by Keith Vogelsang

The city held its first ever Bike Summit on April 28th, hosted by city staff and held at the Bloomington and Monroe County Convention Center. The BBC was a proud sponsor of the event, along with help from Bikesmith’s , the Bicycle Garage, Bloomington Pedal Power, Bloomingfoods, BCOS, and BTOP.

What is a Bike Summit? That’s the question the city’s Transportation Manager Scott Robinson raised in his opening remarks. Essentially, this was a very public opportunity for the city’s Platinum Task Force to begin rolling out some of their findings, and get feedback on what kinds of projects should receive priority. The city has set an ambitious goal of earning a Platinum-level award as a bicycle-friendly community by the year 2016. The League of American Bicyclists directs the program and evaluates applications. Implementing recommendations from the Platinum Task Force will be a crucial part of upgrading Bloomington from in current silver to gold or platinum. The final report of the task force is expected sometime this fall.

Communities are scored along the five “E” rubric of Engineering, Evaluation & Planning, Education, Enforcement, and Encouragement. Summit participants were organized into focus groups around each of these five categories, and asked to develop their own list of projects. Then, each focus group displayed their priorities list, and the entire assembly then had an opportunity to vote on projects. Each participant received five red stickers to be allocated at will. Some of us put all five stickers on a single project, while others preferred to spread the votes around equally.

Vince Caristo, the city’s new Bicycle Coordinator originally proposed the idea of the summit to the task force. Vince then approached me for help in making it happen. The BBC was well represented at the summit, and it was gratifying to see how our partnership with other sponsors could bring together so many bicycle enthusiasts. There seemed to be enough energy (along with great food and drink) for the meeting to have continued beyond our scheduled three hour block of time. The city staff did a splendid job organizing and keeping the event moving along to get the most out of our limited time. The organizers even provided extra bike racks to accommodate the group. Even with the thunderstorms, the racks were at capacity.