On the longest day of the year, advocates, planners, researchers, and community members all gathered together for the Vermont Walk/Bike Summit. It was a hot day in St. Johnsbury, but we were all buzzing with excitement to learn, share, and connect.
We want to share a warm congratulations! to our own Jonathon Weber and Susan Grasso, who were awarded for their work making roads safer statewide through our Complete Streets program. And we as a whole want to say thank you! for the award in recognition of Local Motion’s 25 years of bike and walk advocacy work.
The Local Motion team all arrived with a different set of goals, some to share their current work, some to learn more about the active transportation movement, and some to meet more members of our greater community. Despite our range of personal backgrounds and goals for the day, we all found inspiration being in such a large group of like-minded people.
Many powerful words were spoken throughout the day, and I personally found myself typing in endless quotes in my phone’s notebook app. Mirna Valerio, aka the Mirnavator, started the day off with a keynote speech. Her words about Vermont told why she, and many others, have decided to make this great state a home: she found comfort “being in a community where recreation outside was the norm for most people”.
And I think we proved ourselves as a community of outdoorsy folk, as a group of us braved a thunderstorm during a ride through St. Johnsbury’s new section of bike path. The new path takes you from the end of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail and up to the St. Johnsbury welcome center. We thankfully hid from the worst of it in one of St. J’s famous tunnels that light up as you enter. After a while, though, we knew we’d have to get wet to get home. With a cry of, “this is a ‘heck yes’ group!” we took off into the downpour and safely back thanks to the path.
Some of us came away from the Summit with a new awareness and appreciation for the amount of groundwork and long term effort that is needed to create safer roads and routes. We all took in the expertise of others and made new connections within our active community.
We’ll see you there next year!
P.S. We wanted to note a particularly important correction/update. During the opening session comments, it was stated that there were no bicycle or pedestrian fatalities in the past year. At the time of the Summit, the Vermont Fatality data from the Vermont Highway Safety Data Unit was not updated. It has since been updated, and notes that 3 pedestrians and one bicyclist were killed in 2024. It would be remiss of us to not share this devastating update, and we share our deep condolences for those individuals who lost their lives. Our work continues so that others do not meet the same fate.