Bicycle Friendly America Fall 2017 - 27

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHAWNEE TRAIL CYCLING CLUB

on the road every year in our group rides.
So they get into this thing and watch the
National Bike Challenge totals individually and in the state, because we keep
pushing all the different levels. It's been
fun!
EDUCATION CULTURE IN THE CLUB
A couple things that we do. We're
pushing people to get League Cycling
Instructor certification. Specifically
within the club, we offer the Traffic Skills
101 course. And then I teach a monthly
class, "Introduction to Group Riding
and Riding on the Road." We get people
who buy bicycles and they've never ridden in a group, they're afraid to ride on
the road. Most of this we find is because
they don't know what's the expected behavior once you get out there. Outside of
that, within the club itself, we do a lot of
self education. Our ride leaders for our
group rides go through a certification
process that we set up. Safety education
has become a culture in the club.
We consider ourselves a recreational
cycling club even though we have people
that race within the club. They do that
through other orgs outside of us. We
certainly support them, but we're very
focused on recreational cycling. It's from
top to bottom. We run novice rides all
the way up to race-speed groups. We do
a lot to bring people into the sport and
teach them safety on the road while they
are there.

They'll be coming back.
We started four years ago with a donation program out of the club. We donate
bike racks and bike repair stands to the
local communities every year. This year's
a particularly large one. We've got 17 bike
repair stands going across North Texas
and bike racks as well. The fire chief
in Frisco has agreed to let us put these
repair stands at each one of the fire sta-

tions. They're meant to be resources for
the neighbors and their families.
As far as advocacy goes, we focus on
the local issues. We've been lucky to have
a great partner in Bike Texas and dependent on them at the state level and on
the League on the national level. We've
maintained our membership since the
start in both organizations.

ADVOCACY IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES
We meet with the cities that we ride in,
there's probably a dozen here locally that
we meet with regularly - law enforcement, city councils, park departments.
We're also constantly meeting with people with businesses and homeowner associations in the communities where we
ride.
I've personally spent a lot of time with
the cities of Frisco and The Colony. I
was involved in Frisco applying for and
receiving their Bronze Bicycle Friendly
Community Award. I helped The Colony out this past year. It was their first
application, and they made Honorable
Mention, which I was pretty proud of.
FALL 2017

BICYCLE FRIENDLY AMERICA 27

http://www.biketexas.org/ http://www.bikeleague.org/content/become-instructor http://www.bikeleague.org/content/become-instructor http://www.bikeleague.org/content/find-take-class http://www.bikeleague.org/content/find-take-class http://www.bikeleague.org/sites/default/files/bfareportcards/BFC_Spring_2016_ReportCard_Frisco_TX.pdf http://www.bikeleague.org/community http://www.bikeleague.org/community

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Bicycle Friendly America Fall 2017