Bike Pittsburgh’s staff addressed a full house at the Grey Box Theatre for our annual membership meeting on Wednesday, February 9.

Braving disgustingly cold temperatures, over 120 intrepid Bike Pittsburgh members ventured to the Grey Box Theatre in Lawrenceville for Bike Pittsburgh’s annual membership meeting and many arrived on bicycle.

Board President Ed Engler kicked off the evening by briefly summarizing the past year and then Executive Director Scott Bricker expanded on the successes and challenges of 2010.

Major highlights of 2010

• Relocating the Bike Pittsburgh office to a storefront in Lawrenceville
• Growing to a full-time staff of four
• New Bike Parking Ordinance
• Five New Miles of Bike Lanes
• Pittsburgh received the designation of a Bicycle Friendly Community, due in  large part to the work and advocacy of Bike Pittsburgh staff and members

Advocacy

Erok Boerer, the Advocacy Director, talked about his work with neighborhood Bicycle and Pedestrian Committees, initiatives to make Oakland more bike-friendly, and introduced an exciting new initiative.

More Bike Lanes Will….

How would you complete the sentence? That’s what we want to know, so we can tell the Mayor!

We are going to send (at least) 1,000 handwritten letters to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl in order to simultaneously thank him for the five miles of bike lanes installed in 2010, and gently remind him of his pledge for 25 new miles in the next two years. Read all about it and download the letter here. We’d really appreciate it if you could help us get the word out about this project and direct family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers to this campaign!

Membership, Outreach, Promotion, and Volunteering

Lolly Walsh, Membership Manager, recapped 2010 and touched on future plans for 2011.

The past:

• Bike Pittsburgh membership is up 32% from 2009
• We’re pushing 1500 current members with 604 Pittsburghers joining last year for the first time!
• Last year, we joined organizations and neighborhoods around the city to participate in 43 different outreach events and engaged thousands of Pittsburghers.
• We have an amazingly talented and dedicated membership and last year over 100 volunteers donated 400 hours to bicycle advocacy.

The future:
This year we will have even more opportunities to get involved and in the next couple of weeks there will be meetings to plan Bike to Work Day, for members who want to plan their own initiatives, our first meeting for retired members and seniors, and of course, our regular monthly volunteer night.

Inaugural Class of Bicycle Friendly Employers

Lou Fineberg presented a lot of awards! This is the first year that Bike Pittsburgh is recognizing Bicycle Friendly Employers and he gave awards to:

• Chatham University
• East End Food Coop
• Google
• Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Mullen Advertising
• OTB Bicycle Cafe
• REI
• Springboard Design
• Sprout Fund
• Urban Design Associates
• Whole Foods Market

These companies are doing really cool things to get their employees riding and rewarding those who do so. More information will be available in a forthcoming broadcast.

At the end of the evening, attendees were asked to place green stickers to indicate which of 15 different topics are most important to them for Bike Pittsburgh to work on. “Motorist education” was the runaway winner, followed by bike lanes:

In addition to the awards for Bicycle Friendly Employer, we also presented awards throughout the night for Organization of the Year, Advocates of the Year, and Volunteer of the Year.

Awards

Throughout the night, Bike Pittsburgh staff presented awards.

Scott Bricker presented the Port Authority with an award for Organization of the Year for their initiatives to expand education to their drivers about bicycle safety, support for our programs such as Car Free Fridays, and the decision to “Complete the Fleet” which means all Port Authority Buses will be equipped with racks by this time next year. Great!

Erok Boerer presented an award to the Flock of Cycles for Advocates of the Year. The group was instrumental in drawing attention to the deaths of local cyclists. They are applying to become a non-profit with 501(c)3 status and are known for organizing three rides a month that are “safe and fun for everyone of any experience, age or ability.” Their website explains “Flock of Cycles rides with the cyclist and motorist in mind, treating both with respect.”

Lolly presented one of the awards for Volunteers of the Year to Jane Kaminski who is now a Bike Pittsburgh intern and receiving college credit for her dedication to bike advocacy in Pittsburgh. Jane was always one of the first people to volunteer for any opportunity to do outreach around Pittsburgh, to help with Membership, to travel to events. When representing Bike Pittsburgh, Jane is always very enthusiastic, friendly, and approachable. We appreciate all of the work she did for us last year and are excited to continue working with her this year planning Bike to Work Day.

Lou presented the second Volunteer of the Year award to Alan Lucas. We relied heavily on Alan for most of the graphic design work for Car Free Fridays last year.  He listened to our ideas and thoughts about the look and feel that we wanted and he came back to us with designs that were exactly what we had in mind. We asked a lot of Alan, but he never once made us feel like Car Free Fridays wasn’t a priority for him.