Juggling lessons for bike and transit activists
Plus, an update on my organizing
As transportation advocates there are countless changes we could win; bike lanes, all-door bus boarding policies, new transit lines and much more. It is a “target-rich environment.” But much like lions approaching a herd of zebras, focusing on our targets is key to winning. There are so many opportunities to chase, we can easily fritter away our energies. However, keeping a singular focus can still lead to failure as transportation issues are inherently multi-faceted.
Winning a singular transit or bike change requires winning a mix of policy, process, and budget decisions at different levels of governance. The New York City Congestion Pricing campaign is a prime example of this in motion. The advocates won the policy fight at the regulatory agency, but then Governor Hochul stepped in and paused it. Now the fight has exploded onto a variety of fronts (including the court rooms) to win the singular change of congestion pricing in Lower Manhattan to fund transit improvements.
Thus, to win what we want, we need to juggle campaigns. As the saying goes, a key to juggling is knowing which balls are plastic and will be fine if you drop them, and which balls are glass and will break if you do.
I’m juggling a lot of transportation advocacy efforts these days, and since this Substack is one of those plastic balls I’m juggling, I’m going to be posting sporadically here rather than the weekly posting I had done for several months. During that time I’ll be focusing more on my more pressing transportation organizing activities like:
Bay Area Transit Month! My organization, Transbay Coalition, is supporting over a dozen events this month including this 4-part “Gendered Perspectives of Bay Area Transit Event Series”, The Antioch Whistlestop Tour & Celebration train ride, and the Crafting on Transit event. You can view all the Transit Month events here.
The “Sustainable Transportation Questionnaire for Bay Area Candidates Project” where a region-wide coalition will seek to get the hundreds of candidates for office in the Bay Area on the record about transportation issues. Let me know if you want to help out with this, because it takes a TON of volunteers. Carter@carterlavin.com.
Spinning up SoCal Transit Week with MoveLA (let me know if you want to get involved with that!)
Writing my book for Island Press on how to be an effective transportation advocate. The manuscript is due on 12/1 and I’ve got 2.5 chapters left to write
1-on-1 and small group coaching sessions for transportation advocates across the country.
Once Bay Area Transit Month and SoCal Transit Week are over, I’ll hopefully be able to return to semi-regular short explainers here.
Need help winning transportation changes in your community? I’m here to help! Whether you want a 1-on-1 training session or a group workshop, let’s talk. Email me at Carter@carterlavin.com to set something up. Here’s a bit about what training sessions are like
Donate to help get more bike, pedestrian and transit activists trained across the country!
Interested in sponsoring the training of an activist working on an issue you’re passionate about? Let’s chat. Carter@carterlavin.com