Gravel and Changing Leaves west of Boulder

Ambassador C.C.'s "It’s An Uptown Thang!" Ride

DC Brewery Tour- Four Breweries, 15 miles of fun!

This op-ed was originally published in the January 2022 issue of BRAIN.

What an exciting time for our industry! Over the last 20 months, PeopleForBikes has been working around the clock to capitalize on all this new bike momentum, to improve bike infrastructure and the bike business nationwide. While I remain acutely aware of COVID-19’s impact on our industry and society, every person I speak to, from company heads to sales floor associates, is seeing huge opportunities for bikes.

Who could have guessed that just eight months after BPSA and PeopleForBikes merged in 2019, we’d be confronted by the worst health crisis in a century. Initial concern for the health of our businesses quickly turned to wonder as America embraced bicycling like never before.

I’ll leave predicting supply chain solutions and trends in consumer demand to the crystal ball experts, but I’d like to detail some recent positive changes in our industry that will last for decades.

Essential service: Just weeks after the pandemic began, states quickly realized the essential nature of bike shops and bicycling for both transportation and recreation. What a boost to industry morale and a lasting message about the cultural importance of the bicycle.

Consumer demand:  In 2020, 10% of American adults rode a bike for the first time in a year or more, or for the first time ever. Bike sales surged with 10% of American adults buying a bike and another 13% saying they would buy one next year. These trends continued into 2021, with NPD reporting the year-to-date market for bicycles up 69% over 2019. 

Repurposed streets: Cities immediately recognized the combination of reduced car traffic and demand for more places to safely recreate outdoors. Street closures suddenly made sense to mayors and the open streets and placemaking that happened in more than 200 cities created community when we needed it most. 

E-bikes on the roll: Cyclists across the nation bought just about every e-bike available in the last 22 months. This segment is key to our industry’s growth and the legislative and regulatory environment gets more favorable every day. There’s also growing awareness outside the bike industry that e-bikes are a serious transportation and climate solution. 

Federal funding: We secured major new funding for bike infrastructure — a 70% increase for paths and trails! Even more, Congress authorized a program to build connected bike networks and require all states to create Complete Streets standards.

Bike incentives: The Build Back Better package includes great news for bikes. Namely, an estimated $4 billion investment in electric bicycle tax credits, an $81/month individual bike commuter benefit and a combined $7 billion for climate and equity-enhancing infrastructure grants. 

These benefits don’t happen without hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes work by our staff, volunteer industry leaders, boards and committees. Our Coalition membership increased to 300 companies and our committees brought scores of new and diverse faces into industry processes. We are grateful and humbled by the engaged industry leadership and expertise that helps power our work (highlighted below) every day. 

Improved data: Industry leaders immediately saw the need for more information in rapidly shifting pandemic conditions. Within six weeks, we developed a data dashboard with weekly updates on sales, consumer insights and riding trends.

Accelerated infrastructure: Five cities — Austin, Denver, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Providence — accelerated their completion of safe, connected mobility networks. With our campaign push, they built nearly 400 miles of new bikeways, all within the last 24 months. 

Battery recycling: Powered by Call2Recycle, our new nationwide program works to make sure all electric bicycle batteries end up properly recycled and out of landfills. The bicycle industry is the first transportation sector united under one battery recycling solution. 

Fighting tariffs: Our industry teams helped save more than $140 million in Section 301 tariffs and are active in the ongoing exclusion process. We wrote a proactive trade agenda and will lead the fight against harmful tariffs and bike taxes, keeping costs low for suppliers, retailers and consumers. 

New initiatives: Our newly formed industry Sustainability Working Group tackles issues ranging from chemicals management and packaging to product life cycle, climate initiatives and more. We also formed an industry Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Subcommittee, bringing together 22 brands for peer learning and support. We’re thinking critically about how to make the bike industry a more attractive place to build a career for traditionally marginalized communities. 

Industry campaigns: Our industry came together to fund and create Ride Spot, a platform to keep new and returning customers on their bikes and show them their next great bike ride. Designed to be welcoming and inclusive, Ride Spot reduces barriers to bicycling and challenges folks to ride more.  

Nearly everything has changed and we as an organization and an industry are meeting the moment. We owe our success to all of the leaders that brought our industry together under one trade and advocacy nonprofit association. Even more, we know this is just the beginning. 

While uncertainty about the pandemic and the supply chain lingers, the opportunity and optimism for more and better bike infrastructure, funding and policy and more Americans on bikes shines through. 

Finally, after a three-year absence, we’re excited to bring the bike industry back together again for an in-person Bicycle Leadership Conference in Dana Point, California, March 21-23, 2022. 

Join us and let’s keep the list of learnings growing. Let’s lead our industry to a bright future for more and better bicycling and better bike businesses. We accomplish so much more together. Thank you, and let's keep America riding!

Exciting Times To Go Even Bigger for Bikes

From Colorado to Canberra, e-bike libraries are on the rise and helping break down traditional barriers to riding.

Before I ever rode an electric bicycle, I judged them harshly. As a longtime bicycle commuter, I classified e-bikes as something that wasn’t for me. If there’s a battery involved, does it even qualify as biking? That all changed the moment I rode one for the first time. 

My introduction to electric bicycles was through Boulder, Colorado’s Bcycle bike share, and I was instantly hooked. Although it still required me to pedal, suddenly hills were easier, I could easily offload my heavy laptop bag and I wasn’t breaking a sweat. A month later, I bought a $1,500 e-bike of my own. There’s no bike share station near my home in South Boulder nor at my office in East Boulder, and my new vehicle makes the 12-mile round trip easy, even with 40 pounds of groceries. The e-bike has completely replaced my in-town car use, lowering my carbon footprint and boosting my cardio. 

My experience underlies how e-bikes are transformative, for individuals and the environment, but also a marker of privilege. I had $1,500 in savings that I could spend on something I didn’t need. And, if I wanted to spread out the payments, I have easy access to good credit. For many low-income individuals — those who are less likely to own a car or live close to their places of employment and other essential services — such an extravagant purchase would be out of the question yet all the more vital.

Equitable bike share is one solution and the reason the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) exists. We help promote expansion into historically marginalized neighborhoods through community engagement and we’re advocates of low-income pass options. Despite seven years of effort, however, many bike share systems continue to be built for a certain type of nine-to-five, white-collar commuter, concentrated in downtown city centers and not well integrated with transit. Even for those who do have access to bike share, it may not include electric bikes, which better allow people of all ages and abilities to travel farther distances with heavier loads.

In this context, the growth of e-bike libraries makes sense. Some, such as those run by the Vermont-based nonprofit Local Motion, are indiscriminate in who they cater to. Local Motion lends e-bikes out of its Burlington headquarters and on a roving basis across six other communities in the state, exposing more people to the technology and encouraging personal adoption. Borrowers are able to take home cargo e-bikes and other commuter options for a week at a time to see how it suits their daily needs. Similarly, the Canberra Electric Bike Library in Canberra, Australia — run by the nonprofit SEE-Change and supported by the government — allows residents to try a variety of e-bikes for up to two weeks free of charge. 

Many other e-bike schemes specifically cater to low-income populations or essential workers. Two 2021 BBSP grantees, People For Mobility Justice and Reddy Bikeshare, set up e-bike libraries of their own. The former is a long-term project based in California’s San Fernando Valley that will make 100 pedal-assist e-bikes available to low-income individuals that don’t have easy access to other vehicles. The latter is based in Upstate New York and repurposed donated Uber JUMP bikes into two libraries run by the nonprofits Create a Healthier Niagara Collaborative and the East Side Bike Club. Each library offers around 50 e-bikes free of charge to locals, who only need to sign up online and complete a 20-30 minute orientation. The hope is that by partnering with community organizations and individuals in areas where unemployment rates are high, income levels are low and health outcomes are bleak, the free e-bikes might be a force for good.

A completely different model is being piloted by Colorado agencies at the city and state levels. Launched in fall 2020, the Can Do Colorado eBike Pilot Program used funds from the Colorado Energy Office to supply 13 essential workers in Denver with e-bikes. The success of the program inspired other cities throughout Colorado to do the same, including Pueblo, Durango, Fort Collins and Boulder. As the Mile High City looked to iterate on the pilot, e-bike libraries made a lot of sense.

“We wanted to focus on under-resourced communities that don’t have great mobility options,” said Mike Salisbury, transportation energy lead at Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resilience. “We want to give people more options to get to the places they need to go in their lives, whether that's work or the store or a doctor's appointment.”

Denver currently has three e-bike libraries throughout the city in the Sun Valley, Globeville and Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods — all historically underserved communities. The libraries, each of which is operated by trusted community-based organizations, are among the first initiatives to be funded by the city’s Climate Protection Fund. The locations include Prodigy Coffeehouse, which does workforce development training, Focus Points, a family resource center and various affordable Denver Housing Authority developments. All of the e-bikes — about 70 total — were sourced from FattE-Bikes, a locally owned and operated e-bike shop.

Although it’s too early to draw any conclusions, Salisbury notes that residents have been consistently checking out the bikes and using them. “People are doing exactly what we were hoping they would do, which is using them to get to a job or appointments,” he said.

Denver’s motivation for the libraries is influenced by both its aggressive climate goals, as well as a focus on equity. While electric vehicles are being positioned as an environmental solution by the Biden Administration, the fact remains that in order to practice transportation justice — whereby more people have more mobility options and certain demographics don’t bear the brunt of car culture’s negative effects — we simply need fewer vehicles on our roads overall. 

“E-bikes can fill that gap between what someone can do on a regular bike and what they can do in a car,” said Salisbury. “There are also so many benefits, especially when it comes to public health — any kind of active transportation is a huge plus but e-bikes also reduce emissions, which helps improve air quality.”

However, one of the main barriers to the widespread adoption of bicycling is a lack of safe infrastructure; many people fear for their safety while riding, especially in under-resourced neighborhoods that tend to have fewer protected bike lanes and disproportionate levels of enforcement. Denver committed to building a 125-mile network by 2024, as well as substantially upping its investment in protected bike lanes.

“We need more of that,” said Salisbury, adding that cities need to ensure people feel comfortable riding and offer more ways to do so. “We need to do both at the same time — provide the infrastructure and different ways to use that infrastructure.”

For other municipalities looking to launch e-bike libraries of their own, costs will range substantially depending on the types of e-bikes stocked as well as other logistical factors, including where the bikes will be stored (Denver is using old shipping containers) and who will run the day-to-day operations. Denver is leading the way when it comes to offering free e-bikes to under-resourced communities but Salisbury hopes others will soon follow suit, especially as more funding opens up for climate resiliency projects.

In Oakland, California, a $1 million e-bike library is in the works using funding from CALSTART. The project, which aims to bring 500 e-bikes to low-income Oaklanders, is just one component of the Oakland Department of Transportation’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Action Plan. Crucially, the initiative will contract with local bike shops and employ a comprehensive community engagement strategy. 

While bike libraries aren’t exactly novel, the focus on free e-bikes is. And although none of the e-bike library models are perfect — for example, more could be done to include folks with disabilities — they’re an important first step. Ultimately, our ability to move forward as a species will depend largely on how we facilitate movement in people’s day-to-day lives.

Recreational bicycling is an increasingly popular activity and an area in which PeopleForBikes works to grow everyday.

During 2020, 6% of American adults started (or restarted) riding bicycles for recreation, according to a recent study conducted by PeopleForBikes. Recreational bicycling is an increasingly popular activity and an area which PeopleForBikes works to grow everyday. See our list below for the top five ways we’re currently working to boost recreational bike riding across the U.S.

Building Momentum for Pro-Recreation Policy at the Federal Level
Every year in Washington, D.C., Republicans and Democrats find ways to come together to advance access to recreation and maintain our federal public lands. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the U.S. Senate (SENR) is considering a wide range of bipartisan bills that, if advanced, could streamline the outdoor recreation permitting process, develop long-distance bike trails, promote jobs, enhance equity and environmental justice and more. Together, these bills would go a long way to making the great outdoors safe, sustainable and accessible for all. 



Amplifying Trail Funding Through Our VoteForBikes Campaign
Of the 20 state and local ballot measures we tracked this year through our VoteForBikes Campaign, $56 million in annual funding was approved by voters to improve recreational areas in their communities including parks, trails and open spaces. One notable measure was in Summit County, UT, where voters approved a $50 million General Obligation Bond that will be used to conserve open space and pursue other environmental and recreational projects such as building trails and trailheads.



Supporting State Offices of Outdoor Recreation
Establishing Offices of Outdoor Recreation at the state level is a priority for the bike industry. These dedicated government departments manage the changing demands of the outdoor industry and coordinate across departments to increase residents’ access to the outdoors, diversify the range of recreational activities available and improve the state’s economy.



Improving Access for Electric Mountain Bikes
PeopleForBikes recently hired Rachel Fussell, our new electric mountain bike (eMTB) policy and program manager. In this position, Rachel will focus specifically on the trail and offroad side of electric bike riding and help develop and manage the execution and evaluation of PeopleForBikes’ eMTB programming to foster the growth of eMTB riding, bike infrastructure and the bicycle industry. Visit our electric bicycle webpage to learn about the latest updates on our eMTB program.



Partnering With Recreational Advocates
We value working alongside our advocacy partners as these relationships allow us to work together to improve trail access and trail funding for bikes nationwide. PeopleForBikes recently renewed its partnerships with the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) and the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). These two incredible organizations work to create, enhance and protect great places to mountain bike across the U.S. and introduce more youth to the activity by building strong minds, bodies and characters through cycling.

To learn more about PeopleForBikes’ latest work to support recreational bike riding, sign up for our newsletter or email Ashley Seaward, PeopleForBikes deputy director of state and local policy, at ashley@peopleforbikes.org for more information.

Five Ways PeopleForBikes Is Working to Boost Recreational Bike Riding

A new study shows that areas with less bike infrastructure experience disproportionate ticketing, compounding the effects of racially biased policing and transportation policies.

To borrow a term coined by researcher Charles T. Brown, there are many ways — societal and institutional — in which the mobility of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) is arrested. From the disproportionate enforcement of jaywalking to the numerous highways that bisect majority-Black neighborhoods, it’s a fact that it’s easier to move around in this country if you’re white. A new study from Jesus M. Barajas, Ph.D., titled “Biking Where Black” and published last month in Transportation Research, lends credence to another unfortunate trend: Areas with less bike infrastructure correlate with higher populations of BIPOC and more bike-related tickets.

Barajas began his research while at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, inspired by a working relationship with Olatunji Oboi Reed, president and CEO at Equiticity, a Chicago-based nonprofit geared towards improving mobility outcomes for BIPOC. In 2017, Chicago adopted its Vision Zero plan, following a model that relied on the prescribed pillars of engineering, education and enforcement. As a racial justice advocacy organization, Equiticity saw the inclusion of “enforcement” as problematic for BIPOC communities. Inspired, Barajas decided to study Chicago’s enforcement of bicyclists, bike infrastructure investments, neighborhood demographics and safety statistics to see if any patterns emerged.

For three years now, Barajas has worked to analyze data related to the location of all Chicago Police Department bicycle citations, bicycle crashes and the city’s network of on-street bicycle facilities, geo-coding everything and compiling it all onto one layered grid. Although he used data from as far back as 2014, Barajas focused on 2017-2019 due to the quality of data available, controlling for crash incidences, police presence and neighborhood characteristics.

“Similar to the Chicago Tribune in 2017, we found that there was a significant disparity in where bike tickets were issued and that tickets did not match with incidents of bike safety,” said Barajas. “We also found less bike infrastructure in majority-Black and Latino neighborhoods and that it made a difference in where tickets were issued.”

Based on his research, Barajas adds that if we blanketed Chicago’s most cited streets with infrastructure, there would be an 8% decrease in the number of tickets issued. Another way of looking at it: The rate of ticketing would be cut in half by installing bike infrastructure on all of the streets with citations. In Chicago, the majority of bike citations were for riding on the sidewalk, an illegal offense that's the direct result of inadequate on-street bike facilities. 

“There’s a behavioral response to a lack of infrastructure,” said Barajas, noting that anyone who feels unsafe biking on a street would naturally move to the sidewalk. “We need to figure out a way to make our streets safer and a big way to do that is through infrastructure.”

To be Black or brown in Chicago is to be denied a safe way to move around by bike and then later be fined for a natural act of self-preservation. What results is a no-win situation for BIPOC on bikes: In order to stay safe from cars, riders move to the sidewalk, where they expose themselves to the possibility of the financial risk of a ticket or, in the worst-case scenario, bodily harm at the hands of the police. What Barajas’ research illuminates is how the decisions of transportation planners can lead to racial disparities in the distribution of infrastructure, which then plays into the well-documented disparities in policing and enforcement. It paints a bleak picture of how the problem of policing and the historic lack of investment in BIPOC neighborhoods compounds to further inequity.

The recommendations for moving forward are as clear as the data: build more bike infrastructure in BIPOC neighborhoods. Between 2017 and 2019, 85% fewer tickets were given out and crash numbers declined on Chicago streets that had bike lanes. There’s also evidence that bike infrastructure encourages new riders and bike share users, not to mention the well-established environmental and health benefits of biking. Research has also highlighted how daily experiences with racism — such as suspect profiling and the stressors associated with even the possibility of police interaction — have a profound negative impact on the health of BIPOC. Thus, a lack of infrastructure in communities of color denies people a safe way to travel by bike, ultimately compounding trauma, limiting mobility, stymying our collective climate goals and depriving people of the joy and freedom riding offers.

Of course, in communities of color, there’s a strong perception that infrastructure such as bike lanes only arrive when a neighborhood is gentrifying. Even if data doesn’t support that fact, the perception still exists, making comprehensive community engagement a necessary component of any planning process. Planners not only need to prioritize historically marginalized neighborhoods but also need to work with residents there to ensure that any new infrastructure is meeting their needs. Likewise, it’s important to remain attentive to the intersections of identity and mobility, acknowledging that needs differ across groups.

Barajas’ research makes an equally compelling case for the removal of “enforcement” from Vision Zero policies, along with the abolition of bike laws that penalize people for riding on the sidewalk or failing to wear a helmet, use bike lights, obtain a bike license or register their bikes. Both aren’t novel concepts but rather part of a nationwide trend that’s been gaining momentum since the murder of George Floyd in 2020. 

“We don’t see that connection to safety and given the history — particularly in Chicago — of racially biased policing, the role of enforcement needs to be rethought,” said Barajas. 

In Chicago, after the Tribune analysis broke, the ACLU and the Chicago Police Department reached an agreement to reform the practice of investigatory street stops. As a result, by the end of 2019, ticketing for bike riders across the city declined by 64%. Still, as Barajas’ research shows, the racial disparities in ticketing only got worse, pointing to the need for more anti-bias training and general reform among the city’s police force.

“When police departments prioritize safety over pretextual stops, such as broken tail lights and expired registration, and really only focus on things like running red lights and stop signs and excessive speeding, there’s evidence that shows that the change in tactics reduces the disparities in traffic stops,” said Barajas. “But that needs to come from the top and instill its way into the entire force.”

Since the study concluded, Chicago has made some strides when it comes to building more bike lanes in the communities of color that saw more ticketing. But there remains a lack of infrastructure in other neighborhoods with higher rates of bike citations, especially on the South Side. Going forward, Chicago and cities across the U.S. need to continue to refine Vision Zero strategies and promote collaboration amongst various stakeholders, all with the goal of promoting equity.  

Barajas has since left Illinois for the University of California, Davis, where he continues to research the connection between infrastructure and policing. In California, he’s scaling up the Chicago study to include Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles, where it’s not illegal to ride on the sidewalk. The underlying hope is that indisputable research might lead to widespread reform. 

“You can imagine that the ‘cycling on the sidewalk’ law was put in place with the good intention of protecting pedestrians from cyclists, just like the ‘helmet law’ or ‘light law’ come from a place of wanting to protect people’s safety and health,” said Barajas. “All of these laws were made with the intention of improving safety but end up having harmful effects on communities of color. So the question is, how do we best protect vulnerable road users while also protecting vulnerable populations?”

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PeopleForBikes News

Exciting Times To Go Even Bigger for Bikes

Electric Bicycles for All!

Five Ways PeopleForBikes Is Working to Boost Recreational Bike Riding

Biking Where Black