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Connectivity -- Safety -- Opportunity -- Participation -- Partnership
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What you'll find in this issue:
- A conversation about active transportation messaging strategies with Tom Flood, the ex-auto industry advertiser using his skills to engage people around road safety for people walking, biking and rolling
- A primer on our Active Transportation Plan's participation goal from ATD's Chris Hawkins
- An ATD intern's takeaway from a tour of the Judkins Park project
- Reflections on Week Without Driving
- Recommendations for things to read/watch/listen to
- Events and trainings to keep on your radar
- Grants and funding opportunities
- Surveys to take
- Opportunities to present and publish
- Plenty of useful resources!
 Active transportation professionals with WSDOT and the City of Tacoma help students fit new bicycle helmets before a bike parade celebrating a new bike lane near their school.
Tom Flood on Active Transportation Communication
The more time we spend walking, rolling and biking, or working in spaces meant to support those modes, the harder it can be to appreciate what it feels like to see the world through the lens of motonormativity. Motonormativity, or a bias toward drivers and design that serves them, has been the status quo for a century in the United States. Car company advertising created a perception of car use and ownership as a core element of the American Dream. With cars symbolizing efficiency, individual freedoms, innovation, and status, roads rose to meet them – and society at large lost interest in and support for people traveling in other ways.
Tom Flood used to be one of those car-centric advertisers at the beginning of his career. Today, he is one of the leading branding and communications creatives building awareness about car culture through powerful physical and digital campaigns. As the principal for Rovélo Creative, he’s developing slogans that appear on posters and shirts around the world, challenging people to process what’s lost when we build our lives around cars and to create something better.
It’s crucial for people working to make streets safer and more comfortable for everyone to learn how to talk about active transportation with people who haven’t had these realizations, or doubt that change is possible. Walk & Roll Editor Hannah Weinberger spoke with Flood about his journey away from culture, and what he’s learned about effective active transportation messaging.
 Creative professional Tom Flood, principal of Rovélo Creative. (Courtesy of Tom Flood)
HANNAH: How did you disentangle yourself from a motornormative mindset?
Tom Flood: I was living in Toronto, young in my career in advertising, and I would be cycling to work battling these road dangers and wouldn’t even give them a second thought. I would go in and work with teams of people on these large automotive campaigns pumping out marketing material for auto manufacturers and then bike home at the end of the day. I didn’t see it – I didn’t connect the dots about promoting car culture and then battling it.
That clarity came to me when I took the kids to school by bike for the first time. One morning I was like, wouldn’t this be fun? And then we did, and I was like, oh, this is really, really not great for you guys. Just seeing things through their perspective and seeing that imbalance just immediately woke me up. And once you see it, you can't unsee it, as they as they say.
So, like many people in this space, I started going down this rabbit hole. I went to local council meetings where I live now being like, hey, could we get a stop sign here, or a speed bump here? And then what really set me off and motivated me was getting to know some of the counselors and hearing them frame myself and other people who just wanted some very simple changes as, some sort of radical fringe group. That got me angry enough to start voicing my opinion on these really simple things that I could not believe were divisive.
I was not an urbanist. I'm very new and don't have any experience in this space, and I'm the least radical person I know. I'm extremely boring. I was just living my life and just wanted to get my kids to school. How can that possibly be radical?
So we started just biking to school and sharing our stories and our frustrations about some of the imbalance on the street, and some of the framing, and the way safe streets and protected bike lanes were being talked about in council chambers, like I couldn't believe it. I truly couldn't believe it. It just seemed like the end of the world was near when you had to shift a tiny bit of road space, which was just so weird to me and to my partner.
I started developing more and more content around that. It started snowballing a little bit where people were asking me to maybe develop some content, do some writing, and then it went from there.
Why do you think that work resonated with so many so quicky?
It was coming from a place that I feel is authentic, because I have no experience in this space… and I still don't. It was coming from a place of being a parent trying to get their kids to school, and the fact that we've completely denormalized active travel for elementary school kids.
You’ve done a great job showing how this is not only an issue for everyday people, but that their voices matter. And you’re messaging for and relating to a lot of different audiences. What are some of the most helpful steps to crafting messages for people who you know might have biases and fears about what you’re trying to engage them in supporting — people like those councilmembers where you live – who might have different understandings and awarenesses of what active transportation infrastructure can even be, without being moralizing?
I think the ways we need to start reaching people is just leveraging how brands and products are marketed to the entire planet. For some reason, a lot of the time we don’t connect with people about this on an emotional level, which I think is very important. I think we have to be a lot more relatable because of the Great Divide that's been built in this space. I know it’s a massive uphill battle, but I think we have to be emotional, relatable and simple. Those are the three tools that I think are important, especially because a lot of the marketing and messaging that goes out about active transportation and road safety is just a lot of information. It's a lot of data points and things that for me, I don't care about. I don't care either as a regular human that's not in this advocacy space — I know it's really important because it gets things done — but as a regular, general audience member, just try to connect with me on a human level. I don't need to know about everything else, because you'll just lose the core message of how some of these changes can benefit yourself, your family, your loved ones, your senior parents, whatever it may be.
To me, the challenge is also connecting with people who don’t think like I do. I think most people are completely reasonable. I do. There's the fringes on either side, and I don't care about them. I never will. It’s just not who I want to reach. I feel like I am that middle ground and just happened to have a moment of clarity. It took that moment for me, but I think messaging can help you engage people that might not have had that moment enough to at least appreciate it. Because I think that middle ground, once they're woken up and have the blinders pulled off, I think, you know, we'll do good things for everybody. It's just they haven't had that moment. It's been 100 years of like, the same messaging over and over and over. And I get it. like I said, I come from not even thinking about it either. So I am that person!
That’s a great way to meet people where they are: focusing on individuals and their needs, and shared values. Is it fair to say you’re helping people fight a system in order to help everyone rather than, say, putting drivers in their place? Like, many of us do drive, but want choices.
One hundred percent. I’m not always constantly trying to change minds and move this needle – I share things online that are just me being upset and annoyed – but absolutely. I don’t think othering works. I drive. I would just prefer to not have to drive. That’s it. And I think that’s how most everybody feels. I don’t know one person, or parent, that wouldn’t like to just kick their kids out the door in the morning and not have to take them to school and get that time for themselves. Or who doesn’t want to be able to walk five minutes to grab a coffee or a pint with a friend. People want this, they just might not know they want it yet, and that's the thing that’s important.
Have you ever found that a tactic you thought would work to call people into this conversation ended up triggering negative reactions that you didn’t anticipate? Are there moments where you think a message will land well, but they don’t?
Absolutely. Yes. When you find people like that, you might have a couple of valid talking points, but then you just see the writing’s on the wall. For me, you can’t convert everybody. There’s this one line that I’ve had on some T-shirts and posters and things: Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promised. And it’s really just a point about what we’ve been sold and how it’s not reality. It’s not an anti-car message, it’s specifically talking about auto marketing. But there have been people that just continually say, like, how am I going to get my kids across the country, moving a couch on a snowy or icy day? That stuff still happens. But those are the people who are so far off the deep end that it’s like, okay, I’m not going to invest time there.
What are some messages and tactics that you’d discourage public agencies from using if they’re trying to relate to everyday road users?
I think the boiler plate, cyclical campaigns that we see are a little frustrating sometimes, where we know the reality of road violence on our streets and road safety and all those issues, and then just kind of see the same messages. Like, when it’s almost Halloween, or kids go on holiday break, we say the same things every year about how it’s dark and to be aware. You know the phrases. I think some people, myself included, feel it’s kind of mailed in. I think it’s worth a little more attention and care, and being authentic is what's really important. Otherwise, people see through that where it's just, “Hey kid, here's the best Hi-Viz to put on, good luck with Halloween. It’ll ruin your costume on, God forbid, the one night you're allowed to be outside.” We have to speak from a place where it’s given that people do want change and want to make change to roads and road safety and youth mobility. I think a lot of people are tired of constantly seeing agencies with power ask everybody outside of the car to be safe so drivers can be somewhat dangerous.
What are your thoughts on ways to normalize some of the infrastructure changes needed to sustain safer streets for everyone?
Anytime there’s a new project, it’s like, oh, here we go again with this wild stuff like bike lanes. But our leadership, cities, police, need to do a better job normalizing these systems. It has to come from them. We can’t see our police out there handing out Hi-Viz bands to seniors. We need to see them out promoting systems going in and promoting them, because it’s been a century of denormalizing completely normal things. If someone's in a position of power who is interested in making change, does their organization really show they want to make real change?
Explore more of Tom Flood's work through Rovélo Creative.
Intern Takeaways: Touring the Judkins Park Light Rail Area
Editor's note: This fall, WSDOT gathered community input to recommend changes to the Interstate 90 on- and off-ramps at Rainier Avenue South, near the future Judkins Park light rail station, that make walking, rolling, biking and transit access easier and safer. This project is funded through a federal RAISE grant and a grant from WSDOT's Sandy Williams Connecting Communities Program, funded with revenues from the Climate Commitment Act. On October 1, members of the Active Transportation Division including intern Mason Hap attended a walking and rolling tour of Rainier Avenue South led by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Disability Rights Washington. The tour, part of the groups' Week Without Driving offerings, passed by the future light rail station location. This allowed attendees to experience current barriers to walking, rolling and biking, and talk about safety and access in the area. Mason offered to share what he learned from the experience. Thank you, Mason!
As a WSDOT intern I was able to attend the Judkins Park Light Rail Area Tour that was led by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. We walked along Rainier Avenue South, which passes under Interstate 90 near the future Judkins Park light rail station. Throughout this walk I encountered many barriers that might make it hard for people who don't or can't drive to have easy access to the light rail station. To get to the station, you’d have to cross a couple of freeway off-ramps that also curve at the end, which creates a dangerous blind spot for drivers and is not great for pedestrians.
When we stopped along the way to gather as a group and talk about the area, we noticed how loud it was. We were traveling along a six-lane avenue with lots of cars. The location of the future station is directly above the freeway, which was noticeably very loud and made it hard to hear the tour guide talking if you weren’t right next to them. We were also in a large group with only a six-foot sidewalk to walk and roll on, which together with the noise and cars made traveling uncomfortable.
My takeaways from this experience were that making light rail accessible to people that don’t drive or use wheeled devices is important. Many people rely on the light rail, and access should be as safe and comfortable for people walking, biking and rolling as it is for those reaching it by car. As an intern, I help with the Sandy William Connecting Communities Program. Seeing the current lack of active transportation infrastructure at a project location shows how much potential there is to create safer and accessible paths for people who don’t or choose not to drive. I think it was a good experience to see the struggles that people who don’t drive have to go through, and learn how to improve their experiences from that.
Accessible Explanations: Introductions to ATD goals
Editor's note: We are grateful to Active Transportation Planner Chris Hawkins for digging into the last of our current Active Transportation Plan goal areas. Chris' work makes ATD programming and grant funding more available to more communities, increasing people's ability to participate in biking, walking and rolling.
We produce a lot of documentation while walking the path of developing more complete, comfortable transportation systems, and we don’t expect you to have read all of it. But one of our documents, the Active Transportation Plan, is important enough that we want to make sure everyone has some familiarity with it before we provide an ATP status update and ask for your thoughts later this year. The ATP is our agency’s roadmap toward building and maintaining a world-class transportation network that works as well for people walking or rolling as it does for people using motor vehicles. The plan focuses primarily on engineering questions – what makes a good network – and whether such facilities are available on state routes. We’ve been including overviews of the plan’s goals and corresponding metrics used to track our progress in previous editions of Walk and Roll this year. We covered Safety in June, Connectivity in July, Partnership in August, and Opportunity in September.
The last of the goals, to be covered in this issue, is:
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Participation: Increase the percentage of everyday trips made by walking or bicycling.
For each goal, we consider its Equity implications: How do we pursue this goal in a way where we can meet everyone’s individual needs?
Investing resources and creating policies that help everyone walk, bike and roll in Washington state is meant to accomplish gains in our residents' safety, certainly. But it also increases their sheer ability to choose to use active transportation in our state. The Participation goal helps us measure how well the ATP improves the levels at which people in our state are walking and rolling for their transportation needs. The metrics related to our progress in improving Participation reflect WSDOT’s mission to serve all people with a safe, reliable and cost-effective multimodal transportation system.
Here are four things to know about the Participation goal.
 We aspire to move more, actively. The first ATP Participation metric, on mode share, is an indicator of how well we are rebalancing our transportation system toward highly efficient, active transportation. As of the plan’s adoption in 2021, Washington was a bit over a third of the way toward reaching our aspirational goal of 30% of all trips in the state being taken using active transportation. Among reasons for helping people select active transportation more often, the health of our population is surely a big one. A whole host of health benefits come from being physically active in our daily lives; bicycling or walking for transportation are two of the simpler ways to accomplish that in the midst of our busy days. So, we look at that broader metric of physical activity, too.
Many co-benefits. To come back to a recurring theme from our bite-size stories about these ATP goals, having more people use active transportation for any number of purposes – traveling to school or work, replacing errand trips often done by motor vehicle, accessing public transportation for intercity or longer-haul trips, and more – helps accomplish many different goals. Increasing the overall people-moving capacity of our transportation system is among those goals. As it does so, reducing vehicle miles traveled in favor of other forms of travel, it can improve safety and environmental quality for everyone.
Active transportation supports a growing transit system, and vice-versa. Three of our metrics are about intermodal connections:
- access to transit hubs (an infrastructure quality metric of whether there are safe routes to get you there),
- how are you getting to your transit trip,
- and walk-on or bike-on ferry access.
Washington has robust public transportation systems, and they function better when lots of riders or passengers are getting there walking, rolling or by bicycle.
Many factors affect whether someone is willing to walk or bike for transportation. WSDOT recognizes that patterns in how land is developed — whereby destinations such as parks, retail stores, schools or services are located within a reasonable walking distance of where people live or work — is a major factor in choosing to walk or, to a lesser degree, to bike. As development has spread out across the landscape in Washington state through time, the level of active transportation for such travel needs as children going to and from school has declined (to 11% in 2019), particularly from the benchmark year of 1969 when the rate was about 50% of all kids’ trips to school being walking or biking. Having the supportive infrastructure (sidewalks, paths, bicycle lanes and safe street crossings) in place is necessary but not alone enough to generate participation. As we create safe routes, we can’t expect immediate rebound in levels of bicycling and walking – it takes concerted action (investments, policies and education and encouragement efforts) and time for the communities to catch back up, in how they are growing and developing, with the ways that people were made to move.
Walkable, Bikeable Transit is Community Care: On Week Without Driving
Many WSDOT staff and newsletter readers participated in Week Without Driving this fall, a Washington-rooted national movement challenging people to travel without driving in a system that wasn't built for people who can't or don't drive. I spent my challenge in Seattle thinking a lot about what multimodal transportation feels like when things go right.
So many communities have denied or been denied opportunities to experience the best of transit and bike/walk/roll infrastructure; while it can be hard to retrofit these treatments into the existing system, it's not just the life-threatening costs of continuing to operate with a cars-first design that should motivate us. It's the opportunities that await us: the joy and comfort and safety and freedom and predictability and ease of a system where *everyone* has the means to use the best form of transportation for every trip.
At its best, transit (reached by walking, rolling or biking) allows us to take care of each other. There are so many unfair negative connotations in popular culture related to taking the bus, that often have sources in narrow-minded, unfair and biased opinions about people who've historically relied on them. Not only is there no shame in taking the bus, but it can feel like a luxury *when the system works*.
You're telling me that someone driving a six-figure-plus vehicle will pick me up and let me zone out – sometimes the only escape I get from a hectic day – so I can focus on a book or music or a crossword puzzle or small artwork (for me, it was an embroidery project)? You're telling me I can get time back for my self-care, and probably also get to pet a dog or catch up with a neighbor? And that the vehicle will probably get me where I need to go more quickly than driving myself would and definitely more cheaply when you factor in parking? And that if I get too tired riding my bike I can load my bike onto the bus and honor what my body is telling me it needs? And that I can get up and stretch and not feel like a large child is sitting on my upper back all day because I had to sit driving in traffic?
You're telling me I can *let someone take care of me* after thinking about and taking care of others all day?
That week, I walked and biked to transit stations and rode buses and light rail to reach work meetings. Buses and light rail arrived as scheduled, and I could easily look up realtime ETAs with apps like OneBusAway. I spent my travel time reviewing meeting notes, catching up on news and emails, and – yes – even making progress on an embroidery project. I set alerts in my phone that would go off when I was physically close to my destination, so I didn't have to keep my ears peeled for conductor and driver updates. I saw Every Dog in Seattle. I transported groceries. I gained time.
I know many of us have had frustrating experiences with transit and the active modes we take to reach it. Many of us don't have the transit access we deserve or the walk/bike/roll facilities that connect us with it (as #WeekWithoutDriving makes so clear). Sometimes transit infrastructure breaks down, and the things that are attractive about it become briefly unavailable. Some people don't feel safe taking transit even when they want to use it. But I think when we are so beholden to cars we forget the costs associated with them, what our transportation priorities *can* be, and how multimodal travel hits all the right notes for them. When we invest adequately, the reality of multimodal transportation is one of reliability, convenience, and expanded equitable access to our transportation system.
Challenges like this reinforce why the work we at WSDOT do alongside partner organizations can make so much of a difference in people's lives, and why we're grateful to help readers like you access resources to make change.
We add new trainings as we find them, so the list changes with every issue. Some of these offer continuing education credits. All times are shown in Pacific Standard Time.
All items are webinars unless a location is noted.
November
December
- Dec. 3, 8am: Maintaining a Safer Roadway (National Center for Rural Road Safety)
- Dec. 3, 8am: Understanding the Challenges Facing Older Drivers (Road to Zero webinar series, National Safety Council)
- Dec. 3, 10am: Post-Election Landscape: Next Steps for the Trail and Active Transportation Movement (Rails-to-Trails Conservancy)
- Dec. 5, 9am: Made By All: Warming Up to Winter Placemaking (Project for Public Spaces – fee)
- Dec. 5, 10am: Fundamentals of Aggregate Surface Trails (Advancing Trails webinar series, American Trails – donations appreciated)
- Dec. 9, 9am: PeopleForBikes’ 2024 Policy Wins + 2025 Preview (PeopleForBikes)
- Dec. 9, 10am: Advocating for a High Performing Transportation Alternatives Program: Dialog (Rails-to-Trails Conservancy)
- Dec. 10, 10am: Grants Toolkit for Local and Tribal Agencies. Provide feedback to FWHA about how to improve the federal grantmaking as part of a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project.
- Dec. 10, 11am: Local Infrastructure Hub: Working with Community Lenders to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions (US Conference of Mayors)
- Dec. 11, 11am-12:30pm: Parking Reform as a Climate Strategy (USDOT)
- Dec. 12, 10-11am: Innovative Development of a Year-Round, Destination Trail System in a Rural Area (American Trails - donations appreciated)
- Dec. 18, 12noon: University Transportation Centers 101: An Overview of the UTC Program and Exploring How Practitioners Can Engage the Process (Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals – fee)
- Dec. 19, 10am: OpenStreetMap Trail Mapping for Responsible Recreation (American Trails – donations appreciated)
Sign Up Soon (2025)
Save the Date
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Transportation Justice Leadership Grants from Front and Centered and WSDOT: A grant program funding the ideas of community. Any community-based organization or non-profit that has an idea on how to bring transportation justice to their community is invited to apply. It must be centered on the needs of communities and driven by the leadership of communities. Some possible categories include: Sustainable Transportation Options, Community Engagement/Equity, Capacity Building/Leadership Development, Environmental Stewardship, and Infrastructure Improvement. If you have a community partner that has an idea, please encourage them to apply. Rolling application process between now and mid-May 2025, with first round of reviews for those submitted by November 30.
- Washington State Department of Commerce has ongoing climate planning grants and technical assistance available to local governments across the state. Scroll down to find more information in the expandable (+) section about the grant opportunity.
- USDOT also recently published a resources webpage about the federal funding programs supporting complete streets on legacy highways.
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Climate Resilience and Adaptation Funding Toolbox (CRAFT) was recently launched by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
- For tribes: Opportunity from FHWA - National Scenic Byways Program. Applications due Dec. 16.
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Asphalt Art Initiative Grants (Bloomberg Philanthropies. Due: January 31, 2025.
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Riding for Focus Rider Education Grants for Public Schools in the US and Canada (Outride). Due: Jan. 31, 2025.
- USDOT Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) grants. Applications due February 24, 2025.
Keep track of all of the USDOT’s discretionary funding opportunities at the DOT Discretionary Grants Dashboard. Also, a full listing of pedestrian- and bicycle-related federal funding programs is available through FHWA.
Have any funding opportunities people should know about? Send them to WSDOTActive@wsdot.wa.gov.
Have an upcoming project, open house, public comment opportunity? Construction projects people should know about as they relate to biking/walking? Compliments on a project? Send to WSDOTActive@wsdot.wa.gov .
Calls for Papers:
Call for Applications:
Events:
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Older Driver Awareness Week – December 2 – 6, 2024
- Bike the Bridge (or Walk/Roll) – December 14, 2024, 11 a.m. Come celebrate the opening of Montlake Project's new bike and pedestrian bridge across State Route 520!
We share new papers, established databases, thoughtful essays, and even older research that was ahead of its time. Let us know if these are helpful to your existing work or spark a new project!
If you read this far, thank you! You're finding something of value here and you know someone else who should receive this kind of news. Forward WSDOT Walk and Roll to others and share the subscription link on social media (tag it #WSDOTactive).
Hannah Weinberger
Communication Lead, WSDOT Active Transportation Division
hannah.weinberger@wsdot.wa.gov
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