VI. rounding the bend (1985-1987)

By 1985, WABA had made it in almost every way. Hughes had been reelected to a third term as President -- the only WABA top officer ever to be elected to more than two complete terms. Keenan loved her job, and she earned the respect of virtually everyone who worked with her. She brought with her more office experience than any previous occupant of the WABA staff position, and her recordkeeping rivaled John Irwin at his best.

The bike-a-thon, at last, put WABA on a high and steady level of income. Well, almost. Echoes from a past that couldn't escape WABA: the minutes for the January 1986 Board meeting cited Treasurer Bill Silverman warning, "If current spending rates continue, WABA will be bankrupt by March 20." More echoes: in order to stave off financial insolvency, WABA circulated grant proposals to foundations without success.

However, a more skillful and dedicated Board than in the past kicked around a wide range of proposals. The Board settled on a fundraising appeal directly to members through a phone bank. Keenan and Peter Harnik came up with an elaborate Annual Report summing up WABA's successes for 1985 in an effort to induce members to donate additional money. It worked. WABA's income was enough to tide over the organization until it received the proceeds from the summer bike-a-thon.

WABA membership increased steadily, from 544 in December 1984 to 640 in December 1985, and reached 750 a year later.

At the end of 1984, Ken Moskowitz got a job writing for a Washington newsletter. Much to his surprise, he credits his landing the job largely to his experience editing Ride On! The newsletter was turned over to Sharon Gang, a staff member of Ohio Congressman Don Pease. As in previous changes, the transition was smooth, with Gang producing a well written newsletter on time each month. In mid 1987, a new WABA record was broken for number of issues of Ride On! produced by a single editor.

WABA had achieved that rarest but most important quality for an institution: stability.

Of course, all was not constant. What was once a low- cost, sleazy neighborhood for WABA's office became a high cost, sleazy neighborhood when the porno shops around the corner on 14th Street were closed down. The Hostel building was sold, and WABA had to get out. On June 29, 1985, WABA members loaded the filing cabinets and desks into trucks and trundled the office to a new location, 530 7th Street, S.E., near Eastern Market on Capitol Hill. Rent nearly tripled, but WABA absorbed the increase.

Perhaps WABA's frenetic pace was slower than previous years, but there was no reduction in successes for bicyclists in the Washington area. If there was any change, it was that WABA had become a mature organization working in an environment that was often receptive to WABA's ideas.

There was also one key factor. At the Board meeting of August 1985, the Board voted to abolish the part-time position of Office Manager and replace it with a full-time Director who would perform policy and issue work, as well as keen the office running. Keenan was the only candidate considered for the job.

The change, which wasn't even mentioned in the newsletter, had profound effects. Keenan became the public face of WABA. Where before, various board members would speak in public depending on who could take time off from work, Keenan was the principal presence. She was the press contact, now readily available. She was the professional bicycle coordinator for the greater Washington area; and by extension, WABA became the professional coordination agency.

Keenan became better able to fill in gaps left by Board members. "The funny thing is," she says, "in certain areas, the WABA board became less active. And I don't think the impact of a full-time staff person was 100% positive on the beard.

"The first year that I worked for WABA, the Board members did most of the talking at the Board meetings. By the time I left WABA, I was doing probably three-quarters of the talking at a Board meeting.

"In a certain sense, there is a small chance that some Board members may feel that the staff person can handle it so they don't really need to do much about it."

In other steps toward a more professional organization, WABA leased a computer to handle office operations; published slickly designed brochures for membership recruitment, bicycle safety, and legal information; and designed a new logo for stationery.

For the third year in a row, WABA conducted the Capitol Motion Bike-a-Thon for the benefit of WABA and the American Cancer Society, with Michael Gessel as general chairman. For the second year in a row, Ellen Jones staffed the event with her usual enthusiasm. A total of 305 riders participated in the 1985 Bike-a-Thon and brought in $41,000. WABA's share was more than $16,000. Unlike previous years, though WABA did not make the same mistake of letting membership slide when its coffers waxed full.

The following year, with Jones still staffing the event (but with Diane Curran taking over as Chairperson), the bike- athon almost grossed $50,000 from 424 riders. The following year, receipts went down for the first time since WABA teamed up with ACS. That stirred the old ghosts of doom and gloom, and rightfully so. But WABA snapped back with more sophisticated fundraising from its members.

WABA testified February 12, 1985 before the D.C. Council Committee on Public Works, now chaired by Nadine Winter, on the bicycle-related provisions of the Transportation Department budget. WABA supported the passage of no-fault auto insurance in the District, supported the bottle bill, and opposed a weak, anti-litter measure. WABA also testified in Annapolis against a bill which would require cyclists to wear reflective material at night.

P.A.R.C. won another victory in the spring of 1986, when the Park Service closed off the upper stretch of Beach Drive to auto traffic on weekends.

Helmet safety remained a priority among WABA members. WABA continued to publish updates of A Consumer's Guide to Bicycle Helmets. Carl Modig returned to do work with safety, including taking a new survey of helmet use. WABA also gave a bike safety presentation at Children's Hospital.

In January 1986, WABA board member Doug Farnsworth died. WABA established a memorial fond for Farnsworth, who was well known as the head of Chesapeake and Shenandoah Bicycle Touring. The fund quickly raised more than $1,000, eventually providing a memorial tree in Rock Creek Park.

WABA sponsored many educational events for members and the general public, including a bicycling and sports medicine seminar, slide shows on the Georgetown Spur and on bicycle marking, and workshops on bike safety and bicycle commuting.

WABA went back to a tried and true activity by sponsoring another Bike-to-Work Day on May 1, 1986. D. C. Council President Dave Clarke and Arlington County Board member (and WABA member) John Milliken spoke. Channel 4's news team "rode" to the rally site with the group from Mt. Pleasant-Adams Morgan. WABA sponsored a moonlight ride in Rock Creek Park one spring evening in 1985. The following year, the Washington Post ran a notice when WABA repeated the event, and 150 showed up. The only problem was that WABA didn't have permission from the Park Service for a mass ride.

WABA was a sponsor of the 1987 Capital City Cycling Celebration, which included human powered vehicle speech championships, the Grape-Nuts/AYH ride, the Northeast Bicycle Program Specialists Conference, and a commuter challenge.

When the Maryland Transportation suddenly proposed the widening of I-270, WABA suggested the construction of a high quality bikepath along the new construction. After Maryland officials rejected it, WABA enlisted the firm of Arnold and Porter to take on a pro bono law suit to stop the highway on the grounds that the state had prepared an inadequate Environmental Impact Statement. Joining the suit was the Potomac Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Coalition on Sensible Transportation, and the North Bethesda Congress of Citizen Associations. WABA won an early victory in the courts, but ultimately WABA's suit was thrown out.

WABA also proposed that a railroad track that loops around the District from Silver Spring to Georgetown be converted into a bicycle trail. "This right of way presents a fabulous bicycle resource for D.C. and Montgomery County," Harnik said in Ride On! WABA helped form the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail, which carried on the fight.

The new District Bicycle law took effect slowly. But by the end of the summer of 1985, members were appointed to the Bicycle Advisory Council. Keenan applied through her Councilmember to be on the Council. However, much to her surprise, she discovered that the chairperson of the Council was appointed by the chairperson of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who was Keenan's Councilmember. Keenan thus found herself in the potentially conflicting role of the WABA staff as well as chair of the Council.

"It was very awkward," she said. "Fortunately for this personal dilemma, the Bicycle Advisory Council and WABA have never taken widely divergent positions on issues." When Keenan later became a WABA board member, she felt necessary to abstain on some WABA votes.

It took longer for the position of D.C. Bicycle Coordinator to be filled. But finally, in early 1986, an old Washington friend, Tom Pendleton, was hired. Eventually, the other two staff positions were filled, giving the District what may be the largest staff of any city bicycle program office in the country.

WABA Virginia members increased activity. New Virginia activists were Bill Silverman and Charlie Martin. Also, Harnik and Maxwell moved to Virginia, joining oldtimers such as the Swarts. WABA formed an Arlington Task Force to evaluate Arlington's second Ten Year Plan for the period 1985-1995. Silverman, a computer expert at the World Bank who emerged as a star Virginia activist, was elected to the Board at the end of 1984. Two years later, at the age of 26, he was elected the youngest WABA President.

In early 1985, the long awaited revision of the Greater Washington Area Bicycle Atlas was published. Edited by Ken Moskowitz and again jointly published by WABA and AYH, the third edition was a complete rewrite of the earlier editions. It also contained an expanded section on bicycle organizations and services in the Washington area. Within two years, the Atlas was sold out, and a new third edition, revised by Sharon Gang, was published in 1987.

After five years of inactivity, the Council of Governments (COG) bicycle subcommittee was revived, in part due to Keenan's urging. This ongoing forum to exchange information among area bicycle coordinators was one more step forward for promoting bicycles.

In August 1987, Keenan stepped down as Director of WABA to enroll in the graduate program in Urban and Regional Planning at George Washington University, studying for a masters degree. She, too, had broken a WABA record for longevity by staying more than three years. Her replacement was Lisa Gurney, who has extensive experience both volunteering and working with volunteers. Gurney has a B.A. in Public Management from George Mason University and is working on her Master's Degree in General Administration at the University of Maryland. The transition was smooth and planned. Keenan continued as a Board member by serving as Treasurer.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of WABA, a Gala Banquet was coordinated by, not surprisingly, Peter Harnik. Harnik had served on the Board every year since he was first elected in 1979, mostly as Vice President. He had always been the principal organizer of WABA's grander events.

According to Keenan, "Of all the people I know in WABA, one of Peter's greatest abilities is to make suggestions or steer things in a certain direction based on his knowledge and interest without antagonizing people. He's able to do that at the same time. If things get really intransigent, he knows when to start banging the pots and calling people to action.'

Even if WABA should disappear, its effects would still be felt by virtually all bicycle riders who used the streets, the bridges, and public transportation systems. Even more important, because WABA has made public officials so conscience of bicyclists' concerns, improvements would still be made. The COG Regional Bikeways Technical Subcommittee now includes twenty-two members who are state or local government officials government who spend time on bicycle issues. Not only did WABA have a hand in creating the committee; it had a hand in creating much of its membership.

Bill Wilkinson, an early member of WABA who has worked on bicycle issues in the Washington area since 1969, looked back on WABA's fifteen years. "It got out there and was part of the new age of cycling in the front end. But what WABA and other organizations and individuals have done is to take that early initiative and institutionalize it, and over time and by dint of perseverance, make something out of it."

more>>

I. At the Starting Line (1972) 

II. First Lap (1973-1975) 

III. Falling Off...And Getting Back On (1976-1978) 

IV. Drafting (1979-1981) 

V. Breaking Away (1982-1984) 

VI. Rounding the Bend (1985-1987)

VII. The Final Stretch (1988-1992)

Prepared for the WABA 15th Anniversary Banquet Rayburn House Office Building October 15, 1987 by Michael Gessel