When Riverside resident Valerie Kramer applied for an internship at the Chicagoland nonprofit Active Transportation Alliance in 2011, she wasn’t expecting to be named one of the organization’s Advocates of the Year 14 years later.
“I didn’t even know this was a thing. I was surprised that I could have won something that I didn’t even know existed,” she told the Landmark. “I was first like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool thing to have,’ and also, ‘Am I really doing more than other people? Out of everybody in the whole Chicagoland area?’ It was kind of disbelief, but also excitement.”
While she didn’t get the internship, she described herself as a longtime fan of the group, whose suburban active transportation community she is a member of.
Kramer is one of the minds behind Ride Riverside, the village’s slow roll biking group that has met the second Friday of each month from April to November since 2024, and one of the voices behind a petition that garnered nearly 200 resident signatures this year to implement Vision Zero, a multi-pronged framework for eliminating traffic fatalities and injuries.
“She’s blown me away with everything she’s been getting involved in,” said Maggie Czerwinski, the Active Transportation Alliance’s director of community building and leadership. “She’s very dedicated, and she’s persistent. She’s warm. She’s personable. I think she’s really good at building relationships with a lot of people and focused on getting to know elected officials and village staff and being a resource to people, which I think is important, rather than telling people what to do.”
Czerwinski said she’s a member of the organization’s advocacy team that decides who to recognize each year for their accomplishments in transportation activism.
While Kramer has built up a community of around 100 riders who regularly come out to Ride Riverside’s monthly events — “1% of Riverside’s population, which I’m proud of,” she said — she attributed the group’s success to a bit of luck and her efforts to make the group open to everyone, alongside institutional support from the village’s board of trustees and police department.
“People afterwards told me they were very impressed by those numbers, and I feel like those numbers are kind of out of my control. I just do my best to get people to come and spread the word,” she said. “I think what has made it so successful is that we keep it really accessible. We go slowly. We don’t have major streets to cross, keeping it safe and easy. [We are] advertising to everybody, to older folks, to kids, and keeping it at the same time, same place, same part of the month.”
Kramer said she’s proud of what she and her group — including other leaders like Lisa Peters, Charles Wiegand, Shari Klyber and Kramer’s husband David Oppenheimer — have accomplished in 2025.
“When I first started doing this, I didn’t have any direction in terms of the advocacy. I wanted things to improve, but I didn’t know how or what, and the lightbulb moment came when I saw the aftermath of a crash in Riverside with a mangled bike and a bunch of kids standing around,” she said. “That’s when I decided to look into Vision Zero, which is something we could adopt and work towards: having zero serious injuries and zero fatalities in Riverside.”
Due in part to Ride Riverside’s activism, the village has budgeted $55,000 for the first quarter of 2026 toward a bike and pedestrian plan that will improve safety and freedom of movement to those who walk or ride.
Having gotten the village on board, Kramer said she hopes to partner with more businesses and community members in 2026 to elevate the group’s slow roll rides, which will return in April. She said she has a soft goal of raising attendance at the events to 150 people.
“I’d like to make it even more fun, where we have music and bubbles, make it more of a block party atmosphere as opposed to a serious group. I like the idea of a rolling block party, where everyone is enjoying themselves and hanging out with their neighbors and meeting people,” she said.
“I think we need more of that in our very digital world,” she added. “We need more real-life things that happen on a consistent basis, and what I really love about Riverside is that we are very much a village. People know one another and say hi. There is a really friendly vibe here, and I think capitalizing on that and encouraging that has been a great thing for our village, and I want to make it even better.”
