Cycling Over Sixty

ForeverGreen Trails

• Tom Butler • Season 4 • Episode 2

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In this episode of Cycling Over Sixty, host Tom Butler shares his recent dietary journey, giving a view of the ups and downs of his nutrition evolution and examining why his previous meal planning program didn't deliver the results he'd hoped for. 

Then, Tom welcomes Larry Leveen, Executive Director of ForeverGreen Trails and a true force in the active transportation movement. Larry pulls back the curtain on the complex world of infrastructure advocacy, revealing the patience, persistence, and strategic thinking required to create safe spaces for cycling and walking in our communities. From navigating bureaucratic hurdles to building coalitions, Larry shares the realities of what it takes—sometimes years of effort—to transform a vision for safer streets into concrete reality.

Whether you're interested in fueling your body better for health or understanding the vital advocacy work that creates the paths you love to ride, this conversation delivers insights from two perspectives on making cycling more accessible and enjoyable.

Perfect for anyone who has ever wondered about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating the trails and bike lanes we often take for granted, or anyone looking to make positive changes in their own cycling lifestyle. 

Thanks for Joining Me!

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Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com

Tom Butler:

This is the Cycling Over 60 Podcast, season 4, episode 2, Forevergreen Trails, and I'm your host, Tom Butler. For this update, I want to talk a bit about what I'm doing with my diet. What I'm eating is as big of a part of my story as my cycling. And everybody who's doing a lot of biking needs to have a fueling strategy. For me, a big aspect of my food choices comes down to managing my blood glucose. If you're new here, I found out what was going on with my metabolic health by wearing a continuous glucose monitor. Later, I did a glucose tolerance test with an insulin response. My belief is that if you have an A1C over 5.7, do yourself a favor and wear a continuous glucose monitor and also get a glucose tolerance test. A glucose tolerance test is not that unusual, but make sure that you have an insulin response test with it. And you want to have a physician who understands that high blood glucose levels is a secondary issue to metabolic dysfunction. Hopefully, unlike me, you find that you're processing glucose just fine. What I've been reading suggests that as many as 50% of people have insulin resistance. If you go through all the testing and everything looks good, what this also provides is some results that you can use to compare in case your A1C continues to go up. Keep in mind that there are many physicians who are looking for an A1C level above 6.4 before recommending you take any real action. From my experience, if there is an issue with glucose tolerance, you want to catch it as early as possible. Soon after I found out about the problems I have with insulin and blood glucose levels, I adopted a specific diet. I significantly reduced my intake of carbohydrates, and I didn't worry at all about the amount of fat I consumed. My interpretation of what happened because of that change is that my body became more efficient at burning fat for energy. Eating that way, I did some experiments on myself, which, as I will point out over and over, I recommend that you don't do experiments on yourself. But what I saw from my experimentation was consistent with what I expected to see by being in a state where I was using fat stores to fuel my activity. Eating that way, I lost 20 pounds. Along the way, Kelly started studying the effects of dietary fat on the ability of cells to take in blood sugar. She was seeing a lot of research that was saying that low levels of dietary fat could make muscle cells more effective at utilizing blood glucose. And even with the added carbohydrate, your body was able to process the blood sugar in a way that offset having higher carbohydrate in your diet. There was an aspect of this that I was attracted to because I know that I need glucose if I'm pushing it really hard on the bike. I ate a low carbohydrate diet for more than six months. So I decided at that time to make a shift to a very low fat diet. And my goal was to get my percentage of calories from fat down to around 10%. I want to stress that to eat this way, you need to have a well thought out plan. Fat is essential in a lot of ways, and eating very low fat can cause problems. I was following a plan that specifically focused on getting high quality essential fats. When I made the switch, what I saw with the continuous glucose monitor was very interesting. Unfortunately, I didn't stay with the meal plan long enough to make any valid assumptions of the impact. Ultimately, I failed to maintain the program. I found the food to be excellent. Now it did take a while to adjust to eating less fat. I had to get through a period of being hungry a lot. But the main problem with the program was that it was just too complicated for me to do meal prep. I was eating three meals a day instead of the two meal a day plan that I had adopted when eating low carbs. Plus, in order to get the complex flavors in the recipes that I had for low fat meals, the food prep was more difficult. It took more time to hunt down the unique ingredients in the recipes, and it took more time to prepare the individual dishes. Because of that difficulty, I eventually drifted back into having no real dietary plan. And as a result, I gained about 10 pounds. And I also stopped wearing a continuous glucose monitor. This weight gain has driven me to go back to eating low carbs and higher fat and getting back to the place of using fat as my main energy source. However, I'm not totally turning my back on a low fat plan yet. Currently, I'd like to lose 20 pounds. That would put me at the lightest I've been in probably 25 years. Once there, I think I'll try to make a switch again. And between now and then, I need to figure out how to make low fat meals more manageable. I'm going to investigate the option of switching occasionally from low fat to low carbohydrate. I'm not really sure who to talk to about this yet, but these two plans are not really opposite strategies. The way that low fat helps with blood glucose levels is very different from the way that a low carbohydrate diet does. It might not be unreasonable that I can find a way to benefit from the use of both strategies. One thing that I've really enjoyed is meeting others in the community who are advocating for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. What an awesome group of people. And one of those awesome people is Larry Levine, the executive director of Forevergreen Trails. I asked Larry to come on and talk about Forevergreen Trails and to talk in general about trail advocacy. Our discussion is quite local, but at the same time, I believe there is a lot to learn from Larry that applies to anywhere in the U.S. Here is our discussion. It's awesome to welcome Larry Levine, Executive Director of Forevergreen Trails, to the podcast. Thank you, Larry, for joining me. Thanks for having me so much. Appreciate it. When we're on a trail or a path or a protected bike lane, we are using a resource that didn't just happen to come about. There are teams of people behind the scenes working to make safe infrastructure possible. So today it's my pleasure to have you here, Larry, because you're one of those people making things happen. My goal for this conversation is to have people know more about organizations like Forevergreen Trails and how you help projects get started and move to completion. First, here's an open question that I like to ask. What is an early memory of you have of a bicycle?

Larry Leveen:

Having to learn to ride a bicycle because I broke the training wheel off of my bicycle, my first bicycle, which had hollow wheels. I don't know how that that works, but I remember riding it around so much that I wore through the the the tires. But really it it happened because uh yeah, you just you know, so many quick turns, quick curves uh on those training wheels, and it just gave up the ghost. And you know, necessity's the mother of invention, and I guess.

Tom Butler:

Did you feel like you transitioned pretty well?

Larry Leveen:

Yeah, I I was just so enamored with uh the you know feeling of speed. And and frankly, it it's one of the first ways that a kid can really feel empowered in the world. I mean, besides, you know, flinging mush peas, you know, off the high chair, but you know, move moving through 3D space. I mean, you know, it and and I was always very mobile uh as a kid. In fact, I was quite a mischievous toddler as a result. So I I was bound to be um heck on wheels, I guess. Gotcha.

Tom Butler:

Did you keep cycling throughout your life or did you leave it behind and get back to it?

Larry Leveen:

I biked a lot as a kid and even as a teenager. Although I grew up in a pretty affluent neighborhood, I was never bought a car by my folks, right? Um, and very rarely would they ever loan me a car. So I had to get around. Uh, in fact, my mom used to call it, you know, if I would ask her for a ride and she would say, you know, deal with it yourself. She would call it, you know, take bus 11, but she'd make a little walking symbol with her fingers, like each each leg is a number one. That's bus 11, as you get in there on your own leg power. I was riding my bike to my friends' houses, you know, all through elementary, middle, and and high school. You know, there was no particular infrastructure for that. In fact, I I we lived miles from a sidewalk, even though it was uh, you know, so suburban, you know, subdivision on Long Island, you know, it's no reason to not have sidewalks, it's just cars, that's success, you know, in your goofy house in the suburbs with lawns that you have to mow and stuff like that, and living miles and miles from work, school, shopping, etc. Pretty weird. We were fortunate to have a park to congregate to so we biked there a lot.

Tom Butler:

Well, I have really enjoyed getting to know you and getting to know Forevergreen Trails is the last few months. And I'd like you to talk about what is important for people to know about Forevergreen Trails.

Larry Leveen:

Sure. Well, we are based in Pierce County, Washington. That's the same fabulous county in which Mount Rainier and the city of Tacoma and lots of other cool communities are located. We serve that whole area and perhaps sometimes a little bit beyond because you we also want to make connections, you know, to and from our neighboring counties. So we do kind of get involved in in that way. By and large, our mission is to aid in the build-out of our regional trail system. So there's there is a planned regional trail system, a conglomeration of all of the incorporated communities and the unincorporated county. They all have their respective either trails plans or active transportation plans. And when you put all those together, you get a regional trails plan. And our goal is to help with the build out of that. By and large, that means helping them fund it. But sometimes they they even lack the capacity to pursue the grants that are needed for that build-out. So our technical assistance that we can provide is largely applying for grants on their behalf or any part of a grant application. It's a can be a large, large thing with many steps and many tasks. So we'll do as much or much or as little as they want. And we can even do public-private fund drives on our website to help provide some of the matching funds that are invariably needed for the trail projects. But we also help them, even kind of upstream, if you will, doing review of their of those trail plans and active transportation plans that I mentioned, traffic safety plans, the things that that are kind of the foundational underpinnings of developing a trail system or a network of trails. That is the majority of our work, but there's a bunch of it that's kind of behind the scenes as well. There's legislative work I could talk about, maybe we'll get into later. You know, a little bit of promotional and educational work for the public and elected officials and agency staff folks. But I don't think you have to promote trails too much to the public. I mean, it is, and if you build it, they will come because trails, everyone knows that they're so wonderful. People really want to be there. We don't have to tell folks, hey, use a trail. It's fun. They know.

Tom Butler:

Like I mentioned, you're one of those people that are behind the scenes. Most people that are on a trail that you've been involved with probably haven't even met you, probably don't even, you know, mighty not even know about Forever Green Trails. Talk about as executive director, what what your days look like?

Larry Leveen:

It is a lot of staying aware of uh it's like there's a bunch of bunch of uh spinning plates, right? And you have to always kind of spin ones that are getting wobbly and are gonna fall. There are kind of a standard array of plates that any any nonprofit executive director has to spin and prevent from crashing down, right? Thinks about making the whole concern run and membership and donations and stuff like that. But in terms of related to our mission, it's really staying informed about fostering relationships with all the staff from the local agencies. I mean, every city and town within the county and the county itself and the park districts as well, being aware of what their planning efforts are, being aware of what their uh design and can where they are in design and construction for different projects, um, including on-street facilities that lead to or connect to regional trail systems. Because, you know, when we're when we talk about trails, we're very often talking about facilities that are separated from the roadway, and not just necessarily by you know a paint stripe or or even just you know some uh bollard or some vertical element, but usually significantly separated. That's it. When we say on-street facilities, we mean everything else, whether it's a bike, a kind of more standard bike lane or a shoulder, a striped shoulder, a sidewalk, a shared use path, a two-way, you know bike line, whatever. We pay attention to those projects as well because they are part of that you know extended active uh transportation, active mobility system. Yeah, I don't know if it's you know correct to think of it as like how we have you know feeder streets leading to our our highways, and you know, trails are the highways, and the on-street facilities are you know like like the like the streets themselves for for motorists, but um, it's one way to one way to think of it. But staying aware of all those projects as much as possible is challenging. There's also a lot of staff turnover actually at local levels, you know. Um bigger cities kind of slurp up uh staff from the smaller cities because they can wave more money at them. And then there's invariably, you know, there's bigger cities that take our city staff away. But also, you know, staying aware of policies, uh policy issues and funding issues and opportunities, frankly, at the local, regional, state, and even federal levels is something that you know can take up a significant amount of time, more so at certain times of the year when legislative session you know is happening or when it's a budget year. We have a biannual two-year budget in Washington state. So a budget year, it's even busier than the non-budget years. Yeah. It's a lot of relationship building over and over, whether it's with local agencies or it's uh with other nonprofits or community groups, uh businesses, et cetera. A ton of time and energy goes into the relationship building, but that is that's time well spent because that's how we get stuff done.

Tom Butler:

Evergreen Trails is uh, you know, in my opinion, one of the most effective organizations here in where I live in Pierce County. And uh the expertise that you guys bring, and uh you know, that's not something that just happens immediately. So, how has Fergreen Trails gotten to this point where you're bringing the expertise?

Larry Leveen:

Yeah, that that's a great question. And it had a uh sort of an odd path, if you'll pardon the pun, to get there. It was originally envisioned as sort of, if you will, like a quasi-public consultancy that could potentially have a planner, a real estate person, a designer, uh uh you know, GIS person, and that local governments could utilize the services of this semi-agency uh entity to plan for, design, and develop trails. The funding mechanism for that did not succeed, it was an increment of sales tax, which is needed legislative action. And they tried once and it did not pass. It's rare actually to pass legislation on the first go-around. My understanding is that they never tried again. There was, you know, uh, I think a correct perception that local governments needed help to plan and develop trails, because I encountered that today, even. So it was even more so in the past. Many of the jurisdictions had no active transportation plans or trail plans back then. This is, you know, in the mid-2000s. What's different now is that despite the uh Forevergreen Trails not being um funded in the way that this kind of like, you know, twinkle of an idea had envisioned, for various reasons, many local jurisdictions did wind up developing some sort of active transportation, some sort of trail plan. And so the advocacy call for trails or to have local governments think about trails and to plan for trails, because it wasn't just, you know, a talent shop. It was also going to educate and promote planning for trails. Really, that call is now coming from inside the house, as the saying goes. Most of the jurisdictions have these plans. The trick is now to build these things out. But getting back to that, how we got there, I think without that funding mechanism, I think for for quite a while, for quite a number of years, for Evergreen Trails was a little bit uh floating around, not grounded, didn't have uh as concrete a way to accomplish its mission of connecting Pierce County's communities with a network of trails. It tried to facilitate conversations as well as it could, et cetera. But without that backbone of funding, then we're only ever able to have you know a part part-time staffer. And we're we're subsisting on you know an occasional grant or donation, things like that. But I think that as a result, we didn't get as much done potentially as we might have. It turned out that very shortly after I was hired, one of the foundations that was um funding a good chunk of our operations, they were funding a nonprofit, which we were a member of and participating in. And they said, okay, we've we've you know done our 10-year mission experiment with this thing and we're rolling it up. And you know, you had you had to figure out what to do. And fortunately, we had a very forward-thinking jurisdiction board member jurisdiction, meaning local government board member, the former parks director for Pierce County, Roxanne Miles, who kind of took up the gauntlet, perhaps thrown in her direction uh by a local advocate who you know, and urging the local governments to fund for Evergreen Trails. And so, to her credit, she said, okay. And she kind of we worked on it together and figured out um how to do that. And so we have jurisdiction members, not all jurisdictions, it's it's an optional thing. And then we have jurisdiction membership on our board, so they have you know control and a say over how we do what we do with partially the funding that or the funding that they are partially providing. We kind of got there in this very odd roundabout way. We now provide the technical support, even for a large jurisdiction as large as Pierce County, which has a trails planner. Sometimes they get caught short and they need us to apply for a grant on their behalf or to do any part of an uh of a grant application or to do a public-private fund drive on their behalf. So it's not just the small jurisdictions that need our help, but large ones as well.

Tom Butler:

Talk about the experiences that you've had in your life that kind of inform what you do today.

Larry Leveen:

I started, as I mentioned, cycling as a kid because that was that was how you get around your neighborhood. You just kind of do it because that's all you know, you don't think about it necessarily too deeply, potentially. In uh in college, I was pretty committed to as a budding environmentalist, uh, someone who's had an environmental studies major, and we had a fabulous bus system uh where I went to college. I would supplement that with just biking to school a fair bit, I guess because it was enjoyable. And that just stuck. But you know, you start to, as you would hopefully develop your analytical brain and your critical thinking skills, etc., when you're in college and just biking on those, you know, less less residential streets and perhaps more busier streets, and just experiencing the shortcomings of the built environment for people who walk, bike, or roll. And you start to, you know, you feel it viscerally, right? Everyone knows that feeling, whether you're, you know, waiting at a bus stop or you're walking on down the street or you're biking down a street of a vehicle passing by either you know too close or too fast or a combination, you feel those shortcomings very viscerally. And just thinking about that and thinking about how much car dependence we seem to have just started helping me put things together and committing to learning how to take care of my bike, uh uh committing to that being being my main form of transportation and therefore also learning how to take care of it, to the extent of using my some of my student loan money to go to bike mechanic school. That's a little side note. It was perfectly good, perfectly good use of my student loan, it turned out. It just wound up feeding on itself. But you know, that that personal experience, uh, frankly, as someone, you know, your podcast listeners can't tell, but they might guess that, you know, I'm from what I've said and everything, that I'm uh a white guy who's, I guess, fairly trim, fairly fit, and have in short, a lot of privilege. Walking or biking through the built environment of the United States is one of the few ways that a fit white guy, a tall, physically able white guy, can feel any semblance of sort of lack of personal safety. And and you know, it's it's like you you feel your that privilege kind of like drop precipitously like a cliff. And not to say that I I I understand what oppression is like for other people, but it's a place where you know I just simply don't have quite the same safety and privileges that I have everywhere else. Not to say that I don't have privileges on our streets, I do, and you can you can look into uh outcomes from that people of color have uh from encountering law enforcement versus uh versus uh white folks. There's a disparity there. So I'm not dis discounting any of that, but it's a place where I could kind of first understand a need for uh something to change for uh as a matter of just uh social justice to have a more just world. Because finally, guess what? It affected me, right? It's sort of like getting through Siddhartha getting outside of the palace and and seeing what the world is really like uh in some way, shape, or form. But really putting that together with uh environmentalism, etc. And I just started getting involved in bike advocacy uh mostly in grad school, and it just fed on itself, fed on itself, learned more about traffic safety, learned about collision statistics, learned about outcomes of that, learned about design, aspects of design, and then you wind up having, you know, a level of competency that you can really start to uh apply in the world. And fortunately, there are great mentors along the way.

Tom Butler:

What you talked about there, I've never thought of, and it's so interesting to me because when I'm out on a bike, there's a lot of places that there's a mentality of people in cars that you don't belong here. You're in my space and you don't belong here. And again, as a person with privilege, I I don't get that a lot.

Larry Leveen:

Very other end.

Tom Butler:

Yeah, that's right. So that's man, that's a really interesting observation.

Larry Leveen:

Yeah, yeah, it it it is interesting, but it's it's good to, you know, kind of meditate on because you you can maybe start to have an inkling, a remote inkling of what other people's experiences might be in other sort of spheres and and of society or or the world. But at the same time, you know, even then we're retaining our uh yeah chunk of privileges. But yeah, it's it's kind of like a huh. Right. Yeah. I'm I'm a target here sometimes.

Tom Butler:

Yeah, that's interesting. From your perspective, how would you describe the environment for cycling in Pearce County?

Larry Leveen:

Well, a lot of the West is developed in uh a very uh low density manner, because a lot of the West was developed post-World War II and of course post-automobile. You know, there are certainly within you know plenty of of West Coast cities, there's a core of you know, a good street grid and a walkable area, which one would hope could also lead to a bikeable area if the facilities are there, but at least you know that density that makes it more human scale and more practical to get around in via human power. Much of the West is not that way. And um, once you're outside of, you know, the the larger cities of you know, uh, Tacoma or Seattle or outside of Portland, other places, and even in the Northwest, once you're outside of that urban core, you're often dealing with really low density sprawling land use. That breeds auto dependency because if you need to cover a certain distance to get to school, work, or shopping, what have you, I guess what people think of as a reasonable amount of time, it makes it less practical to do so by bike. Not impossible, as many folks know and or have come to realize, um, who go either car free or car light or have transit they can get to. I think that Pierce County is characterized by, in some ways, um, the worst of both worlds, in that I spent many years in Thurston County, which is the county west of Pierce County. It's low density, but also relatively low population. Whereas Pierce County has a much higher population, but also low density. And it made it sprawl even more. If you have that kind of landform and you're trying to accommodate more folks, you're just gonna sprawl out. And it winds up making for a really, really car-dependent built environment. And you will invariably, especially if you have um something like I-5, Interstate 5, a highway going through an area that's uh a limited access highway, that interrupts your street grid. And what you're left with are you know very few arterials that cross that. So all of your car traffic is concentrated on those arterioles that cross these highway barriers, and it makes those streets even worse for people who want to do any, get around by any other means other than driving. So we are both at the county level and also at the uh incorporated city level and town level in communities throughout Pierce County, trying to kind of retrofit and make do things, whether we're we're calling it complete streets, that's sort of this moniker for uh, you know, a movement or a policy that local governments can have to make streets serve all users, regardless of mode, whether you call it that or you're just trying to retrofit in a few options or options, you know, here and there, even if it's not your standard for all of your roadways. We're doing this in retrofit, which is you know pretty ironic because uh in many ways, in many, in many places, and mostly in you know our our cities, it was all human scale. And then it was to extend it, it was done by streetcar, and those were torn out to make way for automobiles because that was seen as progress. But now we know that we're all choking in congestion and air quality issues and climatic issues as a result, so not to mention personal safety so issues. So yeah, Pierce County is kind of challenging because of the entrenched land use. Land use locks in mobility patterns and behavior. And even if you rezone something, you still have, however, the area's been developed, and it takes a can take you know decades to redevelop it and change fundamentally how an area looks, feels, and operates, and how people get around in it. It's a challenging place. And it's not unique to Pierce County, it's it's all all over. Uh, and we're just happening to be a county that's you know trying in some way, shape, or form to make change. There's plenty of plenty of places around that there. They're like, no, we are in air quotes happy with the way that is. Like we see that as that's the norm. That's what success is in modern society. But thankfully, there are other perspectives in uh throughout Pierce County that are working to make, I think, more positive change.

Tom Butler:

Recently, forevergreen trails hosted the annual Pierce County Trails Conference. Talk to me about the purpose of that conference.

Larry Leveen:

Our conference has that underlying purpose of gathering folks together, energizing them, right? Just by being with other trail fans, whether you're trail user advocate or your local agency staff who works on these things, you know, in some way, shape, or form, you would hope that those would also be trail fans, right? Elected officials who understand and support these things. So it's energizing in that way. There's a lot of networking that's done where people meet each other and make connections that they then utilize in advocacy work along the way. The um the, you know, we have lots of consultants that work in transportation planning and design also attend the conference. It's an opportunity to share best practices about trail planning, design, construction, maintenance, or even programming, um, how to make sure our trails are inclusive for all and welcoming for all, regardless of your age, uh, ability, economic strata, your language proficiency, it's uh, etc. There are you know things that we've done at our trails conferences to address issues of like access and equity and making sure that not just the ability to get to trails and the trails themselves are accessible for disabled folks, but you can address issues of signage. And you know, is an English sign uh sufficient for everyone? Have you checked the box in terms of accessibility, or do you need to accommodate folks who maybe English is their second language, or they are low or no vision, or whatever, like everyone should be able to enjoy that trail. So we explore issues like that often. This particular conference, we were focused on the update to that regional trails plan that I mentioned. Essentially, that is a chapter of the county's long-range parks plan. That's a every six years they update this plan. It's it's a requirement to access certain types of funding. And so it's a definite. Most local governments have a long-range parks plan. Sometimes they call them park recreation and open space plans, or the letters in that alphabet C might change, you know, pros plan, pros to plan, whatever you want to call it, but a long-range parks plan. The regional trails plan being just a part of that was our focus because it really sets out the vision of what the connections are going to be between jurisdictions and where the facilities are going to go within the jurisdictions. Uh, and for the unincorporated part of Pierce County, their capital facilities plans or their investment plans of what they're what they plan to do and when utilizing what funding sources. Those issues matter because, you know, there we already brought up equity. There's equity issues in terms of where you invest in trails. You know, there are parts of our of Pierce County that have very few parks, no trails at all, very bad infrastructure, lack of walking facilities, even safe places to walk or bike. You see that the effects of that in two places. One is a higher rate of people being seriously injured and even killed on our roadways because of lack of safe infrastructure. But even you see it in terms of chronic illness and shorter life expectancy from some of these health problems are dealing with uh or the types of health problems are associated with inactivity. Why? Because there's no safe infrastructure for folks to be active in. We are focused not just on trails and not just on connecting trails, but also on help trying to ensure that we are equitably, as a region, equitably investing in trails and addressing some deficiencies that certain parts of our county have. We've been pretty active in that as well. It's a really crucial document and it bears the focus of not just our conference, but a lot of my energy in uh fourth quarter this year will be focused on that because they are about to release the draft of this plan and then accept public comment. And I will be delving very deeply into that and testifying at our county council, et cetera, and informing our partners about, you know, the good as well as the bad. That we want to give them kudos when they're doing the right things, and we want to help them improve to the degree that we can.

Tom Butler:

One thing that's come out of this podcast and just launched the fourth season, is I'm really convinced that the bicycle is a medical device. And you can look at me and you can look at what health conditions I turned around by becoming active, and I have a lot of work to do, and it's pretty essential to me with the health conditions I have for me to be active. And I think that you know, you said something there that bicycle as a medical device, uh, you need to have safe infrastructure if you want people to get active, especially for people who haven't been active, and you want them to get active, you need to have places that are accessible and you need to have places where they feel comfortable, otherwise you're you're just not gonna do it. So to me, active recreation is essential for health for you know at least 50% of the population.

Larry Leveen:

When you look at advertising for let's just take the the the bike world, you look at advertising for bikes and bike gear, all of the imagery for so long was just people who look like me, skinny fit white guy. So if you don't identify that way, if you don't look that way, are you maybe receiving a message on some level, like you don't belong, this isn't for you? Or even if you you maybe you used to identify that way, but whatever, kids, life happened, and you know, you put on the the COVID-20 or whatever, whatever it is, you just don't have that college bot or whatever. Then you might need a place that is more like a fairly flat trail as opposed to some perhaps scenic but very challenging, like hill climb kind of route. You might just need a place where you can just get a base of fitness down, where you don't have to worry uh about car traffic perchance, or where you're just seeing other folks who are like saying hey and encouraging you, where it's just like it's so pleasant that you're breaking down as many of the barriers to being active as possible. And and trails are great in that regard. Yeah. As I mentioned, it's not just you know land use that takes a long time to turn around and change once you have you know a certain certain kind of land use and transportation system serving it locked in. The the projects can take a while to deliver. And I'm happy to say that just last month, you know, we cut the ribbon on a project in Parkland, part of unincorporated Pierce County, south of Tacoma, which has no trails, uh, very few parks, et cetera. Very characteristic of that an underserved area. We just cut the ribbon on the Parkland Community Trail, the first phase of a trail network to serve Parkland and also spanaway, the community just south of it. That's going to help address the health disparities that we see both in chronic illness as well as what I call roadway violence, serious injury and death that you see there. It's demonstrably higher there than other places. Would you believe it? The the life expectancy of someone there compared to someone in North Tacoma is 10 years different. Wow. A variety of factors, right? Not up to just one thing, but that's just that's stunning.

Tom Butler:

Yeah. 10 years. Talk about something like that project. What's the timeline look like?

Larry Leveen:

Yeah, I mean, the unfortunately, it can take a while. A lot of the capital facilities plans are looking at for the the long-range parks plan I mentioned, the regional trails plan, is looking at a 10-year capital facilities plan. That doesn't even mean that 100% of the things on that 10-year plan get built within those 10 years, but they at least look out that far. And then they use other parts of the plan. Well, it should be reflected in that. That should be a 10-year prioritized capital facilities plan. So they they've kind of looked at all of the potential places where you know they want to have trails, and we'll look at um what they call a demand and needs assessment, looking at who has access to trails, where are they, where are they not, what are the demographics, and thankfully these days trying to address underserved communities. And so, like that can provide some prioritization for a project, a trail project in an area like Parkland, like Spanaway, also like um South Hill, south of Puallop in unincorporated Pierce County is another such area. And even with the prioritization that we're seeing, that's why not just the Parkland Community Trail, but the pipeline trail that you and some of your listeners might be familiar with, heading sort of southeast out of Tacoma and into unincorporated Pierce County. Pierce County is building that partially because it is going to an underserved area with few sidewalks, few parks, et cetera. Even with that prioritization, it can take five, 10 years to make any kind of difference to even get a single phase of a trail developed. And why is that? I would say for a couple of reasons. We are retrofitting these things. And we largely have, you know, a street system, and we are retrofitting in trails where we can, as we can. But also, there's just frankly, there's not a mandate for trails. There's not the same kind of mandate, even in state law, that there is for roadways. In Washington State, we have a law called the Growth Management Act. If you're a developer and I'm the, you know, the city and you're gonna develop some houses or commercial development, I can require you to make some improvements to help with the traffic that that's gonna generate. But then also, you know, that winds up affecting the overall transportation network. And pretty soon I'm gonna have maybe delays, congestion at a traffic signal. Well, the state law says that I have to maintain a certain level of service. They don't dictate what it has to be. The local government uh assigns levels of level a level of service for every intersection. But once you're failing that, you need to address it within a certain amount of time, or you start running afoul of collecting transportation impact fees, which are supposed to go to address things like those deficiencies. We do not have a similar system for trails. There is no policy mandate that requires local governments to have trails. Local governments have adopted their own transportation plans that include or recreation plans that include active mobility projects like trails, but they are not required to. And there is less financial support for things that are not required. Now, there are changes that are happening. Just a couple sessions ago, there is uh legislation that clarified that trails are eligible for transportation impact fees if it can be shown that the that the trail has a significant transportation function. So a beautiful recreational trail out in the hinterlands maybe not would not qualify. But a but you know, local agency staff, if they can show that this trail has a transportation function, significant transportation function, they can use impact fees, transportation impact fees for that. We've gone decades until that change. So there's some efforts. This isn't thankfully an evolving ongoing thing to try to align funding, align priorities, align even even within grant programs, criteria that help local governments either make multimodal uh transportation projects, if not standalone active transportation projects, including trails?

Tom Butler:

I'm certainly interested in doing whatever I can, whatever limited influence that I have, and or I can, any limited influence influence I can acquire here to advocate for more policy, because you know, you talked about the 10-year difference in lifespan, but it's a major economic impact too. And I just to me, active recreation, active transportation is so important for the health of people in the US that you it warrants policy. You had Pierce County executive Ryan Mello open the Pierce County Trails Conference. Can you talk about the benefit of having leadership at that level supporting the work of trails?

Larry Leveen:

One of the most important maxims of advocacy is get the right people elected because you need to have material you can work with, as the as the saying goes. I mean, Ryan happens to understand and be a very active supporter of trails and user of trails. So he's a fellow advocate. You know, not everyone might be in that kind of situation, but you need to have someone who will at least listen to you. You know, you need that material you can work with. Even for the for you know an elected official who who is an advocate, you need, you can't just sit back, you can't say, I voted, and now let my will be done in the built environment. No, you have to actively, you and your fellow advocates, have to get organized, show up at city or county council meetings, and just have a steady voice for trails, for walking, for biking, for traffic safety, whatever, whatever your um your issue or issues are. Because politicians are generally not proactive. They are reactive. Very few elected officials will step off into the unknown. It's like stepping off, stepping out on a cliff. You have to be right there providing that pathway for them. And you don't have to know exactly what's needed. You just need to let them know what they're what you, as their constituent, want to see in the community. They can direct staff, they can approve a budget that directs funding for projects that you know address those needs. So you don't need to be a subject matter expert. I mean, I identify as a policy nerd, um, as a policy wonk, as you know, a traffic safety fanboy, whatever. You don't have to be as well-versed in jargon, all the alphabet soup of transportation planning, but you need to show up and use your voice in a constructive way and hopefully also in a concise way, in a planned way, where you've planned out what you're going to say. And in an organized way, because it really needs to not just be you every whatever it is Tuesday night showing up at open at open mic, because it's easy for some folks, some electives to say, or even staff to say, oh, that's that one guy with that one issue, or that one gal with that one issue. Ideally, you'll get together, and we recently had a meeting where we were chatting about this, kind of organizing a group of folks. So it's just different faces showing up. And that also makes it easier, frankly. If everyone shows up, this is the one month a year that I go and talk, you know, because we have enough folks in our little group, and I talk about this thing, it's like, wow, we're we're seeing like 50 different people showing up every year to talk about different issues around cycling or walking or whatever. Right. This is a broader base in the community. They then, you know, either get reminded of, you know, just keeps it in top of mind. It's also, you know, when they're in their deliberations with their colleagues, they can point to it and remind them we're hearing this from the public is telling us thus and such. And that's why I'm supporting a new fund for safe, safe street crossings, a new capital program for safe street crossings, for example. That's really important. Now, how do you get that kind of training? Fortunately, there are organizations around that that help. We are more of a facilitator in terms of we let folks know where and when these opportunities are for training. And there are other partner organizations that we work with. For instance, Tacoma on the go, recently renamed Tacoma on the go, provides advocacy training for the Greater Tacoma area. So folks know how to talk to elected officials in an effective manner. Also, uh organizations like Washington Bikes have an annual lobby day in our state capitol, and they educate folks about issues, whether it's specific legislation or budget issues, et cetera. And they will provide training. And not only that will kind of facilitate setting up all of the meetings with your elected officials and give you talking points and really smush down that learning curve. In the recreation world, there's a really big tent organization called the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition in our in our state. And they similarly have a lobby day for all supporters of outdoor recreation uh funding and legislation. The good news is that there is a uh sort of a Betty Crocker path where you don't even need to know, you don't have to be a baker, you can still have success and come out with the cake. There are organizations out there, and you know, if you're outside Washington State listening to this, you just need to find those organizations and hook up with them and uh expose yourself a little bit to some of these resources. And it's it's amazing. I have a friend who has a presentation. It's called How 10 People Can Change a City. It outlays some of these points. It really is true. You can just a small group of folks acting in an organized fashion can have a lot of effect.

Tom Butler:

Are you connected nationally to different organizations enough to kind of is Washington unique, or do you think pretty much wherever listeners are, they're going to be able to find organizations that are advocating for safe spaces, for for connected spaces, for connecting communities, things like that?

Larry Leveen:

There's a saying all businesses local. So sometimes you know you'll you'll have things, uh issues in Washington state which don't translate to another state potentially, or you know, even one city to another within the state. So it depends on what you're talking about, if it's like a funding mechanism. It could be a certain type of you know tax that's available or revenue stream that's available in in our area that's not available, you know, relevant in Idaho or or Oregon or whatever, whatever, or vice versa. But certainly there are national organizations, um, whether it's like the League of American Bicyclists or, you know, in our case, we work a lot with or are watching the Rails to Trails Conservancy provide action alerts about federal funding and federal policy issues. Fortunately, the I mean the internet makes it easy for folks to access websites like Strong Towns. It's not necessarily like the League of American Bicycles, it's just like Strong Towns is like that's like the League of Good Community, you know, community livability or other resources. You know, you go on YouTube and you know, really popular channel is City Nerd, or you know, not just bikes is another another. And you can you can learn a lot and get exposed a lot and see how other communities or other countries do things and use that as inspiration. There are lots of opportunities, but in most places there are shoulders to stand on if if folks just uh make a little bit of an effort. It's pretty rare that you have to start something completely from square one.

Tom Butler:

Talk about what you would like to see from a funding perspective. It seems like there's a need for people, and it also seems like there's a shift in funding happening, especially at the federal level. Seems like there's a need for people to understand more how their contribution, whether it be financial or getting involved in activities, whatever, in order to keep things moving forward in the future.

Larry Leveen:

We all have our abilities and frankly our preferences. Uh, some folks they just hate public speaking. And and you don't have to speak, you can be writing, right? But even that, if some folks aren't able or willing to do that, they can write a check and help support an advocacy organization who is working to create change in their community. Whether you're getting active personally or you know, be writing a check, those are both ways to be involved. And it doesn't have to be an either or it can be a both. And unfortunately, we are seeing a complete shutdown of federal funding, many types of federal funding for active mobility. And with a really regressive move towards only supporting automobile mobility, there's been a clawback, meaning a taking back of unallocated, unawarded funds in several grant programs. And in fact, many grants that were awarded for active transportation or other projects, clean energy, transportation, electrification grants that were awarded are being canceled by the federal government uh simply because they were not yet under contract. I expect that the uh the grant programs that fund these kinds of things are going to be uh dismantled by the current administration. So there's no sugarcoating it. This administration is a complete nightmare for cycling, for walking, for anything other than driving and experiencing more congestion on our roadways. That's what their policies will lead to. As a knock-on effect, there is going to be increased pressure in our state legislatures to fund these kinds of active transportation projects. And it's going to be difficult because it's not simply the transportation sector that the administration, the federal administration, is defunding. They're defunding anything that doesn't align with their politics, and that includes social services, et cetera. And so there's going to be a tidal wave of competition at state legislatures and then at local levels, competition for funding. I cannot fault an elected official who, I'm going to use hyperbole here, who chooses to prevent someone from going hungry rather than build a trail. I'm not saying it that is the decision before them, but with dollars being a finite resource in our governmental budgets, there is going to be more competition because of the federal administration. So we are entering a really tough time for active transportation. It behooves us to have, you know, my job is to help make sure that Pierce County is as well positioned as possible so it can compete in that more competitive environment. So making sure that we understand all the grant programs that are available and what their criteria are. And we're reaching out to our jurisdiction uh members and potential members to say, like, hey, you need to be aware, this things are going to be tougher this year. And we have the data to show it. The projects are getting more expensive and there are more requests for them, and fewer of them get funded. You know, there's a big opportunity cost for or significant opportunity cost for applying for a grant. So when you apply for a grant, you really need to win because when you don't, you've just spent all that time and energy. And that's not cheap. Staff time is can be pretty expensive. So you wanna every time to use the baseball metaphor, every every time you go to bat, you want to hit a home run, you want to bring home those dollars. It's gonna be tougher. Probably the next three years are gonna look pretty tough, pretty grim in terms of federal funding, by and large. There will be some federal pass-through funding that goes to our regional governments in our area, Puget Sound Regional Council. I'm still expecting there to be federal funding that they choose to use in our region for active transportation projects, including trails. But there are some humongous dollars that are just being only directed towards highway projects. It's a real shame.

Tom Butler:

Uh it's kind of hard to look out into the future right now, it seems like, because you could have a change of administration and go back to where there's a value in addition to cars. I think there's always going to be value placed on transportation by automobile. But to have administration that adds to that an understanding and a value of active transportation. But given that that it might be kind of hard to just you know see the future, do you have some thoughts about where you'd like to see Forever Green Trails go as an organization?

Larry Leveen:

We want to try to foster the in the process leading up to the this this regional trails plan update uh that I've mentioned, the county convened some meetings of jurisdictions uh in different uh portions of the county itself. So these cities, you know, in this, like in the northeast part of the county, these cities, we're gonna have a meeting and and talk about their trail projects, et cetera, um, and these kind of cohorts, if you will, west side and then you know the south area, et cetera. It may be that since trail connections are crucial, just like for roads, right? If you just had a strip of road, it wouldn't get much use if it wasn't connected to other roads. Trails are the same in that regard. So we are really focused on trying to make some of the connections and fill in some of the gaps that we have in Pierce County, even, you know, regardless of jurisdiction. So that requires coordination. And so looping back with those cohorts and seeing if, like, for instance, you know, the cities of Milton and Edgewood have two of the last remaining gaps in what we call the the east-west portion of the interurban trail. Um, our friends north of us would say this the southern interurban trail. And fair enough. What we call the interurban trail, there's there's a north-south portion and an east-west portion. And the whole north-south portion is completed, thankfully. And the east-west portion has three gaps, one of which is currently being worked on by the city of Sumner. But Edgewood and Milton each have challenging gaps in that trail. And so we're trying to just had a meeting with staff from both of those cities, and we're going to be exploring, partnering on grants that address both of those gaps to complete the trail, because it might be that grant agencies appreciate and more highly rank a grant request that completes a trail instead of filling in just another gap. That's one of the things that we'll be trying to do is work in these uh regional cohorts as it makes sense. But really, to the focus is on filling some crucial gaps. We currently have a fund drive going for the city of Piwallop to fill in the last gap on the Puallop Riverwalk Trail. Once the Milton and Edgewood gaps are filled in in the interurban trail, the Pualp Riverwalk gap is filled in. I mentioned the city of Sumner is filling in their gap from a significant effort, advocacy effort, in uh years earlier. We were able to get a trail included in a highway extension that Washington State is doing in Pierce County. Um, SR 167 has a trail included in that overall project. Once those are completed. We will have an 18-mile trail loop connecting Pullop, Sumner, Pacific, Edgewood, Milton, and Fife. And that'll be neat, not just not just enjoyable, but it's nice to do a loop trail rather than an out and back, in my opinion. I like that a little more. But you know, we're really connecting communities and population centers. And that's something that we are interested in doing and looking forward, but also being a continual watchdog and making sure that we are, as a region, equitably investing in active transportation and active recreation. So continuing that work in Parkland, Spanaway, and South Hill.

Tom Butler:

Thank you so much for coming on, Larry. I really have enjoyed getting to know you, and I look forward to working together and have you help me become more skilled at advocating for things. And I really believe in the concept of exercise as medicine. And I think trails are vital to that. So I see the work that you're doing at Forevergreen Trails is part of that, part of that picture of bringing more healthy opportunities to people all over the county. And then I I think that our county can be an example to other places too. So thanks for coming on and thanks for everything you do.

Larry Leveen:

My pleasure. It's great to talk with you to be on the podcast and to now work with you in your capacity for the Tacoma Washington Bike Club. Really important partner for us as an organization and in our in our region as you're finding out more and more each day in your capacity, your governmental affairs capacity. So it's a pleasure to be with you.

Tom Butler:

Yeah, well, I know we'll be talking more later. So I'll talk to you then. Happy Trails. I don't think there are many places that aren't impacted by tighter budgets for alternative transportation. And I do think everyone needs to elevate the way we ask for funds. And that might mean finding your local Larry Levine. I would encourage everyone to get involved in advocating for safe places to ride. As Larry suggested, take a bit of time here and there to attend meetings and express the importance of active recreation for you. Whether you are active in local bike advocacy or just starting to consider how to get involved, I hope that where you're riding you can fully enjoy yourself and all your cycling adventures. And remember, age is just a gear change.

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Tom Butler

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