As a student commuting daily to the 夜色视频, Malayla Harding has given some thought to traffic in the Truckee Meadows, including the ability of bicyclists to navigate the town.
“That’s something that’s always been on my mind,” she said.
A second-year civil engineering student, Harding has considered pursuing transportation engineering, which focuses on moving people and goods safely, efficiently and sustainably. This semester, she had a chance to explore those issues in greater detail when she represented Reno-Tahoe at the National Bike Summit March 24-26 in Washington, D.C.
“It was an incredible, mind-blowing experience,” she said.
In addition to hearing from bicycle advocates and speakers, Harding and other conference attendees met with representatives from Nevada’s Congressional delegation.
“We just sat down with them and told them our concerns and different things we want to see,” Harding said. “A really important one that we talked about was different fatality rates within Nevada.”
The League of American Bicyclists, the organization that sponsors the National Bike Summit, ranked Nevada 38 out of 50 in its 2024 Bicycle Friendly State Ranking. The Silver State scored low in the categories of infrastructure and planning, as well as “Every Ride Counts,” which measures how well states collect bicycle ridership data.
‘She’s super-capable’
The Truckee Meadows Bicycle Alliance (TMBA), also known as Bike Washoe, selected Harding as a conference delegate after she applied for its Goodenow Fellowship, which offers $2,100 in travel support to a Bike Summit delegate. The fellowship honors Susan Mae Goodenow, a local cyclist who was hit and killed by a vehicle in October, and Harding is the first recipient.
“Malayla’s application was strong across all of the things we were looking for,” TMBA board president and geography Associate Professor Tom Albright said. “But if I were to single out one, it would be the fact that her experience growing up here and navigating our roadways and seeing them become increasingly difficult for someone on a bike helped inspire her interest in pursuing a degree/career in civil engineering.”
Albright added that the TMBA typically has a presence at the National Bike Summit, but this year no one on the board could attend.
“It put a bit more pressure on (Malayla) than we would have preferred, but fortunately, she’s super-capable, and also made some connections with other Nevadans (while) participating, so it went great,” he said.
One of the connections was with a civil engineer from Las Vegas. Harding said they talked about advocating for sidewalks and policies that improve bicyclist safety.
“Before I went on this trip, I was kind of shaky on transportation engineering (as an area to study),” she said. “But having those conversations definitely made me want to go into that.”
Harding added that she’s also very interested in policy as a result of her experience.
“That’s something I’m definitely going to keep an eye on, because that sounds really interesting,” she said.
