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!

Encourage employees to get out of their seats

The Fearless Flyers program goes beyond group rides and bicycle basics to provide community-based education, wellness resources and an inclusive cycling environment.

Fearless Flyers, a 10-week training program based in New York City, empowers queer 16- to 25-year-olds through bicycling. Run by the LGBTQ+ community nonprofit OutCycling, the program goes far beyond group rides and bicycle basics to provide community-based education, health support, resources and welcoming spaces — all while building diversity, equity and inclusion in the bike industry.

“Through goal setting, peer learning and group accountability, Fearless Flyers graduate from the program with the skills and confidence they need to ride further and stronger, on both our city’s roads and in life,” said Dianeldis Disla, executive director of Fearless Flyers and affectionately known as “Mama Flyer.” The program empowers the most marginalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer youth through bicycling, helping them focus on wellness and health through physical activity. Participants are also connected to community resources and trained on how to help their peers do the same. The program emphasizes bike safety alongside social and leadership skills. Upon graduation, youth receive a bicycle, helmet, lights and bike lock.

By bringing the benefits of riding to youth in historically marginalized communities, Fearless Flyers is helping diversify bicycling. “A lot of the young people we work with face a lot of challenges, especially being people of color, gender nonconforming or from the hood — backgrounds that are all very marginalized,” said Disla. “The majority of our participants are Black, Indigenous, people of color [BIPOC]. They come from all five boroughs of NYC, though often from underserved communities including parts of Harlem and the South Bronx.” 

Due to the community-based educational components, the program is also more than just a fun, social club. “There’s a lot of support that isn't really provided in typical cycling clubs,” said Joshua Terefe, program director at Fearless Flyers. “Cycling and friendship are very necessary, but with Fearless Flyers, we've definitely seen higher amounts of engagement.”

Beyond weekly bike rides, Fearless Flyers facilitates food, jobs, funds and connections to other LGBTQ+ organizations throughout New York City. In addition to its weekly rides, Fearless Flyers also offers regular check-ins with program participants to talk about challenges they are facing and connect them to other forms of support. La Sala, a Dominican women’s development center in Washington Heights, works closely with Fearless Flyers to provide creative workshops and courses, skill development, activism and advocacy. Disla also works as a drop-in coordinator for La Sala, which means “living room” in Spanish. “They've been such a great partner,” said Disla. “It is the only organization I've known that's run by solely Dominican people and people of color.” 

Ultimately, Fearless Flyers is all about empowering the LGBTQ+ community in NYC. “[In our program,] the people in power are the same people making decisions and those are the same people who are advocating for the same folks that they're providing services for,” said Terefe. “As a transgender person of color, I’m not only doing this work but then modeling it for the next riders who are coming up. The point is to continuously keep growing and continuously give opportunities.” Naturally, Fearless Flyer graduates are often later hired as ride leaders and senior ride leaders the following year. 

As they walk the walk to promote DEI, Fearless Flyers is pushing bike shops and the bicycle industry to do better. “What does safety look like in a bike shop for a person of color?” asked Terefe. “What does safety look like for someone who is 18 years old, non-binary and low on funds?” A lack of disposable income, alongside implicit and/or explicit bias can create barriers for marginalized communities in retail shops throughout the country. 

“When the young people come to the stores with us for the first time, they're kind of like, ‘When y'all are done with me, how do I continue to do this?’” said Terefe. Fearless Flyers works with local bike shops and bicycling organizations to ensure all people feel safe continuing to seek out help and community. One such place is Tread Bike Shop, a self-described “unpretentious vendor” in Washington Heights. “This is a bike shop that is in a predominantly Dominican, Latino neighborhood, where the staff is also reflective of that,” said Terefe. “That alone provides a lot of comfort for our riders.” OutCycling and other local nonprofits donate gear to support Fearless Flyers. 

Through the diversity of its participants and exposure the program provides, Fearless Flyers is helping break down barriers and misconceptions about bicycling at large. “Cycling is not only for white cisgender males, you know? It's for everybody,” said Disla. “It can literally transform people. It transformed me in so many ways. It opened up more than just physical changes, it's also been mental, emotional, even spiritual.” 

In addition to providing positive health benefits, cycling has given Fearless Flyers participants the opportunity to earn extra income, explore new parts of the city and explore new parts of the world. 

“In 2018, we had the opportunity to take five Fearless Flyers to Paris, France, and actually cycle and compete with other folks who are from queer-led organizations [around the world],” said Terefe. “For a lot of young folks, it was their first time leaving New York or leaving the country as a whole.” Beyond teaching youth how to bike for recreation and for transportation, Fearless Flyers is also introducing youth to competitive cycling. OutCycling will be taking more Flyers to compete at the Gay Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2023.

Fearless Flyers recently received a $15,000 matching grant from Outride, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of youth through cycling and cultivating inclusive cycling communities. With the grant funding, Fearless Flyers will strengthen its existing program, launch summer series events and enhance its tracking capacity to further demonstrate the positive impact of its program in the community. 

“We’re going to organize little gatherings like scavenger hunts, an LGBTQ+ cycling tour and community rides so people can learn more about the history of Stonewall, as well as visit Christopher Street and other LGBTQ+ sites in the city,” said Disla. 

In the meantime, Fearless Flyers will continue making the lives of LGBTQ+ youth better with the help of bikes. Follow along on the Fearless Flyers’ Instagram to keep up with current participants and graduates, queer bike events and all of the incredible work the organization does to make bicycling better for everyone. 

PeopleForBikes is proud to highlight the work of Outride and Fearless Flyers in their efforts to build diverse, inclusive bicycling communities and get #MoreKidsOnBikes. We’re excited that this blog is also featured on Outride’s website.

Empowering LGBTQ+ Youth Through Bicycling 

Tools like BikeMaps.org and PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis help planners make investment decisions that prioritize safety.

In case you’ve missed the abundance of less-than-stellar headlines, the pandemic has coincided with a surge in car crashes and deaths. In fact, according to the New York Times, “The United States is enduring its most severe increase in traffic deaths since the 1940s.” Due to vehicle improvements, reductions in speed limits and a crackdown on drunk driving, crashes have declined since the 1960s — although lower-income and BIPOC communities continue to bear the brunt of the violence.

Fast forward to summer 2020. With fewer folks on the roads, aggressive driving became the norm. When more cars returned later in the pandemic, the trend in crashes continued to rise, and between 2019 and 2021 per capita vehicle deaths rose an astonishing 17.5%. The trend has impacted pedestrians as well as bicyclists, who make up a fifth of traffic deaths and are far more vulnerable to dangerous street design and aggressive driving. 

In 2014, Trisalyn Nelson, a geography professor and spatial data scientist, was biking when she had a near-miss with a car. It’s estimated that only 20 to 30% of crashes are officially reported, and even less than a decade ago there was no centralized reporting of crash data or near misses for bicyclists. If only a fraction of crashes are reported and you’re an urban planner or policymaker trying to prioritize investments in safer streets, the lack of good data makes it difficult to know where to start. 

“At the time, there was this growing popularity of using crowdsourcing to improve data on a bunch of things,” said Nelson, who was then teaching at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. “We really wanted to develop a system that would allow us to curate the individual rider’s experience to try and understand where safety issues occur and how we can better design our on-street infrastructure.”

Nelson, alongside colleagues from the Spatial Pattern Analysis & Research (SPAR) Lab, recruited developer Taylor Denouden and graduate student Ben Jestico to build BikeMaps.org, a data resource that maps bike safety outcomes as collisions or near misses. The primary national resource for mapping crashes, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data set, only counts crashes that involve a motor vehicle and a fatality. Some cities collect more comprehensive collision data independently, but there is no national source compiling city-level data. BikeMaps has emerged as one resource to help broaden the definition of safety data and fill in the gaps through crowdsourcing.

The system, which resembles Google Maps, allows a user to scroll to their city, find the location where an incident occurred, and drop a pin, prompting them to answer a series of questions.  

“We spent a lot of time working with bike safety researchers and city planners to try and figure out what kind of questions we should ask on the map,” said Nelson. “People can describe what happens and we get some really great descriptions.”

The product team also had developers layer in Strava ridership data, which helps researchers contextualize the safety data. For example, if one bicyclist out of 10 gets in a traffic collision on a street, the street is super unsafe. If one out of 1,000 bicyclists is involved in a crash, the crash risk is much lower. Since data on bicycling exposure is notoriously hard to obtain, BikeMaps turned to Strava to provide a sample of bicycling volumes. In conjunction with other data sources and correcting for any biases in the data, the team is able to paint a more accurate picture of the total number of riders in any given place at different times of the day.

Seed funding for the BikeMaps website was originally provided by the Canadian Automobile Association (Canada’s version of AAA), while the Public Health Agency of Canada invested heavily in its promotion to recruit crowdsourced contributions to the map. Today, Strava remains a close collaborator while funding comes from both Canadian and U.S. sources. Assorted staff, researchers and students maintain the site. BikeMaps.org is currently used in more than 40 countries in five different languages and a version for pedestrians and folks in wheelchairs is currently in the works.

In order to maintain a simple, easy-to-use interface, the website serves solely to crowdsource data rather than display all safety data, even in cases where other crash data is available, such as from police reports or hospital visits. However, the BikeMaps team conducts in-depth research and analysis when partnering with cities, collecting all available data and showcasing “hot spots” — or particularly dangerous areas for bicyclists. Transportation officials can then use the BikeMaps team’s analysis to prioritize infrastructure improvements in targeted areas. 

“We really want to help create access to bicycling by making cities safer,” said Nelson. “And the only way to do that is to really empower people making decisions to figure out where they should be making investments.”

The beauty of BikeMaps is that it serves as a call to action for everyday individuals who are passionate about bike safety data, allowing anyone to map their own experience and identify hazards. The project is always looking for champions within communities to advocate for bike safety and provides resources to share and encourage action locally. 

As a resource, BikeMaps complements PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) tool, which is a major component of our City Ratings. The BNA identifies low-stress bikeways and emphasizes connectivity, focusing on the need to build more high-quality, safe bike networks. BikeMaps focuses on specific safety incidents, which in conjunction with the BNA can help cities better prioritize infrastructure investments for safety and connectivity.

“It’s important to understand where you need to have investment but also where investment will lead to a more connected network,” said Nelson, noting that equity also needs to be considered. “We want to increase safety but with a focus on access. Who needs access to bicycling the most? People who have the least amount of choice in terms of their transportation modes.”

BikeMaps has submitted grant proposals to design and deploy an equity dashboard for transportation decision-making, but that’s still a work in process. Nelson acknowledges that some things — such as income levels and race percentages — are easy to quantify, but other factors that impact access will differ from community to community. 

“When it comes to that work, much of the decision-making needs to be done with community partners who are underserved,” said Nelson, emphasizing the need for partnerships between government, nonprofits, academia, and community-based organizations. “We need to make sure the voices we’re trying to serve are at the table and that we’re not just coming from the top down with ideas. But I think that will lead to new challenges around data and that’s where a team like mine can really come in and be helpful.”

Rebecca Davies, PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings program director, sees City Ratings and BikeMaps as complementary resources. She also welcomes additional bike data mapping tools, such as New Orleans’ bike equity index, which incorporates demographic data into bike planning, and Toole Design’s Safer Streets Priority Finder, which calculates injury and fatality risk based on a city’s historical data. In the absence of federal or state governments tracking equity, safety and connectivity information, planners looking to build better bike cities are often forced to create their own datasets or make decisions based on incomplete information. And while the U.S. Department of Transportation is starting to acknowledge the importance of data collection and analysis when it comes to road user safety, more work is needed.

“Ultimately, I hope that we get more complete data on bike infrastructure, ridership, and safety outcomes from the Federal Government,” said Davies. “Until measuring bicycling is a national priority, City Ratings and BikeMaps are two projects helping to fill those gaps.”

PeopleForBikes, in collaboration with Wend Collective, helped five U.S. cities successfully increase bicycle mobility through the construction of new bike infrastructure.

In 2018, PeopleForBikes set out to accelerate the construction of mobility networks in five U.S. cities — Austin, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado and Providence, Rhode Island. The project, dubbed the Final Mile, in partnership with Wend Collective, was successful in achieving that goal. It also created a playbook for any city looking to quickly build quality, connected bike infrastructure.

The Final Mile utilized a dynamic, accelerated approach to combine existing political will and untapped community support for bicycling by providing the necessary resources for cities to rapidly accelerate the pace of bike network implementation.

Austin completed 115 miles of new bike lanes to achieve a 50% build-out of its All Ages and Abilities Mobility Network in only 24 months.

Denver constructed 100 miles of new bikeways, tripling the pace at which its planned network of interconnected, low-stress bikeways was being built. 

New Orleans managed to construct 27 miles of new bikeways and offered the highest concentration of new protected bike lanes in the program.

Providence constructed 43 miles of new bikeways, with an additional 22 miles planned for construction in 2022. 

Pittsburgh completed 50 new network miles and is dedicated to completing another 15 miles in 2022.

The Final Mile program offers a unique model of investment designed to shape local policy through political action. In the five funded cities, the program helped inform growing interest and support for bicycling, aided local leaders in shaping their goals and contributed to national momentum in favor of improved bicycling infrastructure. 

Below are our top lessons learned from the Final Mile.

Cities are capable of achieving tremendous goals when they have the means and will to do so. The Final Mile program asked these cities to find the will (through community-driven advocacy) so local leaders supported by PeopleForBikes could provide the means (funding and expertise).

With a bold vision and sufficient resources, cities are able to establish more ambitious goals and achieve them. 

Balance must be struck between elected officials, city staff, advocacy groups, community leaders and residents to achieve success. 

Every stakeholder group has a role to play in creating the initiatives. The Final Mile framework helped streamline processes to move the campaigns forward quickly.  

Every project faces unique hurdles, including city administration structure, the way resources are allocated and how communities are engaged in the decision making process. 

The Final Mile funded parallel strategies in all five cities, but approaches will vary to meet the needs of each individual city looking to achieve success. 

Developing inclusive opportunities to comment is the most efficient way to deliver real feedback to officials from the people most affected by their decisions. 

Amplifying supportive voices helps highlight what is most important to the community.

While all cities are unique in their challenges and resources, much of the Final Mile programming can be scaled and applied to cities of all sizes across the U.S. to make connected bike networks achievable anywhere. 

Connected bike networks still benefit people who will never use them. Effectively communicating the universal benefits of quality bike infrastructure is crucial in building communitywide consensus. 

Bike networks add value to communities by increasing opportunity, relieving congestion, providing recreation opportunities and more — the benefits stretch far beyond those who chose to move by bike.  

Learn more about the Final Mile by visiting finalmile.peopleforbikes.org.

A Proven Model for Accelerating Bike Networks

A new study highlights how Black riders are more than 4.5x as likely to die while riding a bike than white riders on a per-mile basis.

A new study from researchers at Boston and Harvard Universities highlights the disparity in traffic fatalities according to race and mode of transportation, with Black and Hispanic bicyclists more likely to die while biking than their white counterparts. Authors Matthew A. Raifman, MPP, and Ernani F. Choma, Ph.D., found that fatality rates per 100 million miles traveled are systemically higher for Black and Hispanic Americans for all modes — and notably higher for vulnerable modes like bicycling and walking.

For every 100 million miles traveled, there are 34 deaths among Black bicyclists compared to 7.5 deaths for white bicyclists. Likewise, Hispanic riders have a 70% higher per-mile fatality rate than their white counterparts. The same elevated rates held true for Black and Hispanic pedestrians when compared to white ones covering the same amount of ground. Although Asian bikers and pedestrians died significantly less often than all other racial groups, the study nonetheless highlights the gross inequity experienced by BIPOC biking and walking in America (this study did not include Indigenous Americans but earlier research found that all-mode traffic fatalities were higher for Indigenous and Black Americans than for white and Asian Americans.)

The elevated fatality rates for Black residents are especially shocking if you consider that they were found to travel relatively fewer miles on foot or bike than other groups considering their share of the population. The study includes both bicycling miles logged for transportation and recreation and unsurprisingly, white cyclists tended to log the most miles. In speaking with Streetsblog, Raifman explained that white riders are more likely to have access to long, connected networks of low-stress routes. 

“The ability to safely bike 40 miles on a rail-to-trail line in the suburbs is very different from the ability to ride a few blocks on a sharrow in a city,” said Raifman.

It makes sense that a disparity in access to safe infrastructure would translate to a disparity in fatality rates. We know from other studies that Black communities tend to be less walkable, with fewer well-maintained sidewalks and crosswalks, as well as have less investment in transit and protected bike lanes. Black residents are also more likely to live near unsafe roads with inadequate lighting, experience the unjust enforcement of bike laws and have their neighborhoods bisected by highways. 

In her 2021 book, “Right of Way,” author Angie Schmitt discusses how victims of traffic violence are disproportionately poor, people of color, immigrants and/or elders. For Schmitt, the fact that transportation planning work is a predominantly white, male profession has translated to cities that are built around the transportation habits of one subsect of the population. As such, the different needs and habits of BIPOC, children and the elderly are often overlooked.

The study from Raifman and Choma, titled “Disparities in Activity and Traffic Fatalities by Race/Ethnicity,” calls attention to the need for cities to address the way race coincides with traffic violence by making critical infrastructure investments. In America, we tend to prioritize efficiency over safety — this data highlights how infrastructure investments should be prioritized according to the number of fatalities, alongside things like how busy a corridor is and where it's located. Organizations like BikeMaps.org are working to help city planners better identify critical infrastructure needs but more can be done when it comes to making equitable decisions. 

Although the researchers can’t speak to what’s causing the disparities in traffic violence, there’s no excuse for not acting on the data and incorporating it into our existing infrastructure and safety planning. Traffic fatalities are a completely preventable public health challenge — Black and Hispanic Americans bearing the brunt of it should be deeply concerning to us all. 

Bike Fatalities Are Worse for Black and Hispanic Americans

These nine projects will reach and engage traditionally underserved populations through shared micromobility.

The Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) awarded $75,040 in grants to nine projects that will reach and engage traditionally underserved populations through shared micromobility. This is the seventh round of mini-grant funding the national bicycle advocacy organization PeopleForBikes will administer through its partner role with BBSP.

"Better Bike Share mini-grants allow us to support short-term, impactful projects that directly improve access to shared micromobility for lower-income and/or BIPOC communities," said Tangier Barnes-Wright, senior partnership and program manager at PeopleForBikes and BBSP. "We are inspired by the 2022 grantees and look forward to learning from their projects and sharing lessons broadly across the nation."

The following projects were selected by a grants panel to receive funding: 

Increasing Low-Income and Latinx Ridership on Portland’s BIKETOWN | $9,400
Community Cycling Center, Portland, OR

The Community Cycling Center will partner with Andando en Bicicletas y Caminando (ABC) to increase BIKETOWN bike share access through signups and education in low-income communities of color. Over the course of three sessions, 10 neighborhood leaders will be trained on the process of signing up for reduced-fare membership, positioning them as a trusted resource for other community members.

The Go Hub Community Mobility Rituals | $9,000
Equiticity, Chicago, IL

In partnership with Divvy, Superpedestrian and local community-based organizations, Equiticity will host a monthly bike ride and scooter roll. Each ride will have a different theme, socializing participants around the act of mobility and increasing a sense of safety, ownership and autonomy. Depending on the ride, Divvy bikes or Superpedestrian scooters will be provided and participants will learn about each system and its corresponding low-income membership program. 

Golden Rollers: Introduction to BCycle and Micromobility for Older Adults | $5,640
Ghisallo Cycling Initiative, San Antonio, TX

The Golden Rollers program will provide annual bike share memberships, training, guided rides and safety equipment at no cost to 24 seniors and older adults with the aim of increasing ridership. The program will be based out of a senior center adjacent to a BCycle bike share station. This mini-grant will allow interested participants to gain familiarity with the BCycle system and access their fleet of two-wheeled, electric-assist bicycles.

Art, Bikes and Books for All! | $9,500
Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville, Nashville, TN

The Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville, the Nashville Public Library and the Music City Dope Pedalers, a majority-BIPOC bike club, will partner to grow the existing Bikes and Books for All program, which makes checking out a BCycle bike as easy as borrowing a book. Funding will help the program expand to more library branches, create bike routes and host a community bike ride with art bikes designed by local artists. 

Blue Bikes Community Liaisons Program | $6,000
Blue Krewe, New Orleans, LA

Blue Bikes will recruit liaisons from the three neighborhoods within its system that rate highest according to the New Orleans’ Bike Equity Index, which helps identify underserved, priority areas. The liaisons will participate in monthly training and be compensated for leading one community outreach activity of their choosing each month from June to November. They will also represent Blue Bikes at neighborhood events, sharing information about the system and gathering feedback on how to improve bike share.

Wheels to Work | $7,000
Houston Bike Share, Houston, TX

Modeled on Indego bike share’s Wheels to Work program in Philadelphia, this mini-grant will support employment and increase health and mobility through bike share. Houston Bike Share will work directly with New Hope Housing’s Harrisburg location to combine services such as resume writing and soft skills classes alongside bike share system training and bike safety. Participants will receive a free BCycle membership and participate in group rides designed to be inclusive.

Building Mobility Justice in Pittsburgh | $9,000
Bike Share Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

This mini-grant will fund aspects of the POGOH bike share system’s equity initiatives, including cash payment administration, support for its $10/year low-income Mobility Justice Pass and its 2022 Community Day event execution. The Community Day will bring families and the neighborhood together around outdoor activities, food, music and a helmet giveaway, raising awareness about POGOH and the Mobility Justice Pass. 

Equity Memberships | $8,500
Tulsa Bike Share/This Machine, Tulsa, OK

This Machine will partner with local nonprofits, including the Tulsa Housing Authority and two prison alternative programs for female drug offenders, to provide a form of reliable transportation to access essential services. The pilot program will offer reduced-priced memberships to folks working with its partner organizations and anyone with a SNAP or SoonerCare card. The goal is to collect comprehensive data before applying for funding to make the equity membership program permanent.

West Dayton Community Outreach | $6,000
Bike Miami Valley, Dayton, OH

The Dayton Bike Share system is expanding by adding hubs in the city’s priority areas of West and Northwest Dayton. These geographies were historically redlined and are still today majority Black communities. This mini-grant will fund work on the front end of that expansion, gathering input from residents, providing marketing materials and helmets for the demo days and stipends for door-to-door outreach in the community.

Beautification of Downtown BCycle Station | $5,000
Des Moines Street Collective/Des Moines BCycle, Des Moines, IA

In partnership with ArtForce Iowa, the Des Moines Street Collective hopes to bring refugee, first-generation youth to bike share through the beautification of a downtown BCycle station. Marginalized youth will have a hand in the entire creative process, from the initial brainstorm to the final product. Every youth artist will participate in two group rides, receiving bike-riding lessons, an annual BCycle membership and a helmet and bike lock.

The Better Bike Share Partnership is funded by The JPB Foundation as a collaboration between the City of Philadelphia, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and the PeopleForBikes Foundation to build equitable and replicable bike share systems. Learn more at BetterBikeShare.org.

Better Bike Share Partnership Awards $75,000 in Grants

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Empowering LGBTQ+ Youth Through Bicycling

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A Proven Model for Accelerating Bike Networks

Bike Fatalities Are Worse for Black and Hispanic Americans

Better Bike Share Partnership Awards $75,000 in Grants