Leah Shahum, SFBC

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

She’s the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and a board member of the national Alliance for Biking and Walking — meet Leah Shahum.

I sat in on a session in Washington D.C. earlier this year at the National Bike Summit where Leah was sharing her stories of building a vibrant cycling community. I knew right then I had to get her on the show. It would be Jeff Miller at the Alliance who would make the introduction.

San Francisco is a Gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community as rated by the League of American Bicyclists, so Leah has many experiences to share from her 15 year term.

Her mission — promoting bicycling for every day transportation. It must be working,

San Francisco has seen an increase of 71% in bicycle trips just in the last 5 years.

Even with all those hills…

She offers a lot of great advice to a city like mine where we’re just getting going with a Master Plan.
[blockquote size=”full|half|third|fourth|two-thirds|three-fourths” align=”center” byline=”Leah Shaham” rating=”0|1|2|3|4|5″]The arguments around environmental benefits, health benefits, and livability benefits of bicycling are well made and I think for most sectors of the community you don’t need to necessarily convince people – they get that. But we’re having a lot of challenges, I will say, with the perception that creating bike space, when it means changing auto space, would be bad for business…[/blockquote]
From bike racks to bike share, Leah shares her advice.

Show #52 Listen.