The LNC applied for a $25,000 grant to the State Farm Neighborhood Assistance Program to support the Walk It! Bike It! and the Walk the Walk -- Drive the Drive Campaign.

We submitted the following for review in June but we didn't make the cut to the final 200 for online voting.  We will try again next year!  Let us know if you have ideas to strengthen our application.

Describe problem and how this addresses an unmet need:

Lewisburg is a compact, historic community with the potential to be a great place to walk and bike, but it just isn't safe for everyone to do so because of an entrenched car-focused culture.  Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg works to promote walking and biking, putting on events to raise awareness about the benefits in terms of health, sustainability, economy, and quality of life, working to identify and prioritize issues, and advocating with elected officials and agencies for improvements in infrastructure and policy.  Walk It! Bike It! has developed a campaign entitled “Walk the Walk – Drive the Drive” which helps residents understand what they can do right now to improve road safety for all users, whether as a walker or a driver.  Promotion of the campaign to date has been slow and modest.  Dedicated funding would allow us to expand our efforts and bring the message home that we all have a role to play in keeping our roads safe.

How will the grant funds help you meet this need?

Everything Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg has accomplished to date has been made possible by generous community members volunteering their time and resources.  We have worked with the school district to put on Walk and Bike to School Day, staged a major open street event called River Road Holiday, and introduced the concept of Bike Valet Parking during the principal street fair in the community.  The $25,000 grant would enable us to purchase safety materials for the public, like reflective vests, safety flashers, and bicycle bells, and to promote road safety more comprehensively in local conventional media platforms as well as online.  A combination of ad buys, educational videos, posters, and printed materials would round out the project.  They would also expand the reach of the safety campaign to far more of central Pennsylvania, bringing the message of our shared roles in road safety to many more people than our current community effort can manage.

Will there be any lasting impact from the proposed project?

The Walk the Walk – Drive the Drive campaign has the potential to revolutionize the traffic culture in central Pennsylvania, bringing the message of streets as shared resources to the broader public and emphasizing the benefits of walking and biking as they accrue to everyone in the community – even those who don’t walk or bike themselves.  We are working to move our community and our region beyond a narrow focus on driving from point A to point B at the highest speed possible to incorporate respect and empathy in our interactions on the streets.  Did you know that in Pennsylvania it is state law that 1) at locations with traffic lights, pedestrians must obey traffic control signals and 2) at locations without traffic lights, vehicles must yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk?  Did you know that bikes have a legal right to be on the road?  Did you know that the speed limit is an upper limit and it can be safer to drive slower?  Most people don’t.  With your help, we can change that!