Kadasjah Whitehurst, 16, paints a bicycle in the Richmond Cycling Corps Youth LAB. Photo by Courtney Cotton
Group Continues to Use Bikes to Change Lives
The Richmond Cycling Corps is using the love of bikes to foster leadership and personal development with kids from underserved Richmond communities.
Through their LAB — Learning Around Bicycles — program, founder Craig Dodson, teamed with Richmond artist Dan Sheets, has selected 10 team members who will paint bike frames with imagery representing facets of their neighborhood, family, school and the cycling corps.
Indoor programs such as bike painting keep the cyclists engaged during the winter downshift in outdoor activities.
According to their website, Richmond Cycling Corps:
…use(s) cycling as our platform for CHANGE. We infuse ourselves; our passion, our values, our creativity, our drive, and our dedication into the lives of our youth. We have fun. We laugh. We teach. We learn.
For more information about the program, see the recent article by Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams.
The VBF has created two new bike safety posters to promote safe cycling practices. (Click on the images below to download the PDFs.)
The first poster, “Light Up the Night” encourages riders to wear bright colors and equip their bikes with lights and blinkies while riding at night. Virginia law requires a bike to be equipped with a headlamp and reflectors, and a red taillight on roads with a speed limit of 35 MPH or greater, when riding between sunset and sunrise.
The second poster, “Color Blind” reminds cyclists that a bike is considered a vehicle on Virginia roads, and requires cyclists to obey all signals and traffic markings, as is required for cars and trucks.
The VBF encourages people to download these posters, and distribute them at local schools, bike shops and businesses. The PDF files are optimized for an 11″ x 17″ poster, but other sizes will work too.
What’s the future of transportation in Virginia? What should our goals and priorities be? How should our monies be spent?
We’d love to hear your comments.
Here’s the draft report announcement, from our Deputy Secretary of Transportation:
Dear Transportation Planning Stakeholders,
The draft report of the VTrans2035 Update will be available for public review from December 4, 2012 through January 4, 2013. VTrans is Virginia’s statewide long-range multimodal policy plan that establishes the vision, goals and investment priorities for the Commonwealth’s transportation systems. The update of VTrans2035 links the investment priorities to the goals, provides more detailed investment strategies to expand upon the investment priorities, and introduces a framework for performance-based planning.
The draft report of the VTrans2035 Update will be available on the web at www.vtrans.org On behalf of Governor McDonnell, Secretary of Transportation Connaughton, the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, and Virginia’s transportation agencies, I invite you to review this document and provide comments either through the comment portal on the VTrans website or by emailing statewideplans@governor.virginia.gov. Please forward this notification to your constituents and email distribution lists.
Thank you for helping to plan for Virginia’s transportation future!
Sincerely,
David Tyeryar
Deputy Secretary of Transportation and Chief Financial Officer
Transportation Secretariat
Commonwealth of Virginia
Click to go to BikeVirginia.org
Rgistration opens Saturday, December 1 for Bike Virginia 2013, to be held June 21-26. Bike Virginia is a fully supported multi-day tour with daily riding and camping, held in a different part of Virginia each year; with a different theme of historical, cultural, or geographic interest.
What about this year’s tour?
[continue reading…]
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-ffAr_0M34f91E.gif\")