Sometimes one person’s vision to make their community more walkable, rollable, and bikeable sparks a larger movement.
During a recent webinar, community champions and Walking College graduates gathered to share their journeys diving into deeper community work, and their insights on how to inspire others to get their communities involved to create change.
Emilie Bahr, Walking College Manager for America Walks, kicked off the webinar by introducing the Walking College, a national program for community champions eager to work toward expanding access to walkable, vibrant, safe places. Fellows hone in on a challenge they want to address in their communities, develop the knowledge and skills they need to help bring about positive change, and create a Walking Action Plan for getting the work done. The Walking College is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, in support of the Active People, Healthy Nation initiative℠.
Arlis Reynolds, a City Council member for Costa Mesa, California, and board chair of America Walks, moderated the webinar. “In my experience through and since the Walking College, both hearing about successes and then personal experience,” said Arlis, “It’s so clear that so much of success depends on individuals just deciding to take action and then galvanizing their community.”
Arlis was joined by three more Walking College graduates: Katrina Keeby-Watkins (2021) from Detroit, Michigan; Laura Harris (2025) from New Orleans, Louisiana; and Lauren Adkins (2023) from Hot Springs, Arkansas, who shared their experiences and insights on championing walkability projects and engaging their communities for change.
Community Engagement and Empowering Voices in Detroit, MI
Katrina Keebe-Watkins founded the Bailey Park Neighborhood Development Corporation to improve her historic and often overlooked McDougall-Hunt neighborhood, and applied to the Walking College (2021) with the goal of improving pedestrian and bicycle safety by developing plans, programs, and activities to help calm traffic along major streets.
Katrina’s Walking Action Plan included a walk audit of her neighborhood, encouraging residents to apply for speed bumps on high-speed streets, and focusing on traffic-calming infrastructure like trees, bulb-outs, and better marked parking lanes. Many of the speed bump applications were successful, but the city did not approve a bulb-out on Charlevoix Avenue across from Bailey Park.
During her presentation, Katrina emphasized the power of community engagement and community-driven decision making. The Bailey Park Neighborhood Development Corporation invests in people, prioritizing local talent and resources to build long-term community wealth, and focuses on building a sense of “connectedness.” “We want every resident to feel like they have a voice,” said Katrina.
Since its founding, her organization has helped develop an innovative blueprint for community engagement and neighborhood revitalization that is yielding tangible results. As one of the first dedicated community-focused spaces created within the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood, Bailey Park has turned two acres of vacant lots into an exercise area, playground, and green space. The park also hosts a historical arts alleyway project and features solar lighting that increases visibility and helps residents who are walking, rolling, biking, playing, and relaxing feel safe.
Coalition Building for a Safer St. Claude in New Orleans, LA
As Education Policy Consultant with Bike Easy and now as a Technical Assistance Manager with Safe Routes Partnership, Laura Harris has been committed to making biking, walking, rolling, and transit safer in her neighborhood—especially along St. Claude Avenue, a busy and dangerous state highway running through New Orleans neighborhoods.
St. Claude Avenue represents an intersection of high-speed traffic and social life in New Orleans. Tragically, it is also the site of multiple cyclist fatalities. “Change really starts with paying attention,” said Laura, who developed her Walking Action Plan (2025) around strategies designed to make a Safer St. Claude. Her efforts have grown into a broader community-driven campaign supported by a coalition of community members and neighborhood transportation and safety partners sharing a common goal: to create a more people-oriented corridor.
Laura credits the success of Safer St. Claude on coalition building, community engagement, and helping people visualize change. Having a digital presence to document the issues and proposed solutions was key, as well as simple but powerful visualizations using graphic design tools to show what’s possible. Events organized by neighborhood business partners drew attention to safety concerns such as people parking illegally in medians. Overall, Laura encourages giving people the vision and tools to run with the campaign to eventually reach critical mass. “Folks really know the solutions they want already. You just have to give them an opportunity to identify,” she said.
While things in New Orleans move “like molasses”—really slow—the campaign has experienced successes along the way, including more frequent conversations with the city and state, and installing flex posts along bike lanes. “Stay tuned,” Laura said, because there’s more to come.
Securing the Funds for a Connected Trail Network in Hot Springs, Arkansas
As a Long-Range and Historic Preservation Planner for her hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas, Lauren Adkins talked about how her city has worked towards active transportation. Home to 38,000 residents, Hot Springs is largely dependent on tourism and increasingly sees investing in walkability and bikeability as an important economic driver. The city has visions of a local trail network that connects to the Hot Springs Creek Greenway Trail, a walkable and bikeable path that stretches from historic downtown to the southern end of the city.
“There’s a real connection between the fact that Hot Springs has visions of a local trail network and the Walking College,” said Lauren, who spoke about securing funding to invest in these community projects.
With an abundance of federal funding available when she started the Walking College (2023), Laura saw the value in helping get people excited about applying for some of that funding to transform their communities. She pitched the idea of applying for a large federal grant to her colleagues in the city’s engineering department, and they identified a tie-in with an existing proposal for a local trail network. While they didn’t get the grant that time, they did the next year. Lauren advised, “Don’t give up just because you get one rejection.”
The Hot Springs Trail Network is underway and will include seven trails spanning 135 miles. 65 of those miles will connect downtown Hot Springs and the bathhouse row historic district to downtown Little Rock, and will be one of the largest regional trails in the state. “We’re on our way to actually getting our network,” Lauren said as she shared the news that Hot Springs broke ground on the third trail of the network this year.
Their project’s success has led to the city hiring a professional grant writer and securing about $2.75 million in federal funds, which supported planning efforts that resulted in $2.4 million from various state grants for construction and planning. Private sector investment has been key to the project’s implementation, too. Non-profit partner Friends of the Hot Springs Park has had an active role in these activities, as well as with the Greenway, and has purchased land to donate to the city. Oaklawn Racetrack, a historic part of Hot Springs and a large employer of residents, also has contributed to trail development.
