WABA Quick Release

Archive for July 12th, 2011

Early this morning, WABA alerted its members and supporters to a sudden decision by DC Council Chairman Kwame Brown to strip Councilmember Wells of his leadership of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation.  Fundamentally, we were concerned that a change in leadership might mean (1) a stalling of certain proposals and initiatives that WABA and the the bicycling community have been working with Wells and the Committee to push forward, and/or (2) a new leader that would not share our view of the importance of bicycling as a core element of the District’s transportation network.

With the announcement of Councilmember Mary Cheh as Chair, those concerns are greatly eased.  Councilmember Cheh is a cyclist who has demonstrated her support for bicycling during her time on the Council.  So while we are disappointed in the discontinuity itself, we are happy to welcome Councilmember Cheh as Chair of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation and will make it a top priority to work with her, on behalf of our members and the cycling community, to ensure that momentum is not lost in expanding safe cycling in the District.

Congratulations, Councilmember Cheh, and welcome.  We look forward to working with you, your staff, and the Committee staff under your leadership.

We have been mighty busy here at WABA with our core mission of bicycle advocacy over the past few years.  So busy, in fact, that the advocacy section of our website had been allowed to accumulate a bit of outdated information.   We have recently taken the time to update our advocacy section of the WABA website.  You can see the updates online here: www.waba.org/advocacy

In the future we will try our hardest to keep this section of our website current and updated.  (But we’re unlikely to delay pushing the improvements in order to update the website about the need to push for them.)

We will continue to keep you updated on our most current advocacy issues through our new blog: Quick Release.  We post almost daily about our advocacy, education and outreach initiatives, and events.  Take a moment and set your RSS or Google Reader to follow our blog feed.

The advocacy priorities outlined for each of our local jurisdictions (Mongomery, Prince George’s, Fairfax, Alexandria and Arlington Counties and the District of Columbia) and the greater Washington region represent many years of on-going work and include a listing of overall priorities for future work. If you have thoughts about our priorities, we would be glad to hear your thoughts.

In November, WABA will be hosting a regional Call to Action Summit to set local and regional advocacy priorities.  The process will begin in September with local stakeholder meetings in our various political jurisdictions.  The region-wide Call to Action Summit will be held on November 3rd.  We are still working out some of the logistics, so stay tuned for more information coming in the next few weeks.