BikeWalkLee and Lee County staff participate in Bike Summit with Secretary LaHood on April 11th in Tampa

 It was inspiring to participate in Thursday's Tampa Bike Summit with Secretary LaHood and other national, state, local officials and advocates to focus on ways to make the roads safer for cyclists.

Lee Co.team with Secy LaHood--Ann Pierce, Tessa LeSage, and Darla Letourneau

As noted in our April 8th press release,  Lee County was one of  Florida's communities invited to share its complete streets implementation experiences at the Bike Summit. Tessa LeSage, Lee County's Sustainability Director and co-leader of the county's complete streets team, did an outstanding job of highlighting Lee County's efforts as part of a panel discussing how planning and the built environment can make our communities safer for cycling.
 BikeWalkLee representatives attended, as did several staff from LeeDOT and Lee MPO.

It was gratifying to have national and state officials single out Lee County government as well as BikeWalkLee advocacy efforts for praise.

I've posted a photo album (with captions) about the summit, so check it out. To be inspired, watch the recording of the opening session, featuring Secretary LaHood and other federal and state officials, click here. (this was posted on the Secretary's "FastLane" blog)

Secretary LaHood urged summit participants to "go back to your community and share what you've learned with as many people as you can so today's ideas can be the seeds of tomorrow's solutions."  With that in mind, there will be a another blog story by Monday about our "take aways" from the summit, so stay tuned! 

Reporters from both NBC-2 News (Chad Oliver) and News-Press (Christina Cepro) spent the day with us in Tampa and did an excellent job covering the event.  Below are links to the videos and stories.
News-Press:
Video:
 
 News-Press Article 

NBC-2 News Story
Video:
 NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral

WGCU also did a short story on the summit, with an interview with BikeWalkLee's Letourneau on their 5:30 p.m. NPR.  Click here for story and audio.