speakers include Ana Lucaci and Nicole Huegenin of Denver-based Walk2Connect, Dr. Elliot Bruhl of SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC, Chief Medical Officer based in Sitka), Bonita Banks BSN RN of South Peninsula Hospital in Homer, Alfgeir Kristjannson PhD from the University of West Virginia and Reykjavik University (Iceland), Maeve Nevins-Lavtar from the Municipality of Anchorage Department of Parks and Recreation, Dr Frederick Foote MD, Sarana Schell of AARP Alaska, Ken McLeod JD policy director of the League of American Bicyclists, Lee Hart of the Alaska Outdoor Alliance, and Scott Menzies and Charlie Lowell of the Sustina Bicycle Institute.

Click this link, https://www.kcaw.org/2020/05/18/alaska-walk-and-bike-conference-goes-virtual-this-june/, to hear Sitka’s Doug Osborne of the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) and Anchorage’s Dawn Groth RN BSN of the Alaska Division of Public Health discuss the conference during a May 18 morning interview on Sitka’s KCAW-Raven Radio.

A tentative agenda is posted below. To register for this free, virtual conference, click this link, https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_u_Hpx4yzQtK4khFeIX5BMg. For more information, contact Dawn Groth at dawn.groth@alaska.gov.

• Alaska Walk and Bike Conference flier (PDF for printing)

• Tentative Agenda for the Alaska Walk and Bike Conference (updated June 4))

Sitka to host second annual Alaska Walk and Bike Conference on June 9-13

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Are you looking for ways to make Alaska more walking and bicycling friendly? Sitka will host the second annual Alaska Walk and Bike Conference on June 9-13, with the theme of Walk.Bike.Roll. Creating an Equitable Transportation System For All.

While the agenda is still being finalized, but the plan is to bring in a couple of national speakers talk about walking and biking policy, as well as some Alaska and local presenters to round out the event. Our tentative national speakers are Ken McLeod, policy director of the League of American Bicyclists, and Ana Lucaci and Nicole Huguenin of Walk2Connect, a Denver-based nonprofit that has recently worked with Kodiak Walks.

The first two days will mostly be geared toward walking and the second two days will be geared toward biking. To get you out of the conference room, we hope to include group hikes, bike rides, a walk audit, a bike maintenance workshop, and other events throughout the week. Saturday features some free community events — a guided hike, a Sitka Cycling Club group bike ride, and an open house at the Salty Spoke Bike Collective. We will post a tentative agenda when it is ready.

Why is this conference in Sitka? Sitka is the only community in Alaska with both a Bicycle Friendly Community designation (Silver) and a Walk Friendly Communities designation (Bronze). This is a chance to see what works in Sitka, learn more about Walk Sitka and the Sitka Cycling Club and how they deal with some of the challenges they still face in their efforts to become more walkable and bikeable.

Prices for the Alaska Walk and Bike Conference are low — $50 for the full conference, or $30 for the two days of June 9-10 or June 11-12. This year we also will have a special half-day price for either a morning or afternoon session. There will be a couple of lunchtime events, such as lunch-and-learns, that will be open to the public.

Please use this website to register online. We accept online payments by PayPal or credit/debit cards, and if you select the invoice option there is info about where to mail your check. You can find more details about the event at https://walkbikealaska.wordpress.com. You can register at http://akwalkbikeconference.eventsmart.com (click on the event name and follow the instructions).

For more details, contact Doug Osborne at (907) 966-8674 or douglaso@searhc.org, or email akwalkbikeconference@gmail.com. We will have a limited number of travel scholarships available. To learn more and to get an application, contact Dawn Groth at dawn.groth@alaska.gov.

Alaska makes small gains in 2018 Bicycle Friendly States progress report

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How does Alaska rank when it comes to cycling compared to the rest of the United States? According to the 2018 state progress reports released last week by the League of American Bicyclists for its Bicycle Friendly States program, Alaska ranks 35th, which is an improvement of one spot since the last official ranking in 2017 when Alaska was 36th.

While each of the 50 state progress reports shows a ranking in the upper right corner, the League of American Bicyclists did not make an official ranking in 2018.

“We did not update the ranking this year,” League of American Bicyclists policy director Ken McLeod said. “This year we only did an analysis of federal data and outreach to state advocates and agencies for comments. The ranking is based on a more comprehensive survey process, which we intend to do in 2019.”

Over the years, Alaska typically ranks in the mid-30s with a high of 29th in 2011 and a low of 47th in 2009. There were major changes to the ranking system criteria in 2012 and 2017, McLeod said. Washington has been ranked No. 1 every year since the rankings began in 2008.

“Since creating the Bicycle Friendly State Program in 2008, the League of American Bicyclists has ranked each state based on the actions taken to make bicycling better. Of special focus has been outcomes and activities by state legislatures and their departments of transportation,” the League’s website said. “For 2018, the League used federal data on bicycling to highlight the evolution of biking-related inputs and outcomes in every state during the last decade. The Progress Reports provide graphs of state ridership, safety and spending, including comparisons to regional and national averages for each indicator.”

The progress reports provide additional information based on federal, state, and local reports for each state’s ridership, safety, and spending on bicycle infrastructure. It also looks at whether or not a state has made policy changes in five areas — adopting a Complete Streets policy, adopting a safe passing law (at least three feet), updating the statewide bicycle plan within the last 10 years, creating a bicycle safety emphasis area, and using 2 percent or more of federal funds for bike/pedestrian projects in the past five years. Of the five policy areas, Alaska only answered yes to the statewide bike plan (the Alaska Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan is being updated this year for the first time since 1994 and is in final draft status, so this is a gain from 2017) and having a bicycle safety emphasis area (our only yes in 2017).

“The Bicycle Friendly State℠ program was launched in 2008 in order to better understand state efforts related to bicycling and provide a comparative framework that allows states to easily identify areas of improvement,” the League’s website said. “Through our ranking, we hope that states and the public can easily understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of each state’s efforts related to bicycling.”

Alaska’s progress report noted we rank seventh overall in bike commuting at 1.0 percent (a slight decrease since the rankings started in 2008), We also rank over the past 10 years as one of the most safe (top 10) for bike commuters as far as fatalities, and we also showed one of the largest decreases in the amount of Federal Highway Authority funding being used for bike/pedestrian projects (although that total did go up in recent years). In addition, the progress report noted the update of the Alaska Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan and an effort by biking and walking advocates to create a statewide advocacy group called Bike/Walk Alaska.

While the 2018 progress reports don’t constitute an official ranking, here is how the states rank based on the numbers in the upper right corners of every progress report:

  1. Washington
  2. Minnesota
  3. California
  4. Oregon
  5. Massachusetts
  6. Colorado
  7. Delaware
  8. Utah
  9. New Jersey
  10. Virginia
  11. Maryland
  12. Pennsylvania
  13. Michigan
  14. Vermont
  15. Florida
  16. Illinois
  17. Maine
  18. Georgia
  19. Ohio
  20. Rhode Island
  21. North Carolina
  22. Arizona
  23. New York
  24. Connecticut
  25. Wisconsin
  26. Tennessee
  27. Louisiana
  28. Idaho
  29. Texas
  30. Iowa
  31. Nevada
  32. Missouri
  33. South Dakota
  34. New Hampshire
  35. Alaska
  36. Arkansas
  37. West Virginia
  38. Indiana
  39. Alabama
  40. Mississippi
  41. South Carolina
  42. Wyoming
  43. Kentucky
  44. New Mexico
  45. Oklahoma
  46. Montana
  47. Kansas
  48. North Dakota
  49. Hawai’i
  50. Nebraska