The BTA's 2011 Legislative Agenda is starting to gel and last week there was a flurry of coverage from Portland about it. If you haven't seen that coverage, here are some of the key articles:KBOO Bike Show - Tori Bortman and guest host Michelle Poyourow talk with Rob Sadowsky, Executive Director of the Bicycle Transportation alliance about BTA's agenda for the 2011 Oregon Legislative Session. (via PortlandTransport, here's the mp3 of the show [26MB].)
Two BikePortland articles:
2011 Overview
Additional Details
From the BTAblog:
Safety Focus
Vision Zero Concept
The agenda is increasingly being shaped more by Portland-area concerns than statewide interests, and a subtext for the work in 2011 will be the way the forthcoming Strategic Plan of the BTA shapes up, and the extent to which they embrace statewide horizons and goals or retrench for a more narrow Portland metro focus. Stay tuned, as there is sure to be more conversation and debate.
2 comments:
Correct me if I am wrong (and I probably am:) but wasn't one of the reasons the BTA was in some degree of upheaval/decline that they were too Portland focused? I really don't know the history well. It does seem to me that for the BTA to be truly effective they need to take the gains that have been made in Portland (while NOT taking them for granted) and apply the best of them in a STATEWIDE effort.
The Portland-periphery relation has been an ongoing question, deferred often and never definitively resolved. It will be interesting to see the Strategic Plan, the members meeting on the 14th, and other conversation and debate.
The Washington County Transportation Coalition, a former "chapter," split off from the BTA in part because they were not able to forge a mutually agreeable relationship.
Eugene's GEARS are a separate entity, have a collaboration with the BTA, and offer another model. (But they are also a riding club and advocacy group - like Seattle's Cascade Bicycle Club, but they are having their own set of struggles right now.)
Anyway, lots of debates going on, not just in Portland.
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