Mark Your Calendars and Get Involved. Bike Summit Coming This Spring.

(The following guest piece was written by Joe Linton, co-founder of the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition and one of the good people organizing the Bike Summit.  Joe provides the information on how anyone can get involved with the Summit after the jump.)

The Los Angeles Bike Summit is coming
Saturday March 7^th 2009 at Los Angeles Trade Tech College
in downtown L.A.

Bike Summit will bring together the
various bike communities in Los Angeles for a 1-day meeting with
speakers, trainings, films and other surprises. It's being brought
together by the Urban and
Environmental Policy Institute - the same folks who brought you
ArroyoFest which closed the Pasadena Freeway to cars and opened it
to bikes and pedestrians in June of 2003 (perhaps foreshadowing
today's crimanimalz?) UEPI is a community-oriented research and
advocacy organization based at Occidental College in Eagle Rock. UEPI
programs address issues involving work and industry, food and
nutrition, housing, transportation, regional and community
development, land use, and other urban environmental issues. Learn
about UEPI's varied programs at
our blog.

Bike Summit will generate a dialog
between diverse parts of the bicycling communities, in hopes of
building greater effectiveness in future bicycle advocacy. We're
hoping that bicyclists attend and become bike activists. The summit
will connect bicycling to broader environmental and livability
movements – including global warming, reducing oil dependence,
transit-oriented-development, walkable neighborhoods, and more. We
also want to build the bicycle movement by inviting non-traditional
constituencies – such as groups involved in struggles for
immigrants rights, environmental justice, and community
planning/development.

Some confirmed out-of-town guests
include: Noah Budnick of New York
City's Transportation Alternatives and Bernardo Baranda Sepúlveda
and Dhyana Quintana from the Mexico
City office of the Instituto para el Transporte y el Desarrollo de
Políticas (ITDP.) A few more out-of-town guests are also
in the works – stay tuned.

Like Los Angeles' recent Bike Summer,
we need Los Angeles bicyclists to play a big role in coming forward
and making the event a success. Is there a workshop that you'd like
suggest? Could you teach or help teach a workshop? Even ideas on
speakers that you'd like to see, or topics you'd like to explore.
What workshops would you like to see? Some ideas: How cities fund
and implement bike projects, Bike Blogging, Bike Wrenching
Cooperatives, Non-Violent Communication, the Latest in Bike
Facilities, Ciclovias, Traffic Calming... let us know what you'd like
to see.

There's a call for workshops – online
here – deadline for submissions has been extended to January 9th.
There's a wiki with
background information on the summit. If you have ideas,
questions, comments, suggestions, please email them to
labikesummit@gmail.com
. Interested folks are invited to
attend a planning meeting taking place this Tuesday night December
9^th at Los Angeles Eco-Village, 117 Bimini Place, LA
90004.

Mark your
calendar now – March 7^th 2009 – Los Angeles Bike
Summit.

Photo: Guy William Welch/Flickr