Bill Nesper is the Executive Director of the League of American Bicyclists, the voice of bike advocacy at the federal level. We talk with Bill about where bike advocacy needs to grow, getting people on bikes to experience “the good life,” and building a more mainstream movement.

Avi Stopper (00:00)

Welcome to Bike Networks Now. I'm Avi Stopper, the founder of Bike Streets. Through a series of conversations with leaders in bike transportation and beyond, we're trying to answer a question: Why is bike transportation still not possible for most people in American cities, and how can we make it a reality? Despite voter support and billions of dollars of investment, there's no city in America where biking is a practical reality for people of all ages and abilities. Why is that? And how can we fix it so anyone can ride to the places they want to go today? These aren't just freewheeling conversations. We're in search of an answer. And that answer — a modern approach to innovation — is the topic of a book we're writing on how cities can make bike transportation possible today.

Avi Stopper (00:49)

My guest is Bill Nesper, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists, the most august of bike organizations in the United States. I started Bike Streets in 2018. Get this: the League has been around since May 30th, 1880, when it opened its doors as the League of American Wheelmen. That name is just so 1880s, by the way. Bill has led the organization since 2017, and as I understand it, he's been there since 2002, when he started as a membership assistant. So yes, he basically started in the mail room and now he runs the place. He and the League are the voice of biking in Washington, DC. He spent years building support for the bipartisan infrastructure law, which, if you didn't know, included a lot of funding for biking and walking. Those were the good times.

One of Bill's priorities is to make it so more Americans live in what the League calls bicycle-friendly communities. For a guy advocating for a resurgent form of transportation rooted in the 1880s, he also has an expansive view of both the present and the future. He has partnered with Waymo to advance street safety initiatives and has a pretty broad view of what's currently going on. So Bill, welcome. Happy Bike Month. How did I do with that intro?

Bill Nesper (02:09)

That was awesome. Happy Bike Month, and thanks for that intro. What is this newfangled thing we're doing here, this podcasting? We're from the 1880s. We don't do very many of these.

Avi Stopper (02:21)

I think there's supposed to be a hand-crank radio associated with this.

Bill Nesper (02:24)

We're trying to have a bicycle-friendly America, see? Yeah, absolutely. It's really great to talk to you today. I appreciate the intro and the opportunity.

Avi Stopper (02:34)

Let's jump into it. This is a podcast oriented around the question of why it's not possible for most people to ride a bike to the places they want to go in their cities. First off, I want to ask if you agree with that premise. And second, if you do, why do you think that — it being 2026, about 145 years after the League started — why is that the case? So first, do you agree with the premise that bike transportation is not a practical reality for most folks in their cities? And why do you think that's the case?

Bill Nesper (03:09)

Yeah, so you changed what you said, right? You said "not possible" first, and then "not a practical reality." When you said "not possible," I immediately thought, well, a lot of folks don't know that biking is possible. That's different from what you said the second time — a practical reality.

Most Americans live in suburban land use, which, for the last 80 years or so since after World War II, means a lot of the places where people live — our streets and our lives — are really built around car mobility. In that reality of large arterial streets with fast-moving traffic, the perception of safety and actual safety are both hampered by fast-moving vehicles and communities that don't really feel like they're built for our type of transportation and recreation, which is on a bike.

So for most Americans, biking is a nice thing you get to do on vacation, or maybe something you do in your neighborhood. Lots of Americans bike. PeopleForBikes, the industry organization in the United States, measures bicycle participation, and I think it was around 112 million people who rode a bike last year. Lots of people ride bikes. But do they ride them regularly? That's the question. Can they ride them as just part of everyday life?

That's something we believe in at the League — we want people to have the joy of bicycling in their lives. We like to say it's the best vehicle ever made. You know the smile that comes when you feel that feeling of flight, traveling under your own power, by yourself or with friends, wherever, for whatever reason. Bicycling can be an extremely joyful activity, a very practical way to get around, a very environmentally sustainable way to get around, a healthy way — all those great things we know about biking. But the reality that it can be part of everyday life might not be so attainable for folks. So the barriers to that everyday cycling are something we're dedicated to removing.

Avi Stopper (05:29)

That's a great frame of reference, to think about it as an everyday activity. It's so interesting how, when people go on vacation, they go to the beach and have a glorious experience riding along the boardwalk. I'm thinking of Newport Beach in California. There's this incredible path, and people ride so happily on beach bikes — no helmets, wearing flip-flops, bathing suits.

Given that American cities are the way they are, what do you see as the way we get to a point where everyday cycling is something people can actually do? What's the way to fill the gap between where we are, with the built environment being what it is today, and where a lot of us hope to get, where that joy you experience riding on vacation is actually part of your daily life?

Bill Nesper (06:21)

That's a great question, and it's something we think about all the time. People have these great experiences biking on vacation and feel like, wow, this is a really practical way for me to do X, Y, or Z — like the scene you described in Newport Beach. What we call bicycle-friendly communities are the answer to this. We have examples across the country, from small towns all the way up to the biggest cities in America, of the kinds of things communities can do to make more things bike-possible.

So in practice, it is being done in a lot of places, and those things are infrastructure, like you said. Giving people places to ride that are safe, that feel safe, and that are connected to the rest of the transportation system. You need connected bike networks, and that means they need to be based on context. That arterial street that's in your mind — if you have traffic going 45 miles an hour on it, you need more separation from that traffic to feel comfortable and to be safe. But you also need to know there's a connection to get to that place. So the streets in between your house and that destination — that arterial street needs context-appropriate bike facilities, all the way down to neighborhood streets that need very little extra infrastructure.

There are places around the country building infrastructure that really welcomes people to ride their bikes and feels comfortable for all ages and abilities. There's a way to do it, but you need those connections, and it needs to be legible in the minds of the people thinking about making that bike trip — to go see friends, to go to the store, to go for a fun ride. You're always thinking, how am I going to get there? And there's all sorts of other infrastructure that supports that decision too. Will there be bike parking where I'm going? Are there wayfinding signs that help me figure out where I'm going? Things like that.

The Bicycle Friendly Community program is an evaluation tool we've been using for over 20 years in the US. It measures not just the infrastructure, but also whether there's bicycling education in every school for people who don't feel confident riding and for young people. There are good examples in communities of every shape and size where this has been done. So it's not really rocket science.

But it's important to note that, as bike advocates, sometimes we might decide to choose Bike to Work Day as the main thing — the city's main event of the year. I love Bike to Work Day, and I think it's a great celebration of biking. But for a lot of people, riding to work is a really long trip. A commute might be 11 or 12 miles. Now, for you and me, I love it — let's do it, both there and back.

Avi Stopper (09:37)

Yeah, can we double that, actually?

Bill Nesper (09:54)

Exactly. But for the average American — and actually the average Dutch person, and we're talking about one of the best places to ride in the world — once you get past about five miles, the percentage of people riding their bikes for those trips goes down precipitously. And it's the same with walking. The natural human walkshed, the area a human will walk, is about a half mile. It takes about 10 minutes. It's the same with biking. So understanding that there's a lot of biking that can be done near your house, even in a more suburban land-use situation — we know 50 percent of all trips in the United States are three miles or less. So making those trips more possible by bike is probably one of the biggest ways we can help the person who doesn't necessarily think of themselves as a cyclist get out and go by bike.

Avi Stopper (10:38)

I'd like to return to the point about what I interpret as complete networks being the foundational element. Do you believe that complete, high-comfort networks — so that people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds can use them to go where they want to go — are indeed the foundational component?

I'll contrast that with education. I think education is really beneficial and valuable, and the League has for years trained people how to ride in cities. It's a great program. But you can only educate so many people to such a degree before they confront the cold, hard reality that they're going to be riding in sketchy locations unless you have a complete network. Do you agree with the argument that the component that enables this as an everyday activity is a complete network?

Bill Nesper (11:34)

Yeah, absolutely. Building that complete network is what we should all be striving for. If we're going to reach the 60 percent of the US population that we call "interested but concerned" — they're very interested in cycling, but they're concerned about their safety — then yes, I think it is foundational. That said, I think everyone should have bicycling education. Every person in America should have on-bike education by the time they're through primary school. Knowing how to navigate places where there aren't great networks is really going to open up what's comfortable for you as somebody who rides a bike. But yes, absolutely foundational.

Avi Stopper (12:16)

I remember an educational experience I had maybe 10 years ago. A guy who ran the kids' bike camps in Denver was describing all the incredible destinations around town they were taking grade-school kids to, and I asked him, how on earth do you accomplish that with tricky spots like X, Y, and Z? His answer was simple: we teach them to get off and become a pedestrian. For a block, they become a pedestrian.

Now, I'm not suggesting that's the optimal end state for bike transportation. But it is an enabling condition to overcome certain boundaries today. I just thought that was a counterintuitive educational idea, and it's informed a lot of our Bike Streets work — that sometimes, for people at a certain level of comfort, a particular spot is best navigated as a pedestrian.

But coming back to the complete network idea: it seems to me that a truly connected, complete, high-comfort bike network is a bit of an elusive target in most American cities. There are certainly some cities that have done it better than others, but in most places, this is something that doesn't exist.

I'd like your take on something that's been elemental to the work we're trying to do with Bike Streets. It's based on the observation that the conventional way advocacy and infrastructure have been done involves an overarching bike master plan document describing what the network will be at some point in the future. The way we go about building those networks, however, is very much facility by facility. One bikeway at a time — we're going to go to war over this protected bike lane, then we're going to do this bike boulevard, and at some point in the future, they're all going to connect and it's going to be awesome.

Our work, as I think you know, has been oriented around the question of how you can create a complete network — a version 1.0 network that isn't completely optimized, but is complete. And how do you do that quickly, instead of this somewhat Sisyphean experience of doing one disconnected thing at a time? I'm curious to get your reflections on the way conventional advocacy and departments of transportation have approached this, and whether you feel there's a need for a new paradigm — or if you reject the premise.

Bill Nesper (14:50)

I think you're right that in most American cities, with incrementalism, bicycling access isn't a priority. That's probably not shocking to any of your listeners. In the places that take this most seriously, you see network development happening faster. A lot of times it does depend on paving schedules and things like that, but it can happen much, much faster than it's happening in most places. There are some places — Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example — that require the bike plan to get implemented. So when you're building a street, you're going to do the thing you said you were going to do. It's going to happen.

So there are ways to accelerate that, and here's a full-throated call for it: let's build the public support for decision-makers. Let's make sure this is on the agenda, because it's going to open up the joy of biking — the good life — quicker in those places.

I do think there's a lot of knowledge shared among people who bike every day. I live right outside of Washington, DC, and I work in DC. Development has been going great in Washington. I have to applaud our local advocacy organization here, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, WABA. We're the federal group; they're the local group. They just had a huge win when the federal government tried to remove a protected bike lane from a vital artery that goes right by the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and all sorts of other nationally significant landmarks.

So bike lane development has been going great here in DC, but there are still parts that aren't so easy to get through. I think having people in the bike community help others navigate — to make that minimum viable network by weaving people through, kind of like what you said about getting off your bike and becoming a pedestrian — sure, that's a reality in some places in the US. But it's a version of that: how do we help each other get from here to there? That's something folks in the biking community can really help with for others they're trying to welcome along.

I don't think we're going to get the big group of people riding in US cities until you have a legible network, where you go, "Wow, yeah, I can definitely get from here to there this way. And there's a bike-share bike right here, and I can just go." In a lot of places, we're still far off from that. But there is something we can do to weave us through the more safe and safe-feeling places in a network.

I want to go back to the point you made about the education component, in particular showing people how to do things. The League is made up of local changemakers. That's our bread-and-butter member — the people who are part of our organization, working for people they don't even know, so we can make bicycling accessible for them. The people who do this work in communities, who go to meetings and show up and speak up for these things, are our core members, and those folks have a real part to play in helping bring new people into this movement and adding biking into their lives.

One of the cool stories I've heard recently was in Eugene, Oregon. They're a gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community. There's a program there for young people: how do you get to the amenities you need to get to as a kid — or as anybody, actually? How do I get from my neighborhood to this pool, this recreation center, this other destination? There are people who help them do that. They take young people out on rides and connect them from their neighborhoods to destinations. That kind of thing is part of creating truly bicycle-friendly communities. Eugene is gold-level; it's great to bike in almost all of it. But even there, you still want the kind of bike culture that brings other people along and helps them see what's bike-possible.

Avi Stopper (19:24)

I've been leading group bike rides in Denver since 2018, and they're just glorious experiences — one of my favorite things in the world to do. One of the things that's so powerful about it is that it's a group of folks, many of whom don't ride regularly, and you ride side by side, two by two, on quiet residential streets that are on one of our low-stress bike maps — the Denver Bike Map, in this case. You have conversations with people, and, like you said, they use the term "the good life." When people actually experience it, and it's not in the abstract, they recognize what an incredible way to live this is.

Not that you have to replace every single car trip — especially the longer ones — but for trips that are reasonably short distances, easy to cover on a bike, where the bike is actually the most efficient device, it's an incredible change. And there's an interesting nexus between complete bike networks — I love that you used the "minimum viable network" framing, which is drawn from a book called The Lean Startup that introduces the idea of a minimum viable product. I completely agree that cities need to be thinking about networks as their minimum viable high-comfort network. That's completely what our advocacy work is about: how do we create version 1.0 quickly, then iterate on it to make it better and better?

The nexus I see is that if you can create that and really activate people on it — with programming and education like you're describing, so people improve their understanding of how to use it — then through that experiential component, because it's not just abstract, it's so much easier to turn people into supporters of further investment. That way you have the resources to go from 1.0 to 2.0, and from 2.0 to 4.0 and 6.0.

One of the interesting challenges we as a movement need to figure out is how to just get to that first network so people can actually start to use it, and as a result activate that many more people around it. Practically, it does need to be a network. But even small things that are big things — like the bike bus phenomenon — are just incredible. As I talk to people who are leading and participating in bike buses, it's amazing how easy it is, through that experiential form of community engagement, to actually say, "Whoa, this is an elevated way of living."

Bill Nesper (22:12)

I love it. You brought up "the good life" in my comment, and also "an elevated way of living." I think it's really important for those of us in the bike movement to paint the picture that this isn't taking things away from you. It isn't removing the freedoms, the good life, the things you've worked really hard for. This is actually delivering on those things. And it does take — even in the best bicycling places in the world — you still have group rides happening, bicycling education happening, because people need to learn how to navigate the system. But what a joy it is to be able to share that with folks.

And then, like you said, for them to see it and become part of the movement. Like I said early on, this is not rocket science, what we need to do. Gosh, I was just in Portland, Oregon, two weeks ago at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit, which is put on by the statewide group there called The Street Trust. So many great folks working on so many great things. But it's funny — to me, Portland's neighborhood greenway system remains the most fun part of riding there. I love this new bridge they did, and these connections they've made, and this really cool signalization, and you're like, my gosh, look at all this stuff. And I got to ride with Sam Balto's Alameda Elementary bike bus out there.

Avi Stopper (23:32)

Yeah, I've been on that bridge.

Bill Nesper (23:43)

It was just what you said. It's this beautiful, human, disarming thing that's happening — not just for the kids. They're having a blast, right? The parents are all looking at each other like, how great is this? Look at what we're doing here. This is amazing. And then you've got the people driving by in cars who are just waving people along. You're having a real community, human moment and experience together that isn't just a one-off. It's become part of the fabric of the bike culture there. And that can happen anywhere.

Avi Stopper (24:23)

What you're describing is poetic. And yet so much of this conversation and debate is about, to your point from before, taking things away — a scarcity mindset. It seems to me that something about the way we make our arguments is falling flat. Because if something as simple as an elementary school bike bus can give people the kind of transformative, joyful view of what the world can be that you were describing, why are we mired in these endless debates about scarcity?

That scarcity mindset is very interesting to me, because I've been thinking about the bike movement increasingly from the perspective of abundance. For those not familiar with the concept, there's a worthwhile read from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson called Abundance. The basic idea is that cities and states are not getting the job done when it comes to building things. So first, do you like the abundance framing? And second, what's your take on the way we seem to constantly be mired in the muck, when what we're trying to create is something radically additive and beneficial to people's lives — and yet the popular conception is, "This is going to take away my parking. This is going to take away a lane." What's your view on that?

Bill Nesper (25:55)

Yeah, I think abundance is a great starting point, and it's coming from a place of strength, really welcoming people into what you're doing. We're human beings, and it's easy to fall into a combative, scarcity mindset when you think things are being taken away from you. I also think it gets real when you're fighting for a particular street or project that does save lives. So it's hard at times not to get dragged into — maybe when somebody else is controlling the narrative — just a necessary stating of the facts.

I think the most effective arguments are the ones made, for example, around the 15th Street bike lane here, where you talk about how this is a community. Number one, it's public space — streets are public space. And this project has made it better for everyone. I believe commute times for drivers have actually gone down. Safety has gone up for all users. And overwhelmingly, people who live in the neighborhood say it's a bonus that we have this in our community. I think we have to really lean into that. That's the way to be thinking about this: how does this help everybody?

It gets real when you're talking about a particular project, or when you're really trying to save lives and stand up for people who a lot of times don't have a voice in this — people who are biking, walking, using transit. It can be really difficult. I don't want to oversimplify it, but yeah, I do think having the abundance mindset is the way to go, and talking about how this is additive.

A lot of times, when we talk about trying to build bicycle-friendly communities, people who might be skeptical are thinking, "Oh, they're trying to turn my town into Portland," or "into Amsterdam," or whatever.

Avi Stopper (28:07)

That old canard.

Bill Nesper (28:21)

Exactly. That's really not what it is. The best definition of culture I've ever heard, the one that really resonates with me, was from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He said culture is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Your community has its own history, its own people, its own thing. It is authentically itself. And what we're trying to do when we build an authentic bike culture is: it's your authentic place, plus bikes. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves is that we're a place where biking and walking and getting around under our own power is fun and safe, and it's something we do here.

Getting there isn't so easy, but it needs to be about that additive good — adding value to everyone's lives. It's not just some special thing that a special group of people do, where they get this special lane. It's about, "Wow, this makes our community better. This makes it possible for our kids to have more freedom and to be safe, so I'm not having to cart them around everywhere." I feel that as a parent. There are ways to make these arguments that build on what the community values deeply, showing how making biking safe is part of those larger values you're really after as a community.

Avi Stopper (29:50)

One of my most enduring lessons — I went to business school at the University of Chicago — is this idea of the learning organization. The guy who coined the term described it this way: learning organizations are places where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.

Do you think that describes the way bike advocacy has unfolded? I see a lot of unforced errors and static thinking. An example of an unforced error is the determination to use plastic flex posts all over the place, when business owners and neighbors respond very negatively to them — at least in Denver they do. Bike advocates actually dislike them, because we were promised fixed concrete protection. And the cities themselves don't like them because they're a maintenance headache.

I also think about this argument we're constantly fighting: "Yeah, well, you took a lane away and I don't see any people riding bikes in that lane." More broadly, I'm curious whether you feel we're learning from the hard lessons that have made it difficult to create complete networks, and what some of those lessons are. You have a fairly longitudinal view of this that I don't have — you have it over multiple decades. I'm wondering if you feel we're advancing, developing our messages and approaches based on observation of what works and what doesn't, and not just bashing our heads against the wall because that's "how it's done."

Bill Nesper (31:50)

I think we have been learning as a movement. I think we are more organized and better at speaking up for our priorities than we have been in the past. That said, I'm not satisfied. I don't think it's happening fast enough. Sure, there are folks who might not be coming from that mindset or approaching this in the most effective way. But overall, in my time doing this work, I do think we've gotten better at making the case.

In places that — I mean, Denver. If you look at Denver, it's not perfect, right? It's gone through ebbs and flows, but overall it's trending up; it's gotten better. The thing is, it's not good enough. So I believe we have to have a much more mainstream movement. We need to be welcoming people in better to help speak for the quality of life, safety, and community goals that bicycling is part of the solution to deliver. We still have a lot of work to do there.

As an organization, we're dedicated to helping people be more effective as advocates wherever they have influence. It takes groups like Bicycle Colorado, in Colorado where you are. It takes people all the way down to the neighborhood level who are willing to make the case and then welcome more people in, so we have a much more mainstream movement. It still does feel like a "nice to have" and not a "must have" for people to be able to bike in their everyday lives. We're not moving fast enough. We need a bigger, broad-based movement — the things we want aligned with what the American people want. Study after study, national survey after national survey, says the same thing over and over: people in all regions, of both political parties, in every demographic, believe that building for bicycling in their communities is good for their community.

Avi Stopper (34:16)

Which brings us back to abundance. Derek Thompson, one of the co-authors of Abundance, said something in a recent interview along the lines of: we need to be in the business of producing outcomes. And those outcomes, I think, are the mainstreaming of what you're describing.

In Denver, as a case study, things have gotten better for people who ride bikes, for sure. At the same time, at least as long as I've been tuned into this, I've never heard more grumbling, more complaining, more antipathy toward this — from what I would, I don't know if I'd currently call it the mainstream, but from a large number of people, there's significant dissatisfaction. So what better way to create a mainstream movement than to actually activate those people, so the ones who are upset about it now are converted into the people who use it? Maybe it's a green-eggs-and-ham kind of thing — they try it, and they'll see that it's incredibly powerful.

One of the learning-organization misses I see is what Derek Thompson describes there about being outcomes-oriented. The Bicycle Friendly Community approach, as I understand it, has the five E's, right, which is how you do your evaluations: equity and accessibility — meaning people of all ages and abilities; engineering — is there good infrastructure; education — we discussed that; encouragement — active programming available to folks; and evaluation and planning. Maybe the missing E-word is "effectuation" or something. But do you feel that, as a movement, we are outcomes-oriented? I want to distinguish between outputs and outcomes. I'd consider the creation of bike infrastructure an output. An outcome is a kid riding their bike to school without their parents. An outcome is tons of those previous naysayers, plus a new mainstream, saying, "This is amazing, let's do more of it." Do you think we are outcomes-oriented?

Bill Nesper (36:38)

The places that are doing this best are, and they're thinking about ridership, safety, and the perception of safety. When they're thinking about how many people are riding regularly, that E of evaluation is really important. It's important for places to measure themselves.

The primary way bicycling is measured in the United States is a national measure: every census-designated place has a number for the percentage of workers who use a given mode of transportation to get to work. It's called the American Community Survey. So that's how we measure journeys to work — that's the primary way we measure this. As a nation, no, we're not outcomes-driven, because if that's the way we're measuring bicycling in the United States, that's not really being truly outcomes-driven.

But places like DC, or Denver, or up the road in Boulder, or Seattle — a number of the places we talked about — they're surveying, they're asking, "Hey, how often are you riding? Is the infrastructure comfortable?" That's what the best places in the world do. Copenhagen has done that every two years for, I don't know, maybe the last 30 years. They have a thing called a bicycle account where they measure those outcomes, and outputs too: here are the things we've done, here's the bridge connection we made, here's the programming we've done. Being outcomes-driven is what's happening in the best places, and we need more places to do it. When you're data-driven, actually asking people, helping them get around this way, and tracking how they want to get around, I think it's a good way to bring more people in and build a more mainstream movement. It's just part of the way we do business here in X city.

Avi Stopper (38:43)

The Portland bike count, I think, is the gold standard — I'm curious if you agree. They have a group of volunteers go out every year and actually count. But systematizing that, much less tying it to a return on investment, is a pretty significant gap, as far as I can tell. For example, a city spends X million dollars on new bike facilities; there should be a population-level lift, I would think, because that's how you justify it.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's investment partner. He said, "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." The way I interpret that for our work is that when we're focused on the number of miles of bike lanes created, that's going to be the outcome — the incentive is "create miles of bike lanes," so you're going to create miles of bike lanes. It's subtle, but if the incentive is "get another 10,000 people to ride their bike to replace a car trip at least once a week," that's a very different incentive. You have to think about design. You have to think about comfort. In the former scenario, if you're just talking about miles created, you could put a painted bike lane on an interstate and say, "Great, we got another 10 miles of bike lanes." That's a bit of an obscene example, but you get the point.

Whereas if you design the incentive around the outcome we seek — we want parents to be untethered from schlepping their kids around, and that manifests as hundreds more kids in a city riding their bikes to school every day — that informs the way we think about design. It obviates the designer's ability to put in these crappy things like mixing zones at big arterial streets. The protected bike lane needs to go all the way to and from the intersection. The way the incentives are oriented has a real, significant impact on the outcomes. Gaps become far less acceptable if you're like, "Yikes, we've got these gaps — what's that going to do to our ridership numbers?"

Are there places in this country where a city has said, "We want to invest this much money, and we want to see 10,000 more people riding their bikes by this time next year," or "100,000 people in five years riding their bikes once a week"?

Bill Nesper (41:15)

Yeah, there are places doing this. Portland is a good example of a place that has goals like that. But what they've learned with these bike counts is that there are also other factors in play. Right now, people aren't moving the same way they were. People aren't going to the center city in Portland as much as they used to; people are working from home. There are also lots of people moving into that wonderful city who've heard it's a biking city but haven't really been invited in. And it still isn't like there's excellent bike infrastructure everywhere, even in platinum-level Portland.

So do I think there's a concrete example in the United States where this has really worked? No, I don't. Back to the best places — Portland, DC, even Minneapolis — they have goals. But even in the best places, it's still not the forethought of the decision-maker, the mayor. Right now, I can't think of a major city where this is the thing. Maybe it can't be the thing everywhere.

Avi Stopper (42:34)

Well, I agree that I don't observe any major American city where the mayor has made it the priority. But I think there's an argument to be made that it can and should be considered the priority, because when framed as an affordability opportunity — if a mayor creates, for a relatively low cost, a complete, high-comfort, all-ages-and-abilities network — that's the kind of scenario that gives people true freedom of choice to decide how many vehicles they want to own. If you can practically reduce vehicle ownership by one car, that could be a $10,000-to-$15,000-a-year savings. That's a pretty strong economic argument.

Balancing the supply and demand of housing in big cities is a decades-long project — Austin has done very well with it in a relatively short period, to be fair. But if cities can figure out how to create these complete networks and give people that optionality — not that everyone's going to do it; I'm not so naive as to suggest that — then market drivers kick in, where people are like, "Gosh, I could plausibly reduce vehicle ownership by one." That does seem to bring it to the center of the current American political discussion.

Bill Nesper (43:58)

Yeah, for sure. Engineers — let's say the people who build things — a lot of times they're the ones who end up not signing off on this or that project, saying, "This isn't going to work." But engineers, in their profession, are problem-solvers. One of the biggest challenges, or calls to action, we have is: how do we get engineers to see this as the problem they're trying to solve, and get the political support and the money to build these things?

Right now there's a highway project in Portland, in the Rose Quarter, and it's like a $2 billion project. If you took $2 billion — I use Portland as an example because years ago, the mayor said something like, they were redoing a mile of Interstate 5, and that one mile would have cost enough to build all of Portland's biking infrastructure. Think about $2 billion: you could give the entire state of Oregon, probably the whole Northwest, great bicycling — build out those networks. But we're still in a state where we're not getting the investment we need.

So we need the problem-solvers in our communities, the chief problem-solvers. They're there to solve this problem for us; they need the direction and the funding to do it. And as a movement, as the people who elect these folks, we need to do our best to make sure our leaders see this as a priority, because it will unlock it in the way you described.

Avi Stopper (45:50)

The mainstreaming of that does seem to be central. It's such an interesting divide between stated preference — people say almost universally that they want this to be possible — and the actual practical reality of getting it done. That delta is just a strange gap.

So to wrap up: you've been at the League for coming on a quarter of a century in short order. I don't know if that's rubbing salt in the wound —

Bill Nesper (46:08)

Oh, god.

Avi Stopper (46:19)

— but in a year or so, I think you'll celebrate 25 years there. I hope they'll give you some sort of pin or bike wheel or something.

Bill Nesper (46:20)

From the mail room. I love how you said that. It's funny.

Avi Stopper (46:22)

From the mail room to the boardroom. So, you get up in front of a room of advocates from across the country — and I use that term broadly, to describe not just people working in formal advocacy nonprofits, but also advocates internal to cities. What are the two or three lessons or recommendations you impart on them that you'd like to see everyone orient their work around? Not to suggest this is a monolith, but what do you see as the priorities for how people should orient their work to make this a reality?

Bill Nesper (47:12)

Great question. As I imagine looking at that group of people — we just had our National Bike Summit here in March, the annual gathering of bike advocates in Washington, DC — the first thing I want to share is that the room looks so much different now. It's all of those groups of people you just mentioned, and it didn't used to be. You have the bike industry, practitioners, city staff, decision-makers, people from other countries, young people under 25, regional diversity, ethnic diversity. You have people talking about adaptive bikes and reaching all sorts of new groups. There's so much energy in that room, and the people who are part of our movement are amazing. Like you were saying, when you take people out on rides and they see what's possible — the people at the National Bike Summit are doing such amazing work, and they really represent their communities so much better.

So my main recommendation is that we need to do more of this, and do it faster. What we're trying to do is great for communities, and we need a mainstream in order to push back against the kind of narrow thinking that will keep us on a trajectory of things not being bike-possible — where walking and biking remain activities that seem impractical and impossible. So we need to keep bringing more people in.

We had a speaker a year ago at the National Bike Summit who said you have to create belonging before belief. People have to feel like they belong as part of a movement that's fighting, even before they fully believe in the whole manifesto, the whole shebang. They need to be welcomed in. So I think taking people out on bike rides, and showing your member of Congress that this bike project in your community matters to you, and trying to build bridges with folks in the health community or the school system — we need to build a mainstream movement, and it can't just be about the bike. It has to be about the things that building for bikes delivers for the community as a whole. We've been talking about this almost the whole time, but building that mainstream movement is the thing. We've been doing it, but we need to double down.

In addition to that, one of the overlooked things — I guess I've kind of talked about this — is the simplicity of just taking people on a bike ride. I think it's something we maybe don't think will be that transformative.

Avi Stopper (50:08)

Mmm.

Bill Nesper (50:14)

Back to that welcoming thing. People need to be welcomed in, and they need to just be part of a community. We need ways to escape the doom-scrolling. We need to reconnect with each other — as my kids say, IRL, in real life. They're craving that. It's easy not to see yourself in the biking community, so we have to do our best to not just say, "We're open, we have a ride that's open for anybody," but to reach into parts of our community and say, "Hey, you, come on this ride. You want to go on this ride? Let's go do this. It's not 20 miles long, it's not 40, it's not 60 — we're going to do a 10-mile ride, and we're going to end up at this new restaurant or this new park in our community." Things like that really go a long way toward building that more mainstream community.

And lastly — I'm sure I've got to have three —

Avi Stopper (51:10)

Those are pretty strong.

Bill Nesper (51:11)

Thanks, man. Yeah, maybe that's enough — I'll leave it there. I think we have a lot more power than we realize in what we're trying to accomplish. I think a lot of people would actually see more of this, as a movement, as really additive to their lives, not taking things away. Really leaning into that abundance mindset, as you say, is going to go a long way toward accomplishing what the people in our country desire and deserve.

Avi Stopper (51:42)

Let's not lose sight of that. Bill Nesper, thank you so much for being our fearless leader. I'm just going to sit back and watch while you make it happen. No, I'm kidding — we'll be in the trenches with you. Thanks so much for your time. It's been a great conversation.

Bill Nesper (51:52)

No, we need you. We need you. It was so great to talk to you. Thanks so much for what you're doing. I really appreciate you inviting me. Keep up the good work.

Avi Stopper (52:06)

Thanks for listening. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for guests you'd like to hear from, drop us a line at [email protected]. Bike Networks Now is a production of Bike Streets. Anyone should be able to ride a bike to any destination in their city today. You can learn more about our work at bikestreets.com.