Sunday, January 4, 2015

UPDATE! And please invite your friends to follow 1st State BIKES

What has made 1st State BIKES so successful in its first full year of existence? Our loyal followers have played a huge part. But we need more of you, in order to mature and become a true force in Delaware bicycle advocacy. And really, we shouldn't have any trouble at all, considering the popularity of bicycling and that we're not even looking for paid members. Supporting 1st State BIKES is absolutely free! And always will be.

We launched 3 petitions in 2014. The first, advocating for a Newark to Wilmington on-road bikeway did quite well, clearing well over 200 signatures. As a result, several cyclists and three key folks from DelDOT rode the route. They took notes on the various obstacles, and many of the fixes involve some traffic signals, parking, and striping. Remediation could begin as early as Spring. Look for updates on this project as we get further into 2015.

The other two petitions, not so well. We collected just over 30 for the Bicycle Warning Sign "In Lane" enhancement, and are still struggling below 15 for enforcement of New Castle County's Unified Development Code where bicycle parking is concerned. The latter is a truly dismal showing, and very discouraging when considering it involves equal level of service. Folks, we have to do better. Signing these petitions truly means something. The signatures are real, and collected in a printable form, and submitted to those in charge. Simply put, projects like this will fail if the bicycling community doesn't support them in the simplest terms.

A huge barrier to gaining support is Bike Delaware. The State's #1 advocacy organization (according to the League of American Bicyclists) is not only ignoring our petitions, and not cross-posting our action alerts, but some of us are even blocked from posting on their Facebook page. This, despite us promoting Bike Delaware's projects and programs. So we definitely have our work cut out for us, in gaining the support we need to not only defend current policies and legislation, but improve or add to what we already have.

So please everyone, spread the word! Tell your friends to stop by and check out 1st State BIKES. Likes tell us lots about how we are doing, and we urge you to please invite your friends - via your own page - to like our page. We prefer to grow organically, as opposed to paying Facebook to grow fake numbers for us.

1 comment:

  1. A Newark to Wilmington path would certainly change the way I travel between these two cities.

    ReplyDelete

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