Legislative advocacy season is currently in full swing at both the state and national levels. Usually, the MassBike team along with a group of bicycling advocates from across the state would be headed down to Washington D.C. for the League of American Bicyclists’ National Bike Summit. The Summit is a time to learn from bicycling supporters from across the country and engage with our stalwart public servants during the annual lobby day event on the hill.

Like much else, this year’s National Bike Summit has moved to a virtual format. So, we are logging in for education and advocacy from behind our screens. 

While many of us will be missing the in-person camaraderie that the Summit brings, this virtual format has allowed us to bring the largest Massachusetts Delegation ever to the Summit. Over 30 Massachusetts advocates are attending this year and will be bringing back a wealth of information to their communities. This ability for increased participation will allow us to further take advantage of the bike boom and further our impact to make our communities more bike-friendly.

Beyond the educational benefits, one of the more important aspects of the Summit is the opportunity to engage with our elected officials during lobby day. Each year, the League of American Bicyclists puts together a list of bike-friendly bills and initiatives to ask our electeds to support. This year is a transportation reauthorization year, which gives us the opportunity to push for more bicycle-friendly transportation initiatives. 

The legislative bill filing season is moving along here in Massachusetts – and we need your help! We have several bicycle-friendly bills filed in both the MA House of Representatives and the Senate, and we'd like your local legislators to become cosponsors.

Working with reps and senators from across the state, we have six bills we're supporting, which help improve road safety, promote electric bicycle regulations, offer incentives for bicycle commuting, and fund rail trails. You can find more information about these bills below, and on our Legislation Advocacy webpage.

This is the very start of the bill-becomes-a-law process, and a good time to let your reps know to chime in.

Our ask for you is to:

1. Get to know our six bicycle-related bills that have been filed for the 192nd Legislative Session
2. Find and contact your local state legislators, either by phone call or email
3. Ask them to support these bicycle-related bills (reference the bills by "docket number," and remember to thank them for their work!)
4. And please share a story about why promoting bicycling, improving road safety, and building our rail trails are so important to you

To make this easy, we've created a template to use to reference the bills when contacting your legislator. If it helps, click HERE to use the template.

Details of the bills we're supporting are below

Join MassBike for the National Bike Summit- virtually! The 2021 National Bike Summit will be taking place online, February 28th - March 3rd. Attend educational workshops, network with bicycling advocates from across the country, and advocate for your congressional district during the virtual lobby day.

The National Bike Summit usually takes place in Washington D.C. every year and our mighty Massachusetts delegation usually travels down to Washington to learn, share, and lobby for better bicycling policies with our senators and congresspeople. With this year’s virtual format, we're looking to grow our team to have a bigger group than ever before attend the summit. Bicycling advocates from across the commonwealth are encouraged to attend, to share knowledge, learn from each other, and show our legislators that we have statewide support for better bicycling for all in Massachusetts.

From beginning cyclists to commuters to long-distance riders, everyone enjoys a scenic ride along Massachusetts’s many rail trails. These trails are separated from cars which makes them low stress for both recreation and transportation. They are also a great, socially distanced way to explore across Massachusetts. Due to decades of advocacy and hard work, rail trails are now plentiful across the commonwealth, and they’re being knitted together piece by piece every year. To find a trail near you, we recommend using the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s (MAPC) Trail Map. The map includes statewide data on walking and cycling paths. You can use the trail map filters to sort by trail type and can even check out the proposed trails advocates across the state are currently working to bring to life.

Southern New England Trunkline Trail in Douglas, MA

While winter riding can be difficult due to the usually cold, wet, and dark conditions, this January’s warmer than average temperatures and sunny afternoons, as well as the looming cabin fever staying inside due to COVID-19, have found many of us logging more outdoors miles than usual.

The MassBike staff has found ourselves taking advantage of the dry January weather by exploring our local rail trails. Jes took her first ride of 2021 on the Southern New England Trunkline Trail in Douglas. Galen biked along the scenic Massachusetts Water Resource Authority Aqueduct Trails in Needham. While Chrystal has been biking on the Mattapoisett Rail Trail whose phase 1B will be open to the public this spring. Even as it gets colder and wetter, we want to make sure you are prepared to keep riding outside all winter long.

As MassBike welcomes in the New Year, we first must acknowledge what this past year meant for us and for so many people who faced loss and tough challenges. We have all been forced to look at the world with new eyes, and to ask hard questions about how we treat each other and build a better world together. For MassBike this meant continuously pivoting our work to face the headwinds and manage each moment to maintain momentum for bike advocacy across the state. Through it all, we kept rolling. Below are a few notable inflection points that defined our year.

Earlier this year, MassBike teamed up with WatsonActive with support from the Mass in Motion program to offer grants up to $1,000 to organizations for bike-related activities. These grants sought to expand access to bicycling through local capacity building and support projects that work within the framework of the Four E’s of Bicycle Advocacy: Encouragement, Engineering, Education, Evaluation and Planning. Each of the E’s is viewed through the lens of “Equity and Inclusion,” with the goal to increase participation in bicycling for transportation, fitness, and recreation. 

MassBike was thrilled to award six organizations across the state with mini-grants to further bike-related activities across the commonwealth. We provided technical assistance to the implementation of the mini-grants through periodic check-ins to ensure the projects stayed on track in the extra challenging year that was 2020.

This year we've been so grateful for the support we’ve received this year from cycling advocates across the commonwealth. We’ve kept bicycle advocacy strong, thanks to our coalition partners and the financial support of our generous donors. With the 2020 bike boom, MassBike is in the perfect position to push bicycling advocacy forward statewide but we need more donors to help keep the momentum going. Give now and the Charlie Proctor Memorial Fund will double your donation. Your donation helps MassBike support our partners across Massachusetts as we work together for better bicycling for all.

Those who tuned into MassBike’s annual meeting met a few of our coalition partners, we wanted to introduce you to a few leaders in bicycle advocacy who are working with MassBike across the state.

On Monday, December 7th, over 220 MassBike supporters joined together over zoom to hear about the great work being done by our partners and cycling advocates from across the commonwealth. We at MassBike would like to thank everyone who came, we were overwhelmed by the support we received during the program. As promised, we have the recording of the event for those of you who couldn’t attend the entire evening.

You can view the entire two-hour program in full below. For your convenience, we have also created videos of each segment so you can tune into what you missed or are most interested in watching and sharing with others. In this post, we've included a recap of each segment, including the video and pertinent links so you don’t miss any of the great content that was shared on Monday. 

2020 has been a challenging year but it has also brought lots of new opportunities for bicycling advocacy so to tackle the work we’ve needed to grow our team. MassBike is excited to announce we’ve added two wonderful new staff members. Please welcome Chrystal Walsh our new Development Coordinator and Jes Slavin our new Communications Coordinator. We are thrilled to have their help as we use the momentum of this bike boom to drive advocacy forward across the commonwealth. 

Chrystal and Jes both worked hard on our recent #GivingTuesday fundraising push and are currently helping to put together the MassBike Annual Meeting that’s happening on Monday, December 7th at 6pm. We wanted to introduce them to you before you meet them virtually for the first time at the Annual Meeting (which you should RSVP for right now if you haven’t yet).