Tom began riding a bike when he was eight years old, on the sidewalks of Minneapolis. Within a few years, he made his way around the city as far as the sidewalks and bike paths would take him. Soon enough, he ventured into the streets and was further pushing the limits of how far his bike would take him.

His community activism and involvement began with attendance at a few meetings in his neighborhood, speaking for bicycling where few or no other voices were heard. These meetings were his impetus for advocating in Austin. So many were complaining, but those concerns rarely made it to anyone who could make decisions to actually improve Austin bicycling. While the small community effort being devoted to improving Austin bicycling was effective, it was taken for granted. Austin needed a dedicated voice, year in, year out.

His more serious involvement in the Austin bicycling community began in 2006 when he spoke against a renewed effort for an all-ages mandatory helmet law that singled out Austin bicyclists. As part of this effort, he joined the League of Bicycling Voters (LOBV) board. The next year, he participated in all of the Street Smarts Task Force (SSTF) subcommittees, and became a charter member of the newly reincarnated Austin Bicycle Advisory Council (BAC).

For the next few years, 2007-09, while attending UT Austin, he helped found the UT Orange Bike Project (OBP). OBP provides a community bike shop (including a prime opportunity for students to learn how to fix their own bikes), a bike library for UT students, urban bike safety classes, and a voice for bicycling at UT. While at UT, Tom also served as the UT Student Government (UT SG) representative to the UT Parking & Traffic Policies Committee, as well as the UT Bicycle Committee. His work included sponsorship of a UT SG resolution supporting a bike-friendly UT campus.

In the fall of 2009, he became the first Executive Director of the League of Bicycling Voters. He is also the current chair of the BAC and a co-chair of the transportation committee for Austin’s Climate Protection task force. In preparation for providing urban bike safety classes at UT, he became a League Certified Instructor (LCI) in 2008.

Rob is the Communications Director for Texas AFT, a union representing public school employees. Before becoming LOBV’s president, Rob worked as an alternative transportation consultant developing employer programs to promote ridesharing, transit, walking and bicycling. Additionally, he served as a Community Relations supervisor for Capital Metro’s light rail program in the mid 1990s.

Currently, Rob is a member of the Citizens Task Force for Imagine Austin, the city’s comprehensive plan process. He also served on the Street Smarts Task Force, a mayoral body charged with developing recommendations for encouraging bicycling and making it safer.

A longtime journalist, Rob has also covered issues such as transportation, development and water quality for local publications.

Mike started into local bike politics shortly after he became car-free in 1995. He was a member of the Bicycle Advisory Council until the 1996 Mandatory Helmet Law broke it up. He was fighting that helmet law as a member of the Citizens for Cycling Freedom when they changed their name to the League of Bicycling Voters.

Mike believes that Austin’s bike culture should have an identity, even though he believes this culture is multifaceted and sometimes at odds with itself. To that end, he has promoted bicycles in several ways. He organized a couple of Human Power Parties and bike parades. Now he focuses more on running his bike shop, Easy Street Recumbents, but stays involved in whatever advocacy he can. He co-hosted the “Right Of Way” radio show on KOOP for about 10 years, interviewing people who are trying to be less car-dependent.

Mike’s view of cycling advocacy is level-headed and focused on the future. While he doesn’t support mob actions and road rage, he appreciates the value of events like Critical Mass that encourage cyclists to act in solidarity. Mike sees cycling education — the improvement of cyclists’ own skills — to be the way forward. He also recognizes the need for facilities like bike lanes or bike boxes to encourage new cyclists to start riding and developing their skills. But he believes that these things are like training wheels, to be put aside when the cyclist’s skill come into form.

A statement from Mike:

I am honored to serve on the LOBV board at this crucial time. Austin thinks it is a great cycling city, but it is just a promising mediocrity. We need an organization like the LOBV to rise above that. I encourage anyone reading this to join today, or contribute what you can spare today. It is early 2010 and we are taking our baby steps. Help us to become established, and to help us to help you to get around in a socially and environmentally responsible way — the bicycle! (Or tricycle…)

Alonso is an artist from Seattle, WA, and was raised in Santiago, Chile. He has a license in art history from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from State University of New York in Buffalo. He works for the University of Texas at Austin in Interlibrary Services.

A self-termed “rabbit” cyclist, Alonso has not owned a car for the past 10 years. He has volunteered with Austin’s Yellow Bike Project at least once a week since 2005 and has been a YBP coordinator since 2007. Alonso is an alternate member of the Bicycle Advisory Council and a member of both the League of American Bicyclists and the Texas Bicycle Coalition. He is also a League Cycling Instructor.

Alonso believes that building bicycle infrastructure is the surest way to improve quality of life in a truly democratic fashion. He believes that the way to achieve a higher quality of bicycling life is through advocacy aimed not just toward city officials, but also toward the public at large.

Alonso has lived in Austin since 2000 and currently resides on Lake Austin Boulevard. Although he suffers from the summer heat, he loves Austin very much.

Tommy Eden is a force of nature in Austin cycling. He has been a commuting bicyclist for over 40 years, and his usual commute is just over 11 miles round trip, but it often extends to over 25 miles. He rides recreationally on occasional weekends or holidays, usually between 40 and 80 miles. He has toured 44 states and 11 countries by bicycle, including Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Czechoslovakia.

His community leadership activities include the following:

- TxDOT Bicycle Advisory Committee member since 2002
- Chair, ACA Legislative Liaison Committee since 2007
- BAC member since 2005
- BAC Chair, 2005-2007
- UTC member, 2000-2004

Tommy has lived in Austin off and on since 1976 and currently resides in the Cherry Creek Neighborhood of South Austin, near West Gate Blvd. and Stassney Lane.

The way to improve cycling, according to Tommy, is to improve safety for cyclists, and the way to achieve better safety is through more and better cycling facilities. Tommy believes that Austin leads the way in Texas in bicycle commuting, but that there are many improvements that can be made. The City of Austin has provided some excellent facilities on city streets, and the city has some excellent off-road trails. With the increase in the number of bicyclists due to an increase in facilities, the City of Austin has experienced an improvement in the safety of bicyclists using city streets for commuting. Tommy believes that Austin is likely to move from the League of American Bicyclists’ “silver” classification into the “gold” as the number and safety of bicyclists in the city improves.

In Tommy’s view, the State of Texas, conversely, has prided itself in making sure that its facilities do not attract more bicyclists. Because the Texas Department of Transportation has not provided adequate facilities in its jurisdiction, the number of bicyclists using TxDOT facilities has not increased as dramatically as the number of bicyclists using city streets. Therefore, the safety of bicyclists on TxDOT highways has not improved. If the State of Texas makes further improvements for bicyclists, the safety of bicyclists on TxDOT highways could improve.

Tommy has a vision for TxDOT: the department could start by producing a statewide bicycle plan and developing a policy requiring that bicycle facilities be provided on all highway construction and reconstruction projects. If bicycle facilities are provided with every project which the state builds or rebuilds, then, eventually, every highway in Texas will have improved bicycle facilities. Then the number of bicyclists will increase dramatically statewide, and bicyclists all across the state will be safer.

Eileen is a local Austin bicycling advocate involved in numerous cycling-related groups. With a vision of cycling as both a means of clean, low-impact transportation and a community-building activity, she dedicates much of her time to getting more Austinites on bikes. She has organized several projects, including the annual public forum with Austin’s Chief of Police Art Acevedo, the Austin portion of the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride, and Safe Routes to School.

Eileen’s dedication to cycling is both personal and professional. For the Austin Cycling Association, the largest recreational cycling club in Central Texas, she co-created the Hosted Ride Program, a fun and educational group ride program. For the League of American Bicyclists, Eileen teaches Bike Education courses as part of a grassroots effort to realize cycling’s true potential as part of a multi-modal transportation system in Austin. She is co-chair of Austin’s Bicycle Advisory Council and a member of the Urban Transportation Commission (UTC). (The UTC creates and recommends transportation policies to City Council.) An employee of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop, Eileen works to support commuters and novice cyclists through education and community outreach efforts.

Vince, a native of Houston, has enjoyed Austin’s cycling atmosphere immensely since his arrival here in 1999. He began cycling as a child, as many do, but became interested in advocacy about three years ago with the urban cycling movement. He has also been working at Performance Bicycle since he started there three years ago.

Vince’s interest in Austin cycling revolves around the ability to ride a bicycle on the street. In Houston, cycling is restricted to trails, and Vince loves that a cyclist can ride on Austin’s many bike lanes. Residing in central Austin, he enjoys riding in an urban center where cars do not try to run cyclists off the road. Vince believes that the collaborative, participatory nature of Austin politics will ensure a bright future for Austin cycling. His involvement in the LOBV is evidence of this belief.

When out on social rides, Vince is the documentarian. He takes lots of pictures so that people can remember how much fun they have. He also believes that no social ride is complete without nourishment, so he supplies cupcakes and other snacks to social riders. Vince’s role in the bicycling community is behind the scenes, so look out for him on the street with his camera.

Pete became a transportation cyclist at age 5, and even though the bike has been his primary means of transportation ever since, he only started considering himself a “cyclist” after he rode to Austin from Massachusetts, his former home, in 1995. Fortunately, his bike was stolen that December, and in the process of learning how to build a replacement, he helped to start the Yellow Bike Project (YBP).

With occasional breaks for bike tours, Pete has been a YBP volunteer since 1997. He is proud to represent transportation cycling in general at the Street Smarts Task Force. He is a full member of the Bicycle Advisory Council and participates in other cycling forums, including the Candidate Forum and the Grilling the Police Chief Forum.

A statement from Pete:

I live on Leona Street in East Austin, and I used to know every cyclist who rode by, and now only about one in twenty ring their bells as they pass my house. I don’t know the rest, but since they ride bikes I think of them as friends.

Lane began riding a bicycle at the age of five. Somewhere in the many tens of thousands of miles he has ridden since, he came to understand the transformative power of this simple beautiful machine.

Residing in central Austin, Lane is a professional software engineer. He has lived in Austin for over 15 years and rides his bike for transportation, health and fitness, competition, fellowship, relaxation and meditation, and fun; but also as a political statement, and as a means to discover and achieve goals.

Based on personal experience, observation and a great deal of analysis, Lane believes that the bicycle presents us with a simple and peaceful solution to many problems that we face. Some problems that concern him are traffic congestion, air and water quality degradation, rising health care costs that result from a sedentary lifestyle, traffic injuries and fatalities, depletion of limited energy resources, and reliance on foreign energy resources.

Lane feels that cycling in Austin is not terrible, and has come a long way even in the short time that he has lived here. His opinion is that public expense is still far too skewed toward car-centric transport, and that our land development and use patterns still favor this bias. He also believes there is a serious problem with public perception of cycling and cyclists; he says that cycling is a viable–even optimal–mode of transportation, and cyclists deserve the same respect as any other road user.

Lane has a deep and extensive commitment to bicycling advocacy in Austin. He was the chair of the infrastructure and facilities subcommittee of the Street Smarts Task Force and was also a founding member of the Bicycle Advisory Council. He doesn’t participate in nearly as many social rides as he would like, although he has been known to join in everything from organized fundraisers like the MS150 and the Armadillo Hill Country Classic to the annual Full Moon Cruise to the Ride of Silence to the Thursday Night Crits at the Driveway.

A statement from Lane about what will improve cycling in Austin:

I believe wholeheartedly in what we published in the findings of the Street Smarts Task Force, and also in the goals of the LOBV, namely, to get more people to ride bikes more often.

Sam, an open-source web developer with a degree in electrical engineering from UT, has lived in Austin since 2003. He is committed to encouraging and promoting cycling as transportation in Austin. Sam has helped expand community bike shops, first at the 21st Street Co-op, and now at Whitehall Co-op. He maintains a recumbent bike blog for the Easy Street Recumbents website and hopes to open a new bike shop soon.

Sam is a part owner and resident of the Whitehall Co-op in central Austin, a housing co-op that doubles as a community bike shop. He gets around by bike, and increasingly on foot. He says that living without a car is the most liberating and empowering decision he can make in his daily life. Walking and biking are inherently enjoyable and make us more aware of our community, thus we care more about our community. Sam believes that once the impediments to sustainable transportation are removed, walking and biking will become the standard form of transportation for Austinites.

Sam is passionate about open source software as an affirmation of the unlimited potential of cooperation. He is dedicated to a vegan diet for health, compassion, and environmental justice. For fun he enjoys various do-it-yourself projects, board games, wrestling, qi gong, randonneuring, and bike touring.