Austin Bike & Transpo Activists No Longer With Us

Last update: December 31, 2025

I wanted to memorialize people who promoted bike and transportation issues in Austin, especially because no one else has done so.

Any omissions are oversights, not malicious.  You’re welcome to tell me whom I’m missing.

The list is chronological except that Chris Riley will always be first.

Chris Riley

Chris was a giant in Austin bike advocacy.  I maintain that he got more done than the rest of us put together.

As advocates, we spend a lot of our time begging the government for things like bike lanes.  Riley went at it from a smarter angle: he became part of the government so he could get that done.  He mounted a successful campaign for City Council in 2009, got re-elected in 2012, and in 2013 got the City to adopt the national standards for roadway safety (NACTO).  These standards call for signed pedestrian crossings and some separation for bike lanes (like the flexible white poles), and that’s why you’ve seen them being installed all over the City.  That’s why I say that his accomplishments dwarfed all the rest of our efforts.  Even so, the ped crossings and separate bike lanes certainly weren’t his only accomplishment.  He co-founded the Downtown Austin Neighborhood Alliance in 1997 and was appointed to the Downtown Commission (being a big part in revitalizing downtown, which at the time was pretty dead, with almost no residential), was a member of the City’s Planning Commission (2001-08), was a member of the Street Smarts Task Force (2007-08), reduced the amount of space devoted to parking downtown, got the ball rolling on expanding where ADUs could be built, was board president of Bike Austin circa 2018-22, supported the Red Line Parkway, and lived a car-free life for decades.

I was excited when he announced his run for Council, and I promptly did a matching-donations effort. 

Riley was universally admired in the bike and transportation community and beyond.  As a result, his passing merited quite a bit of extensive coverage about his life and accomplishments:

• Austin Chronicle tribute
• Austin Politics on Riley’s legacy
• Austin Monitor on Riley’s life and passing
• Red Line Parkway memorial
• Official obituary
• Chris Riley bend.  The city honors Riley by naming a portion of the Shoal Creek Trail after him.

Chris was an early member of my bike email list.  Here’s the oldest post of his that I still have, from 1999.  And here’s the last post he made to the forum, in 2021.

Chris passed in July 2024 at only 60 years old.  I was grateful to have been able to visit him shortly before his passing. 

Keith Snodgrass

Keith worked in the very first administration of the City’s Bicycle Program, which launched in 1994.  When director Rick Waring (1994-97) resigned, Keith took over, becoming the program’s second director, serving from 1997-98.  During his tenure, his program won City Council approval for Part II of The Bicycle Plan (the first effort to improve cycling in the city since the early 80's), and began work on implementing the plan.  After he left the program, he came back a few years later to work as a planner.  He was a member of our email list.  Here's one of his posts:

7/19/2001
If you are offended by the Nissan ad that suggests the SUV's design says "get out of the way!" to other street users, you can contact Nissan at:

Terry Green
Consumer Affairs Specialist
Nissan North America, Inc.
P.O. Box 191 vGardena, CA 90248-0191
Telephone 1-800-647-7261

I personally think that a lot of the behavior people exhibit when they are driving is based on mental images created by car advertising, and that the Nissan ad encourages people to drive more aggressively than they already do.

Keith passed on 9/28/24 at age 68.

Dave Dobbs

Dave’s contributions to Austin transportation were earth-shaking.  If all he’d done was get CapMetro to be founded, that alone would be a legacy, but he also got the Red Line established, and got the yet-to-be-built Orange Line approved.  He passed on 7/12/21 at age 82.  His friend Lyndon Henry wrote a lengthy memorial tribute, paying special attention to his transportation-related accomplishments.

Fred Meredith

Fred did a lot.  Here’s a small sample:

• Rode on Critical Mass since the beginning, in 1994.
• One of the very first members on the email listserve, in 1994.
• Interviewed extensively in the local bike documentary Bike Like U Mean It.
• Was the editor / desktop publisher for the newspaper by the Austin Cycling Association, Austin Cycling News, later Southwest Cycling News, for over two decades.
• Served as a board member for the League of American Bicyclists.
• Named Effective Cycling Instructor of the Year, a national recognition.
• Organized numerous charity rides for medical research
• 
  

He passed away on 4/15/19 at age 77.  I was glad our paths crossed, and I miss him.

Jim Damon

Damon had a hand in incubating the Yellow Bike Project (YBP).  He provided space for Bikes Not Bombs (BNB) to operate (and bankrolled the effort, I think).  The BNB volunteer mechanics took their experience and formed YBP.  He passed on 4/15/15 at age 78.

It might be in poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but Damon’s spreading of misinformation is part of Austin bike history, and part of my job with this website is to document that history.  Part of me also thinks that since he lied blatantly, repeatedly, and never recanted—in other words, that he was essentially proud of what he said—then there should be no issue in my relaying what he said.  So, here goes:

Jim wasn’t happy about losing his BNB mechanics to a new group, especially one that got a lot more attention than BNB, and he made baseless posts to the biking email list that YBP had split into factions, and that “Yellow Bike Project” was a trademark of BNB, and then even put out a BNB newsletter claiming that YBP was a part of BNB, assigning credit to BNB for all of YBP’s efforts, such as its public bike releases.  He also insisted, without evidence, that bike helmets made it more likely that cyclists will break their necks if they crash, referring to helmets as "neck-breakers".  He also claimed that it’s safer to ride against traffic (despite decades of solid evidence conclusively proving otherwise), with his evidence being that most crashes involve cyclists riding with traffic.  (Obviously, that’s because most cyclists ride with traffic.  Very crashes involve cyclists wearing polka-dot shirts, not because wearing a polka-dot shirt makes you safer, but because most cyclists don’t wear polka-dot shirts in the first place.) 

Jimmy Hudson

Jimmy was blind, and so he rode a tandem bicycle.  When he put out the call that he was looking for riding partners on his tandem, I rode to his home in North Austin so we could ride together.  For years after that I had a little blurb on this website advertising his looking for riding partners, but I don’t know whether that ever led to anything.  He did many rides with the (now-defunct) Austin Cycling Association, including challenging ones like the Hotter than Hell 100 and the MS 150, and was captain on many of them.  He appeared in the documentary Bike Like You Mean It (link directly to his bit on YouTube)  He passed on 7/21/12 at age 74.