TAL Challenge: Community Action

Act One: The Call

At the start of the summer one of our neighbors alerted us to a community meeting about a bike lane proposal on our street. Dave, who was better versed in the details of the proposal, decided to attend the meeting. It turned out that there were some major changes to our street on the table, changes that would significantly affect access and safety right on our corner. While we supported the general idea of the bike lane, the details were just too problematic to ignore.

Act Two: The Action

So we attended all of the possible follow-up meetings, wrote emails, and made phone calls. At first, our approach was just to try to get the bike lane onto the other side of the street, but eventually, after meeting and talking with our neighbors and learning from them, it became clear that we didn't have to settle for the bike lane as proposed. It had all been presented as a "this-is-going-to-happen-in-this-way" sort of deal with a "which-of-these-options-do-you-like-best" sort of approach. But our community-minded neighbors who didn't want to settle for a "not-my-side-of-the-street" debate, convinced us that we needed to change the designers' plans and come to a solution that benefitted us all.

Act Three: The Solution

And this worked. Sort-of. We convinced the city that any plan had to take traffic flows into consideration, slow down the speed of cars on our street, preserve the greatest amount of green space, and not privilege a city-wide bike initiative over the safety, access, and livability for the community already in the proposed area. The bike lane is still coming, but it won't be as intrusive as planned.

Oh, and the city won't have the money to finalize the project for 10 to 15 years.

As such, I'm tempted to say that all of our work was for nothing, but it really wasn't. We know our neighbors better than we did before, we became politically active in support of our neighborhood and involved our children in this process, and we moved away from focusing on our own best interests to thinking about those of the neighborhood. It wasn't for nothing at all. In fact, we gained a great deal from engaging in this process. In the end, our small victory was a huge win for our family.