N AT I O N A L B I K E S U M M I T
VIRTUALLY A PERFECT NATIONAL BIKE SUMMIT BY LAUREN JENKINS
The pandemic forced a quick U-turn on the road to hosting our annual Summit Is there anything better than 300 people who love bikes gathered in one place? Whether it’s for an epic ride or an awesome event like the National Bike Summit, we always look forward to when our community comes together. Of course, you know how many “large gatherings” have been able to take place in 2020. With great sadness, the League cancelled the in-person version of our annual Summit that was to be held in March. So many advocates, city officials, and professional planners had put so much time into proposing and developing presentations around our theme, “Safe Streets for Everyone” and hundreds of people were expecting to learn and celebrate ways to make biking better in their cities and towns. At the League headquarters in Washington, we put our heads and shared spreadsheets together and, as quickly as possible, we transformed the National Bike Summit into a virtual event that advocates could attend from their home offices across the country. We cannot thank our presenters, keynote speakers, and attendees enough for their flexibility and enthusiasm at a time of great uncertainty. Amid the scramble to figure out online schooling, child care, job situations, and so much more, hundreds of bike advocates still carved out time to be together— online—in order to further our movement for safer streets for everyone. 24
It was an impossible task to try and recreate everything we love about the Summit, but the glow of the computer screen couldn’t dim how inspired we were by keynote speakers like Amy Cohen, co-founder of Families for Safe Streets, and Keya Chatterjee, executive director of the U.S. Climate Action Network or how big we smiled while swapping stories at the post-Lobby Day happy hour. MEMBER BENEFIT
Watch the 2020 Bike Summit Sessions online: bikeleague.org/Summit2020 Rather than dwell on what we missed by going virtual for the 2020 Summit, we’re motivated by how much we were able to do. When we shifted to an online conference, a number of people signed up to attend the Summit who otherwise would not have been able to travel to Washington, DC. Going online also meant we were able to keep up the momentum from our 2019 Summit Lobby Day at a critical time to shape transportation legislation in Congress.
>> READ MORE about in our federal transportation update on page 17