ALL IN – January 24 update, Bicyclist Safety Act

Great news! The Senate version passed Senate Transportation 11-4 on Thursday. The biggest takeaways from that meeting, other than the majority vote:

• it has bipartisan support
• our safety metrics and grounded understanding of bicycle laws are proving very effective
• the dozens of hours of legislator engagement VBF has been doing since November were extremely necessary
• putting the faces and quotes of Virginia’s diverse bike population all over social media and in legislator inboxes shows the wide need for these bills

The Senate version (SB1263) of the BSA will be up for a Senate floor vote Wednesday, and the House version (HB2262) will be in subcommittee Monday with full House vote probably Friday. Because things are moving so quickly and they’re essentially being heard at the same time, it is time to really ramp up our legislators emails/call to the full Senate and full House, regardless of committee membership.

Talk to your Senator ASAP. If your delegate is on House Transportation, talk to them immediately. It has been a minute since we’ve talked about the best practices of legislator engagement, but start by being to-the-point, very polite and respectful, and making sure to tell them who you are and what organization you represent, if any. Be advised that our legislators are under a huge workload and don’t think about bicycling bills very often, this year especially. Be understanding, and thank them for their consideration. It is much easier to leave a bad impression than it is to leave a good one, so do your best.

Your email will be most impactful if you address it directly from your normal email client personally. You can find your legislator here, and a list of emails for them can be found here.

But if you’re trying to get this done in a few clicks, the League of American Bicyclists and Bike Walk RVA each have an email platform you can click through to use. Please share these links on your social media, in your bike-y listservs, etc.

Talking points: you can find our FAQ here with lots of perspective to share with your legislator. If you want to tailor it a bit, you should focus on the real-world specifics of how riding two abreast and the Safety Stop will both prevent crashes AND increase car traffic flow. These are about the only negatives we’ve heard, and so far those oppositional talking points haven’t been impenetrable.

Thanks for all your effort so far. If we have continued success with the BSA, the bills will cross over to each’s respective other house on February 5, and we’ll do this all over again. The back half is usually a bit quicker since the bills have all been seen by nature of us having a patron in each house already. But we’ve got lots of ground to cover, and thanks in advance for keeping the energy up.

~BT

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