An Introduction to Dave Snyder and the upcoming California Bike Summit

Dave Snyder, Executive Director of the California Bicycle Coalition, talking with local advocates at the San Diego Courteous Mass ride

Back in August the Executive Director for the California Bicycle Coalition, Dave Snyder, visited San Diego to meet with local bike advocates. Snyder is the new Executive Director at the California Bicycle Coalition. With Snyder leading the charge at the state level, advocates around California can expect to see the state’s bicycle coalition move into a level of power and prominence that can be expected from Snyder given his track record to date.

Snyder’s initial claim to fame was as Executive Director at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition – an organization where Snyder got to sharpen his bike advocacy chops starting in the mid-1990s. Snyder managed to grow the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition from an organization of 1,000 members into a political powerhouse, despite several setbacks, that is today the envy of bicycle advocacy organizations all around the country. Late last year, Snyder was asked to take on the role as the Executive Director for the California Bicycle Coalition. His job is to turn the organization into one with enough political clout to increase California’s influence in national bike advocacy efforts.

Despite last Friday’s defeat of SB 910, the California Bicycle Coalition was able to tap into California’s sleeping giant, “the thousands of Californians who care about the safety of those who travel by bicycle”. Snyder has his work cut out for him and is working hard to “secure substantial long-term funding, strengthen relationships with bike industry allies and the local bike advocacy community, and increase California’s influence in national bike advocacy.” To that end Snyder has designed the upcoming California Bike Summit to bring together allies from the bike industry and the bike advocacy community for three days in November.  Part of the three day long bike summit will focus on best practices in local advocacy, how to secure funding to fund bike transportation projects, how to grow the bike movement in California and how to determine what the advocates’ legislative and administrative priorities are.  By bringing together advocates from around the state, the California Bike Summit will help advocates create a vision on where California will be five years and ten years down the road for bicyclists.

The flyer for the California Bike Summit is below. More details are available at the California Bicycle Coalition’s website.

 

California Bike Summit Flyer. Click for bigger version.

According to Snyder, “it’s exciting to have this chance to bring together lots of bicyclists and different kinds of bicyclists to talk about that [vision]. If we can get them all together, on the same page, with the same vision, then we have a chance to win some pretty bold things.”