After reaching out to the American Heart Association and receiving encouraging feedback, I (J. Mike Kaiser) decided to reach out to a large bicycle coalition group -- the Alliance for Biking and Walking. These people as I found out (after reading more on their site) are a huge resource for advocates of either bicycling or walking--promoting a healthier lifestyle. I highly recommend visiting their website: www.bikewalkalliance.org.
Below is the response with answers from the Alliance of Biking and Walking with website links--to access for advocacy efforts information--SUPER INFORMATIVE--Thank you Brighid and Christy!!!
========================================================================================================================================================================================
From: brighid@bikewalkalliance.org <brighid@bikewalkalliance.org> on behalf of Brighid O'Keane <brighid@bikewalkalliance.org>
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2014 1:06 PM
To: Kaiser, John M; Christy Kwan
Subject: Re: Please assist us with answering a couple of questions--regarding our efforts to increase bicycle infrastructure on Metrolink rail system.
Hello John,
I forwarded your email to my colleague Christy and her responses to some of your questions are below. Just last week, Advocacy Advance released a report and held a webinar on "Leveraging Health Funding for Active Transportation Investments."
1) What type of grant (not necessarily from your organization but from the government health agencies) would one "apply for" in order to fund the type of bicycle infrastructure changes discussed in our presentation -- a dedicated bicycle car on each train (which increase the quality of health by reducing obesity and stress)?
It's a little less murky on whether or not federal health agencies have spent money for bicycle infrastructure. The CDC has funded partnerships to improve the built environment, but it's a little less known if CDC dollars has been used on actual equipment to retrofit train cars to accommodate bicycles. We just released a reportabout the inclusion of active transportation in the CDC awards, as well as examples of partnerships between health and transportation.
A first step with trying to access federal health dollars for biking and walking is to check with your local public health department. Los Angeles was recently awarded $3.5M from the CDC to prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke and reduce health disparities through community and health system interventions. Talk to your local health department to see if this is an area where they could devote their energy and funds to work with Metrolink for bicycle infrastructure.
It would also be helpful to connect with the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition to see what kind of efforts to date they've had with MetroLink and working with the public health stakeholders.
2) More specifically, what type of grant can we suggest (or pass onto) to the Metrolink in order to get this change implemented?
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has grants available, two of which are particularly relevant:
Urbanized Area Formula Grants (5307)
Fixed Guideway Capital Investment Grants ("New Starts") (5309)
More information on these programs is available in the Advocacy Advance report, "First Mile, Last Mile: How Federal Transit funds can improve access to transit for people who walk and bike"http://www.advocacyadvance.org/docs/FirstMileLastMile_August2014_web.pdf
3) How do we promote this change more effectively by utilizing the data contained in the American Heart Association reports along with wonderful data from the "2014 benchmark report" found on your site (and other advocacy organizations for increased bicycle infrastructure improvements)?
The American Public Health Association has created a helpful toolkit which you may be interested in. The toolkit is mostly meant for public health professionals, but it provides sample messages that communicate the health benefits of active transportation.
Data can be a very effective motivator to promote change, but also compelling stories also have a role. See Lili Afkami's post on the League of American Bicyclists' blog, and youth leaders speaking at last year's National Walking Summit.
Best,
Brighid