Newsletter sent on 10/20

Fall Newsletter: Bike Smart Is Back! 👍

We’re busy gearing up for our fall programs and looking back on another great summer!

Upcoming Events

(Like us on Facebook or check out our events calendar to stay in the know)

• October - Walk to School Month!
  • Children who start their school day with physical activity are healthier and arrive at school more ready to learn than their peers. Help put your school on the map! Celebrate any day in October and let us know how much fun you had! Go to our page to sign up to run a Walk & Roll event, put yourself on the map, and get some giveaways for your students.

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 Complete Streets  | Education  | Recreation| Community

Complete Streets

Pop-Up Demonstration Projects

With fall comes the end of Pop-Up season. These temporary demonstration projects allow communities to test out new walk/bike infrastructure, helping move planned projects forward and sparking local advocacy and conversations about roadway safety. This season, we supported projects in Greensboro, Rutland, Waitsfield, and Ludlow. 

In Ludlow, we transformed a 40-foot-long crosswalk between homes and a town park into a traffic-calming downtown gateway that improved safety for people crossing.

Thanks to our Burlington Greenway Cone Keepers!

Local Motion volunteers have done an incredible job maintaining the Burlington Greenway detour on Battery Street! These folks have been out twice every day since June checking and resetting the cones that delineate the two-way protected bike lane. It just wouldn’t be possible to have this temporary infrastructure in place without the work of dedicated volunteers. Thank you!

If you’re interested in volunteering, you can check for available shifts (through November 14th) here.

Technical Assistance and Advocacy

We’ve been hard at work on a variety of initiatives, many of them in support of walk/bike committees in Vermont communities. This work isn’t always high-profile, but grassroots engagement brings about a lot of change. Here are a few examples:

• Working with the Brattleboro Coalition for Active Transportation on a variety of initiatives including municipal budgeting for bikeway improvements, advocacy for their walk/bike master plan, fundraising for covered bike parking, and more
• Supporting a traffic calming task force in Bristol with recommendations on general strategy, municipal policy updates, and infrastructure improvements
• Completing a community walk/bike survey with the Charlotte Trails and Energy committees
• Coordinating the installation of new bike parking at several Chittenden County schools
• Supporting the Burlington Walk/Bike Council with strategic planning and a community survey
• Influencing in numerous studies and plans around the state, including the Vermont Highway Safety Plan and the Envision I89 Study

Education

Walk & Roll into October with Safe Routes to School

Walk to School day may be on 10/6, but we are celebrating walking and rolling for the entire month of October!

Schools who do even one day of promoting walking and rolling to school will be entered to win one of five sets of 16 bike helmets. That means five schools will win helmets! - learn more here!

Vermont Adaptive

Great partnerships help make biking better for everybody! A huge thank you to VT Adaptive Ski & Sports for the loan of this great handcycle, and thank you so much to the family of Valerie Jean Cameron for making this bicycle available to people who need it. This bike will be used for our Bike Smart school programs in order to provide bikes that will allow every student to be able to participate!

Rolling out Bike Smart

School has started and that means we’ve been sending Bike Smart to Vermont schools. By the end of the season, the trailers will have gone to at least 18 schools! We’ve already had rave reviews of this important and highly in demand program:

“In the two years that I have experienced the Bike Smart trailer, I have received so much positive feedback from students and families. Parents of children who had been hesitant bike riders are thrilled to see their children confident on a bike. And students have so much fun! It opens doors for family bike rides well beyond the school day. It also helps get a dialogue going between myself (PE teacher) and families about who is in need of a bike and who has an extra bike that needs a home. I even had one student who rode for the first time without training wheels during our Bike Smart trailer time call me over the weekend excited to share that he had found an exact match of one of the Bike Smart bikes for sale (used by a family friend) and convinced his parents to get it for him so he could ride it all the time. We met up at the school the next day (yesterday) and he and my son (a classmate) rode around for a couple of hours.”  ~ Brewster Pierce School

E-bikes are AWESOME

From Southern Vermont to the Northeast Kingdom, from the Upper Valley to the Islands, our E-bike Lending Libraries around the state are starting to wrap up for the season. In total, Local Motion e-bikes have been pedaled in 20+ communities and reached at least 700 Vermonters. That’s a lot of effortless, carbon-free miles! 

Is your community interested in hosting our Traveling E-bike Lending Library for a few weeks next season? Let us know!

Elements of Bike Riding by Peter Burns

Did you get a chance to read Peters Burns’ October blog post? We learned a helpful hint for tackling hills on a bike (shift down before arriving at a hill)! Peter also shared a new book to add to your reading list, ‘This is Where You Belong’ by Melody Warnick. The book focuses on feeling connected to the place you live. 

Peter Burns is a long-time bike enthusiast, and one of the original year-round bike riders in Burlington. He writes amazing monthly blogs and teaches a variety of Everyday Biking workshops!

Recreation

Rentals, Rentals, and More Rentals! 

The Trailside Center was busy this summer! Our rental volume was unprecedented with an increase of 30% over our busiest season ever. The incredible  TC staff expertly juggled between reservation holders and walk-up customers to get more riders on the Island Line Trail than ever. From mid-May to mid-October, each bike in our fleet was rented on average of 144 times! Top-notch teamwork contributed to keeping bikes in good working order and putting more people in the saddle, making this season a major success - but don’t just take our word for it.

All Aboard the Bike Ferry

The 2021 Bike Ferry season was a good one (but isn’t every season amazing?)! We had record passenger turnout, not to mention ice cream visits from Grace O’Malley’s boat and public engagement with fascinating lake lessons by the Lake Champlain Sea Grant interns. We are thankful to our fantastic crew, volunteers, wonderful sunny days, and of course wonderful passengers from all walks of life and all sorts of places! 

This year we launched our Friends of the Ferry campaign, which raises money to ensure everyone rides the ferry regardless of their ability to donate. Be on the lookout for this campaign to relaunch in March!

It’s Good to have Valet Bike Parking Back

Did you use Valet Bike Parking this summer? From Summervale to the Dragon Boat Festival, Valet Bike Parking has been at numerous Burlington and South Burlington events throughout the summer. We parked over 930 bikes! 

Our service enables bike riders to attend events and not worry about parking their bike. All of this is made possible by our outstanding volunteers who do a great job keeping this program running smoothly!

Our Community

Volunteer News

There are a lot of things that Local Motion simply would not be able to do without the hundreds of volunteers who donate thousands of hours each year! Visit here to learn more about signing up to volunteer at the Bike Ferry, Valet Bike Parking, Cone Keepers, year-round work-from-anywhere projects, and more!

Plus! Volunteer hours may be eligible for City Market Member Worker credit.

Corporate Sponsorship Opportunities

Your business is invited to work with us to help ensure that biking and walking become a way of life in Vermont! Businesses all over Vermont provide generous annual support for Local Motion’s programs. We will customize a sponsorship opportunity that's just right for your business, from an annual gift to a leadership gift in support of a highly visible asset such as the Bike Ferry or Bike Smart. Learn more here.

Workplace Giving & Employee Volunteering

Workplace Giving & Volunteering are simple and cost-effective ways for any size business to meaningfully engage employees in communities where they live, work, and play. Some employers match or even double their employees' donations! Learn more and contact [email protected].

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