Tag: transportation

Vintage watercolor illustration of red raspberries

Thoughts on Community Engagement Thanks to Picking Berries

Working in the yard, much like walking or riding my bike, frees my brain to run wherever it likes. Last July it brought me to a list of insights into the ways that community engagement is a lot like growing…Continue Reading

Photo of a penny farthing bicycle, front wheel much larger than the back wheel, in front of a poster that reads at the top "In my merry Oldsmobile".

Moving Right Along: Transportation Poems

Serendipity: What happens when you’re paying attention. Serendipity: My method for finding poems for the various collections I curate. Oddity: How often someone who walks, bikes, and takes transit for the majority of her gettin’ around runs into poems about…Continue Reading

Bike/Life Lessons Learned

Many of my stories about who I am and the way I operate in the world start with a story about my mom. This is true about my bicycling even though I never saw my mom on a bike. She…Continue Reading

Page from program labeled WOMAN OF THE YEAR. At left, photo of a smiling white woman with short blond hair wearing dark blue glasses, a light grey dress, and pearl earrings. Text: BARB CHAMBERLAIN, ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION DIVISION, WSDOT Barb Chamberlain is a tenacious champion of building pedestrian and bicyclist networks that serve all ages and abilities. As WSDOT's first-ever Active Transportation Division Director, she raises awareness about active transportation safety, equity, and accessibility across the state and at the national level. Barb led the development of WSDOT's award-winning Active Transportation Plan, which is grounded in equity analysis and serves as a decision-making tool for active transportation projects across the state. The effects of her leadership are seen in the historic levels of active transportation funding in the 2022 Move Ahead Washington package. Barb shares her wisdom and expertise through multiple national organizations, raising the bar for transportation plans, standards, guidelines, and professional practice.

A Thrilling Night

Tuesday night brought an incredible event I have to capture: The Women in Transportation Seminar Puget Sound chapter named me Woman of the Year! I want to share my comments from the stage, or at least the version I had…Continue Reading

Photo taken looking into the sideview mirror of a car showing a sunset against a flat horizon.

How We Get Where We’re Going: Transportation Poems

I’m beginning to think I’m editing a poetry book, what with all these poems on transportation I’m collecting. The images of being on a journey, the physical acts involved with driving or riding a motorcycle, the human relationships and interactions…Continue Reading

Photo of a beautiful new-looking sidewalk at the left-hand side of a street. The sidewalk comes to an end at some bushes and gravel. Nice low Landscaping bushes in a buffer strip between sidewalk and streets. Bike lane painted in the street starts up out of a patch of gravel.

No Thanks for No Sidewalks!

You know what people who drive can take for granted 100% of the time? Having a system of roads connected all the way from starting point to destination. I can start from my driveway in Olympia and go all the…Continue Reading

Shared Streets: A Vision

Years ago in Spokane, I saw the future of bicycling and human-centered transportation on an outing with my family, and it looked great. Here’s what I saw: Where did I see this? Pattison’s North Skating Rink, during the free New…Continue Reading

Thank Heavens for Kind Strangers and Transit

Ride #1 of 2024: Sunny, happy, delightful. Ride #2 of 2024: The reason I’m glad Olympia has transit. A few days after ride #1 I set off in the sunshine for a trip to a meeting with Lee Lambert, executive director of Cascade Bicycle Club. The very…Continue Reading

Photo of a man and two children with darker skin walking down a dirt road lined with trees on either side. All 3 are wearing dark shorts and light-colored shirts and the sun is shining. At the bottom, text with a quotation from Ram Dass: We are all just walking each other home.

Why I Walk

This post first ran on my personal blog, BikeWalkBake Barb, where I’ve been chronicling my walking habits. Since I’ve been writing about multimodal transportation here, I thought I’d add the post to these archives as well. Walking, like riding my…Continue Reading

Photo of a stretch of sidewalk with words stenciled in light blue: "I hope you see this."

“Do Not Drive Through, This Poem’s In The Way”: Transportation Poems Keep Rolling In

Presented with appreciation for all who write poetry, and for those who have created eclectic poetry collections online and in print. This has enabled me to gather a second list of transportation poems to go with the bicycle poems. These…Continue Reading

Photo of light blue paint stenciled on a sidewalk that reads, "poetry is a tour guide. -ss"

“Safe passage through countless intersections”: A Baker’s Dozen of Transportation Poems

Transportation, in my daily work, is a means to an end. It isn’t usually a thing done for its own sake—it’s how we get where we need to go. “Travel” might be a better word for those times when we…Continue Reading