Why attend WABA’s 5th Great Montgomery County Bike Summit? And what’s with the “5th”?
Occasionally someone will ask us about the “5th” in “5th Great Montgomery County Bike Summit,” our up-coming event taking place Sunday afternoon, September 29 in Wheaton.
The story is that WABA ran three summits, from 2014 to 2016, in cooperation with then-Councilmember Hans Riemer. Check out this 2016 video clip. We decided to restart the series last year – that’s the source of this message’s header photo – as part of refocusing our Montgomery County and Maryland advocacy work.
The headline of a 2015 Montgomery County Planning Board news release reads “Second Great MoCo Bike Summit Focused on County’s Bicycle Master Plan.” That Master Plan was enacted in 2018. Public advocacy has been and will remain a key element in working with the county to build out the bikeway network it envisions.
Reporting from the 2016 summit quotes then-WABA Executive Director Greg Billing as stating “the master bike plan was a product of prior bike summits.” Cool!
The 2016 article continued, “Billing also talked about ‘Vision Zero,’ an initiative to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on county streets and roads. He said 45 to 50 people in the county are killed each year.”
Montgomery County experienced 46 road deaths last year, in 2023, and 37 so far in 2024. We’ve made no progress. None.
Please attend this year’s 5th Great Montgomery County Bike Summit to help us further our agenda: building out the county’s safe bicycling network and maintaining a focus on safe streets and meeting the county’s and the state’s Vision Zero commitments.
State Highway Administrator Will Pines will keynote. Administrator Pines is aware of the challenges and is working to meet them. We appreciate his joining us, and also Marc Korman, who chairs the House of Delegates’ Environment and Transportation Committee.
On the county front, we’re grateful for the partnership of Councilmember Natali Fani-González, who will speak and introduce Administrator Pines, and Matt Johnson will represent the Montgomery County Dept. of Transportation.
And we’ll have a reprise of our Effective Advocacy panel, shown (2023) in the photo. Dan Reed from Greater Greater Washington will reprise his role as moderator, with panel members Danielle Blocker, Young People for Progress; Helen Heinrich, Action Committee for Transit; and Shannon Shea, Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee.
We’ll have snacks and plenty of time for information sharing and networking.
Questions or suggestions? Please get in touch with WABA Maryland Organizer Seth Grimes at seth.grimes@waba.org. And we could use a few volunteers, to help with check-in, set-up, break-down, and a few other tasks. If you can help, drop us a line.
We hope to see you on Sunday, September 29 in Wheaton.