we are going to start a movement.

saturday, november 4th, 2023.

Wow, it's been a week.

The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. I found out that there's a quarterly transportation committee meeting open to the public, so I wound up participating. The idea in my mind was this: "my city really needs to improve its bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure if it has any hope of being anything but chain restaurants and big box retailers."

I didn't come to the meeting wholly unprepared— I came with a page full of notes about a five billion dollar federal grant program to improve transportation infrastructure called Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A). The short of it is this: if a city puts together a concrete plan to reduce traffic fatalities, they can get up to an 80% match from the federal government to (a) prove that it would be effective through low cost demonstrations and (b) to build out the improvements once they've shown demonstrable improvement.

Pretty sweet deal, I think. That drastically multiplies the available funding to a municipality's budget.

I didn't go to the meeting expecting to just, like, change everything about how the city works. I didn't want to be the software engineer that waltzes in and claims to be an expert about a whole different problem domain. Even though things have been stagnant in my city, there's a lot I have to learn.

I had a bit of a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment at the meeting, though. The transportation director indicated she was vaguely aware of the SS4A grants from a neighboring city's transportation director, but didn't think it was worth pursuing due to the strings attached. She seems very sharp and was lauded by all involved, plus some conveyed praises from the former mayor.

So, as far as all that goes, I volunteered some legwork to help write a grant proposal if she would like to pursue the opportunity. And if not, I'd still like to participate in the next quarterly committee meeting and be added to the small mailing list.

I was not the only newcomer at the committee meeting, though.

Turns out, there's a business owner that is also a die hard nut about non-hostile transportation infrastructure that joined in, too.

We flapped our jaws after the committee meeting, exchanged contact information, and it looks like we may be putting together some sort of nonprofit advocacy organization to lobby in favor of fixing our city's infrastructure.

I shit you not. This is happening.

He's gonna be pretty busy in the last bit of this year (as are many business owners in the holiday season), but we're going to try to meet again late November and hit the pavement HARD early next year to make concrete plans and get stuff DONE. In the meantime, I might see if I can drum up some support for the eventual advocacy organization that does not yet exist.

Y'all, we are going to start a movement.

I'll keep you posted ;)

Until next time, be well!