A $1 million National Science Foundation grantee aims to bring safety in numbers to underserved bike commuters, creating communal art in the process.

Fabian Wagmister, an Argentinian-born artist and associate professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), didn’t consider himself much of a bicyclist until he turned 50. It was then that his wife, in an attempt to facilitate a healthier lifestyle, bought him a bike. Within a week, he’d decided to ride the 15 miles from his downtown home to the UCLA campus. That journey transformed the way he saw L.A., igniting a passion for traveling on two wheels. 

“The bicycle has been largely a rebirth for my body and my sensibilities towards the city,” said Wagmister, whose physical and emotional health has since improved. “I get on the bike and recover that sense of childhood to a degree. It’s made me a more playful, relaxed human being.”

Wagmister became a bike person and, in classic fashion, he soon wanted to convert others. In addition to bike commuting, he started taking his kids to school by bike and planning long bike tours. The bicycle became a tool for discovery and self-exploration, which led to Wagmister’s evolution as an artist. One 2017 project, “Bicicletas Blancas,” took place over six nights in Buenos Aires. From sunset to sunrise, Wagmister — decked out with sensors that measured things like location, heart rate, pedaling cadence and vibration, as well as microphones that captured sound — explored the city and his own emotions. As he biked, the data from each ride was processed algorithmically to control a light sculpture and interactive map.

“Everything I was experiencing was being transmitted live to an installation in an art gallery,” said Wagmister, who has a particular interest in combining technology and art in community-forward projects. The rides attracted other bikers and passersby, sparking connections and inspiring Wagmister to gift a bike to a stranger each night. “That is who I am — that’s the kind of art that I do and that I enjoy.”

In the years since, Wagmister has continued to create technology-based bike art, always inviting everyday riders to participate. He’s also taught other artists to design these types of artworks, cultivating a collective of bicycle artists that span the globe from Costa Rica to Switzerland. When the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced its Civic Innovation Challenge in 2021, Wagmister began dreaming up a new project that would focus on underserved communities in L.A., this time using art as a way to facilitate ‘bikepooling’ (like carpooling but for bike commuters). 

The Civic Innovation Challenge sought ready-to-implement projects that would offer better mobility options for neighborhoods that suffer from spatial mismatch, or inconsistency between low-income households and suitable job opportunities. Knowing that any mobility research project administered by an art professor would be a longshot, Wagmister recruited his friend and colleague, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Ph.D., an associate dean and well-respected professor of urban planning. For more than three decades, Loukaitou-Sideris has focused her work on city public spaces, examining how we might better design our parks and green spaces for people that have been neglected due to their race, gender, age, income and/or housing status. 

“When I was asked to participate, I was really excited,” said Loukaitou-Sideris. “We’re trying to make bicycling accessible to communities that have typically been marginalized in terms of mobility.”

In February 2021, Wagmister, Loukaitou-Sideris and Jeffrey Burke, an associate dean of research and technology at UCLA, secured an initial $50,000 NSF research grant. The team used the funding to partner with the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and trusted community-based organizations in downtown L.A., including Los Angeles River State Park Partners and the Anahuak Youth Sports Association, which primarily serve historically-marginalized Latino and Chinese neighborhoods. Wagmister, by nature of where he lives in L.A. and his earlier art projects, already had deep ties to the area. Together, the team distributed and analyzed more than 700 surveys to better understand residents’ mobility habits and needs.

From that initial research phase, the Civic Bicycle Commuting (CiBiC) project began to take shape: The team would develop a user-friendly app that allows local commuters to join ‘bike-to-work flows,’ creating a safety-in-numbers effect as they chart routes across L.A., which would then be digitally translated into public art pieces. The same nonprofits that helped with the initial outreach would be tapped to support the project by subcontracting additional organizations, recruiting riders and disseminating more surveys. In September 2021, the NSF found the project compelling enough to grant the team the final $1 million round of funding. 

While still in the development stage, the pilot project will run for about a year and target the low-income communities surveyed in the research phase, among whom car ownership is low. Since downtown L.A. is lacking in bicycle infrastructure (its Bicycle Network Analysis score is just 26/100) and suffers from many of the same perceptions of bicyclists that we see nationally (namely, that they’re wealthy, white and male), CiBiC is an attempt to rethink urban bicycle commuting. By using technology to connect people — helping them identify and join bike flows — the hope is to promote a feeling of safety, motivation and camaraderie, turning a once dreaded commute into something healthy, sustainable and economically viable.

“Inclusion is a main driver of the project,” said Wagmister. “Part of what we want to do is transform L.A. bike culture from being a male, 20 to 30-year-old activity to being a communitywide activity. Our target rider would be a 45-year-old mother that has never taken her bike to her work — we want to make bike riding a possibility for those who have never considered it.”

In order to ensure novice riders feel comfortable, researchers plan to continue collaborating with the local community bicycling organizations, incorporating an educational component as well as recruiting experienced bikers to lead the bikepools. In addition to compensating the leaders, the plan is to also offer different financial incentives to encourage people to start bicycling. For those without access to a bike, donations and bike share are all on the table as possible options (METRO, the transportation agency that oversees L.A.’s bike share system, is an important partner on the project and already offers reduced-fare bike share passes for those in need). 

Many of the people in the target area have a commute between 1 and 5 miles, ideal for biking, and the plan is to design certain bike corridors that meet the group’s needs. For individuals with longer commutes, the hope is that the presence of bike flows will make it easier for people to connect biking with other modes of transit, like biking to a subway station. In a culture where commuting is generally considered a solo endeavor, CiBiC will ask people to come together to ensure one another’s safety as a group, sacrificing a little efficiency for comfort and creating a vibrant bike community in the process. 

“For women, the issue of sexual harassment in public transit environments is very real,” said  Loukaitou-Sideris, noting that alongside infrastructure, it’s one of the main reasons women don’t participate in biking. “A group of people biking together will make people feel less scared of being harassed and run over by traffic.”

While a mass of bicyclists taking over city streets might seem like a far-fetched Utopian dream, the idea of riders achieving safety in numbers — often dubbed critical mass — isn’t a new concept. In fact, the L.A. Critical Mass ride, which takes place on the last Friday of every month, is known as “America’s largest community bicycle ride.” In the last year, more and more families have turned to group bike commutes to make kids’ journeys to school safer. Known as a ‘bike bus’ or ‘bike train,’ such events have gained notoriety in cities like San Francisco and Barcelona, effectively shutting down streets to cars. Who’s to say a group of adult commuters couldn’t do the same? The researchers plan on prototyping a few flow corridors to start but hope to eventually have hundreds of routes across the city.

For Wagmister, the social technological component, as well as the collective creation of art, is key to rallying folks around the cause and generating a feeling of ownership.

“In the CiBiC system, bicycling is about going to work but it’s also a creative cultural activity,” said Wagmister, explaining that by projecting the routes in a public art display, people will be allowed to interact with the commuters in real-time. Information will be taken from the app, which will also have a journal component where people can share written and video feedback of their journey. “By riding in our system, you’re part of a collective of authors creating this amazing artwork.”

Of course, the CiBiC project is still research, and the team can’t say for sure how participants are going to feel afterward. Wagmister secured additional funding to run a simultaneous pilot in Buenos Aires, where the culture is different and the bike infrastructure is better. Still, he’s optimistic that both experiments will result in an increase in the quality of life for participants. If successful, the hope is that Metro will be able to maintain CiBiC long-term, positioning L.A. as an innovative mobility leader when it comes to meeting sustainability and equity goals. 

“The concept of human infrastructure driven by people in terms of the needs of people — it’s about time we start thinking about our communities that way,” said Wagmister. “Let’s let our communities design the way they want to go to work and then we can provide the support based on what they tell us they need.”

CiBiCi Researchers Hope to Make L.A. ‘Bikepooling’ A Thing

L.A. Researchers Hope to Make ‘Bikepooling’ a Thing

Pandemic-era changes to the built environment dramatically shifted the urban bike landscape. But if equity had been centered, would the numbers be higher?

In 2021, Santander Cycles, Transport for London’s bike share system, reported its busiest year to date. According to a recent press release, there were more than 10,900,000 bike hires last year and more than 1 million individual customers, 178,000 of which were new (a 7% increase over 2020 and more than double that of any year prior to 2020). By all accounts, it was a banner year for London bike share, echoing the larger increase in bicycling across the U.K. capital.

During the pandemic, the number of Londoners who bike jumped from 21% in 2019/20 to 27% in 2020/21. Participation also grew, particularly among minority communities and women. Additionally, Transport for London research shows that one in five people who don’t bike are open to starting, which could increase participation rates to more than 40%. In particular, more than half of Black and Asian non-bicyclists (49% and 46% respectively) reported that they were considering starting to bike.

London’s increase in bicycling can be directly attributed to its response to COVID-19, namely the ways in which the city prioritized new, equitable investments in infrastructure. In spring of 2020, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, released “Streetspace for London,” a detailed plan outlining projects and other initiatives to create more space for people to safely walk, bike, scoot and wheel their way around the city, helping to mitigate the effects of lockdown. The main projects were pretty simple: Build out a network of temporary bike lanes and routes, widen sidewalks and create 70 new Low-Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs) by restricting vehicle traffic on low-speed side streets.

These changes transformed the city, which has a population of almost 9 million. Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner, shared that the city saw a 200% increase in bicycling compared to pre-pandemic numbers, touting the 100 kilometers (62 miles) of new bike lanes and LTNs as major reasons for the increased ridership. While both the new lane miles and the LTNs have proved popular, there were questions about the equitable distributions of the LTNs (in most cases, critiques centered around the lack of public outreach and not the creation of the LTN itself). 

A study published in October 2021 found that “LTN implementation has been broadly equitable at the city and micro levels, but the picture is more mixed at the district level, despite districts being encouraged to consider deprivation when planning LTN locations.” What the researchers concluded feels obvious, but is far from a given when it comes to city planning: Continuing to monitor the distribution of infrastructure changes among different demographics will only help planners to improve equity.

A different study credited COVID-era pop-up bike lanes with an 11-48% increase in bicycling trips in cities across Europe. While safe networks of bike infrastructure are crucial to increasing mode shift — especially for women and other underrepresented groups — evaluating their impact is often difficult due to the glacial pace at which most cities tend to operate. The quick roll-out of pop-up bike lanes in European cities presented a unique empirical opportunity to estimate the effect of new bicycling infrastructure. It only makes sense then that an increase in bike lanes, especially protected bike lanes, would also benefit bike share.

Of course, all of these changes mean little if they’re: a) not sustained, and b) confined to certain parts of a city, and thus, certain demographics. In London, efforts were made after the fact to incorporate public outreach into plans and see what can be done to increase accessibility to bicycling. While acting quickly and prioritizing people over cars played a crucial role in getting more folks to bike, more community engagement at the frontend likely would have ensured even larger increases — as well as more persistent and sustained use, which in turn can generate enormous public health benefits that outweigh initial investment costs. 

Transport for London acknowledged the importance of ensuring that people from all backgrounds feel comfortable biking, noting that such inclusion is key to creating healthier, more sustainable communities. Still, while National Health Service (NHS) staff are able to use Santander Cycles free of charge and students receive a 25% discount, no reduced pricing scheme currently exists for low-income residents. Bikes can be rented for £2 a day (about $2.70) or £90 a year ($120) for an unlimited number of 30-minute journeys. 

It’s one thing to acknowledge the importance of engaging diverse riders and another to reduce barriers in order to achieve it. Santander Cycles is currently undergoing an expansion in Southwark Council, with eight new docking stations being instituted over the next year, and is working to introduce around 500 electric bikes into its system by summer. The latter is a good step to reducing some of the barriers that prevent people from riding (namely fitness, age and trip distance) but the e-bikes will likely cost more, an insurmountable barrier for many.

What remains impressive about London is the number of pop-up bike lanes it instituted and the dramatic effect it had on bike share and bicycling in general. Writing about the pop-up bike lane study in Streetsblog, Kea Wilson notes how researchers couldn’t replicate the study in the U.S. because the scale of COVID infrastructure interventions was so much lower and our cities are more auto-centric. She adds, however, that the U.S. is in the unique position to continue to invest in quick build infrastructure while centering equity. We can learn a lot from what the U.K. did and didn’t do.

Adding quick-build infrastructure to underserved neighborhoods might get more low-income and BIPOC individuals to consider biking, but as long as our cities maintain unjust traffic enforcement and bike laws, residents can’t afford bike share or bike maintenance costs and riders aren’t served by network routes, the number of bicyclists will fall short of its full potential. To create mobility systems that serve everyone — and address climate change, air quality and other societal ills — we need to invest in equitable bicycling infrastructure and better bike share systems, ensuring that comprehensive community engagement is centered every step of the way.

Looking for more bike lessons from Europe? These seven cities are role models when it comes to great bicycling and offer tangible learnings for the U.S.

In Northwest Arkansas, employees at J.B. Hunt and Walmart are volunteering to fix up bikes for community members in need.

On a Monday evening in November, in a nondescript warehouse in Bentonville, four bike repair stations were filled with seven volunteers. There were tools, extra bike parts, snacks and seasoned helpers doling out words of advice. Some people had bike mechanic knowledge but most started the night as passionate riders. The bikes being worked on ranged from a Frozen-themed kids’ bike with training wheels and streamers to a racing red dirt jumper, and there was lots of talk about everyone’s first time riding. With each bike built, the volunteers got faster and more comfortable using unfamiliar tools. 

The group was gathered in support of Pedal It Forward, a nonprofit dedicated to refurbishing donated bikes for riders in need. Founded by Justin Tubb, Gary Vernon and David Tovey in 2014, the organization is predicated on the power of the bicycle to transform lives and create healthier communities. Over the years, it's grown from a small operation to hosting monthly workshops throughout Northwest Arkansas. Although the organization is run by two full-time staff members and a board of directors, volunteers are the heart and soul of the program, putting in the many hours and elbow grease required to refurbish old bikes. 

“If we cannot turn the bikes we receive into bikes we can donate, we cannot continue to grow and meet our goals of getting more people on bikes,” said Pedal It Forward Programs Coordinator, Stuart Gower-Jackson. “They are the engine room!” 

On this particular night in Bentonville, employees from J.B. Hunt and Walmart were working hard to meet Pedal It Forward’s holiday goal of fixing up 200 bikes. Once bikes are handled by volunteers, they go through a rigorous testing process to ensure they are roadworthy. Although volunteers don’t get to see where the bikes go after they leave the Pedal it Forward warehouse, that isn’t the reason they show up. Take Griselda Jaimes for instance, who works for J.B. Hunt and signed up because she felt drawn to the cause. 

“This organization encourages low-income families and at-risk youth to cycle by providing them with a bike of their own,” said Jaimes. “Being able to help out is a highlight of the event for me.”

Pedal It Forward gets its bikes from a variety of sources, including individual donations from local residents and retailers, who occasionally receive damaged bikes that they’re unable to put on the sales floor. The organization never knows what it’s going to get or what state of disrepair the bikes will be in. While not every donation is salvageable as a complete bike, parts can always be recycled and nothing goes to waste. With more than 60 “Pedal Partners,” or organizations that help disseminate the refurbished bikes, there’s a never-ending need.

Due to its limited staff, Pedal It Forward found working with partners to be a more efficient way of getting the bikes to people in need. Any business or organization that works with underserved communities in Northwest Arkansas can sign up to be a Pedal Partner — examples include recovery programs, education institutions, the Department of Veterans Affairs and homeless shelters. Pedal Partners are responsible for identifying individuals involved in their organization that are in need of bikes and once a partner submits an order form for bikes, Pedal It Forward gets busy filling it. Of course, orders are much easier to fill when there are bikes ready to go, hence the importance of a consistent flow of volunteers.

Most of the employees from J.B. Hunt and Walmart first heard about Pedal It Forward through their respective company bike programs, fueled by PeopleForBikes’ Northwest Arkansas satellite office. Our team there has been working with businesses to get employees riding more often and commuting by bike, cultivating strong internal bike cultures. Through the bike programs, employees can go on group rides, attend educational classes and participate in other bike-related events. 

It helps that both J.B. Hunt and Walmart are committed to giving back to their communities and that they encourage employees to volunteer. Walmart even offers grants to nonprofits when its associates volunteer 25 hours or more. While anyone can show up for a volunteer night at Pedal It Forward, many of the participants in the bike program prefer volunteering together. Some teams at Walmart even use the volunteer experience as a team-building opportunity to get to know each other outside of Zoom meetings.

“Having recently joined Emerging Tech [a team at Walmart], I wanted to share in a hands-on experience with new team members while giving back to our community,” said Walmart Associate Zach Springer. “Pairing community with physical labor has always proven to be a successful recipe in building relationships internally and externally.” 

Not only are the volunteers learning about each other, but they are also learning how to fix their own bikes at home. With the changing weather and loss of daylight, November was a prime time for volunteering. Group rides tapered out and with the holidays fast approaching, Pedal It Forward had a need for new volunteers. The wrench events offer a way for the bike program participants to stay engaged — and learn some valuable mechanic skills.

In early 2020, the PeopleForBikes team in Northwest Arkansas signed on as a Pedal Partner, recognizing that not every employee across our various bike programs would be able to afford a bike. Joining the Pedal Partner program helps break down barriers to access for employees that might want to join their company’s bike program but don’t have money in their budget for a bicycle. Working with Pedal It Forward has been a win-win, making access to biking more equitable and providing opportunities for co-workers to help each other discover the joys and benefits of riding bikes. 

“It's not all about wrenching,” said Gower-Jackson. “We also get to meet new faces and find really cool alternative collaborations and ways to get more bikes out there.”

Just after 8:30 p.m. at the Pedal it Forward warehouse in Bentonville, volunteers took off their shop aprons, cleaned off the bike grease and stood proudly with the seven bikes they built that night. What started off as an evening with co-workers ended with new friendships and plans for a future bike ride. There was a feeling of collective accomplishment, the group content in knowing that somewhere in Arkansas, a child was going to get a brand new bike for the holidays.

Research out of Colorado State University highlights how comprehensive mode shift could prevent more than 15,000 deaths a year—and not just in crashes.

There’s been a lot of great bike-related research published this year, including studies highlighting the link between bike share use and protected bike lanes, as well as the environmental benefits of bike share and its positive impact on public health. New research adds credence to the positive impact bicycling has on health outcomes, finding that more than 200,000 premature deaths — around 15,000 in the U.S. alone — could be prevented each year if countries support more urban bicycling by 2050.

The study, the first of its kind, modeled what a comprehensive mode shift could look like from a global health perspective using three different scenarios. In the first, things remain unchanged and so do the rates at which people die from car crashes, air pollution or sedentary disease (think cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and obesity). The second scenario, however, modeled the benefits of progressive transportation policies on urban bicycling over the course of 30 years, with 8% of new bike trips replacing cars. The third scenario assumed that 100% of new bike trips replaced car trips by 2050. The modeling allowed researchers to estimate how many lives might be saved by a global shift towards bicycling.

Published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the study compared 17 countries with high levels of urban riding, including Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Research was led by David Rojas-Rueda, Ph.D., an environmental epidemiologist and professor at Colorado State University, in collaboration with Julen Egiguren and M.J. Nieuwenhuijsen, scientists from the Barcelona Institute of Global Health. Their modeling work is based on policies that have been proven to lead to an increase in biking levels:

Retroﬁtting biking infrastructure onto existing roads to create networks on arterial streets, small residential streets and intercity roads.

Building and expanding bike share systems in large cities.

Reforming laws and enforcement practices to better protect active transportation.

Investing in walking facilities and public transport to oﬀer trips that can be combined with bike trips.

Eliminating policies that support additional motorized vehicle use, such as free parking and fuel subsidies.

Establishing congestion pricing, travel fees and development impact fees to disincentivize driving. 

“This study should be seen as a call to implement policies that support sustainable mobility and a healthy urban design,” said Rojas-Rueda. “Current policies will impact our future and the health of future generations.”

Even in the scenario where just 8% of new biking trips replaced car trips by 2050, the researchers found that 8,589 lives could be saved globally, with 1,227 in the U.S. Not only does that exceed the number of bicyclists that are currently killed every year (697 in 2020) but 8% is a conservative estimate if every country invested in the policies outlined above. The true number likely falls somewhere closer to the 100% estimate, which researchers found resulted in 205,424 premature deaths being prevented annually around the world.

As in Rojas-Rueda’s past research, this study supports the fact the benefits of bicycling far outweigh the risks of riding through city pollution, even in countries with poorer air quality, such as China and India. His body of research also points to a larger issue in the way we typically discuss the future of transportation, often focusing on the need to reduce emissions but not acknowledging that we need to also reduce bad health incomes. This study showcases how progressive bike policies can do both. 

What the research doesn’t touch on are all of the additional benefits that would accompany a world with less driving, including fewer collisions between motorists. Speaking with Streetsblog’s Kea Wilson, Rojas-Rueda notes how bikeable communities tend to be more livable, with more green space, affordable housing, grocery stores and other essential services, as well as lower levels of air and noise pollution. While somewhat less quantifiable, noise and other urban detritus can lead to anxiety, stress and anger, none of which is good for your health. The mental and emotional benefits of daily exercise are also well-documented.

The obvious question then is why aren’t countries everywhere committed to the policies we know lead to a better climate, public health outcomes, and quality of life? In the U.S., the Build Back Better Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are a step in the right direction but they’re not enough to fundamentally reimagine how we get around. And that’s a shame — as the research shows, there are lives at stake.

Over the last two years, the Texas capital accelerated the buildout of its all ages and abilities bike network, building more than 100 new miles with no signs of slowing down.

In 2014, the City of Austin set an ambitious goal: Build a 400-mile bicycle network that winds throughout the city, connecting urban trails, quiet neighborhood streets and new protected bike lanes. A network that would offer residents a choice in how they get around, no matter the person’s age or ability. The envisioned All Ages and Abilities (AAA) Bicycle Network would be accompanied by major street crossing improvements and other infrastructure updates, eventually delivering more mobility options, relief from congestion, greater safety to all and a more livable community for Austin residents. 

Buoyed by funding made available through voter-approved mobility bonds, a robust and transparent community engagement process and the support of the city’s elected leadership, Austin’s Transportation Department (ATD) worked diligently to move the network beyond the pages of their plan and into reality. By 2017, however, fewer than 20 miles of the network had been constructed, and while the process and projects were significant achievements, the pace of development meant that the completed network might be decades away. 

In 2018, city leaders decided a change was needed to help Austin meet its mounting transportation needs and the urgency of climate change. A significant acceleration of its AAA bicycle network was determined to be the best course of action. MoveATX — a coalition of community leaders, advocates, activists and local organizations — was founded in order to support the city’s efforts, creating a potent partnership with ATD that has achieved far more together than either would have been able to accomplish alone.

MoveATX launched a media campaign that tapped into the city’s popular support for bicycling, emphasizing the use of out-of-home advertising to drive participation in the city’s public meetings and showcase how the proposed projects would result in reduced congestion, fewer crashes and a more equitable city. This partnership helped build support among residents and allowed ATD to accelerate its project delivery timeline by three times its previous pace.

Learn more about how Austin achieved this milestone by watching our Advocacy Academy video: 

Today, Austin has completed 215 miles of the AAA bike network, more than half of the network mileage envisioned in the original 2014 plan. It’s one of the few North American cities to reach such a milestone. Approximately 64% of Austin’s residents can now access and navigate the completely connected, comfortable system of bike lanes that allow people on two wheels to get to where they’re going safely, all without inconveniencing drivers and walkers.

Decisively, in November 2020, 67% of Austin voters approved Proposition B, a $460 million active transportation bond meant to expand walking and biking networks throughout the city.  With this funding secured, City of Austin officials expects that the entire AAA bicycle network will surpass more than 400 total miles — or 100% of the mileage envisioned in the 2014 plan — by 2025. Impressively, this investment exceeds the commitment recently made—and widely celebrated—by Paris, France ($291 million, with a 2026 completion date). Once complete, 83% of Austin’s residents will be able to easily walk, bike or scoot using the AAA network, connecting them to destinations throughout the city.

Reflecting on what this achievement means for Austin’s future, Mayor Steve Adler said, “Twenty years from now, I hope life on the street just looks active and involved, with lots of people doing many different things and the streets being used in a variety of ways. I want everyone in Austin to have the ability to be able to come together and to move with one another and talk to one another in an environment that is safe, friendly and accessible to everyone.”

Austin is setting a new precedent for American cities, showcasing that not only is a new era of mobility possible, but we don’t have to wait decades for it to become a reality. By building bike infrastructure into our transportation improvements, cities can ensure drivers, walkers and bikers can get where they need to go with the greatest safety and the least amount of hassle. 

We can have peace on the road — and more livable communities — when everyone has a piece of the road.

Austin Will Be America’s Next Great Biking City

An interview with Austin Mayor Steve Adler on the city’s ambitious, 400+ mile bike network.

In Austin, Texas, a more than 400-mile bike network is being built in record time. As of September of this year, 215 miles of the all ages and abilities network are complete, connecting protected bike lanes, neighborhood bikeways and urban trails. Impressively, Austin’s investment of $460 million to complete the network by 2025 exceeds the commitment recently made—and widely celebrated—by Paris, France ($291 million, with a 2026 completion date).

We spoke with Austin Mayor Steve Adler to discuss the ways the city rallied around the network’s construction, the major challenges to achieving comprehensive mode shift and how transit and bike projects benefit drivers, too.

PeopleForBikes: Why is this all-ages and abilities bike network important to the city of Austin?

Mayor Steve Adler: We have to do a better job of giving everyone in our city more equitable, safer and convenient transportation choices. People of all ages — whether they’re a child or in their eighties — and of all backgrounds have to feel comfortable and secure moving freely in Austin. People are not going to survive if it takes an hour and a half to commute to their medical office, to care for their kids or to get back and forth from their job. We also set climate goals in this city which we won’t reach unless we’re able to get people to make a mode shift.

For people who aren't from Austin, can you explain the two transportation bonds that passed and why they were such a big deal?

Two really important bond initiatives went before Austin voters last November, which, due to the pandemic, was an exciting time to take a bond initiative to voters. Many cities backed off of taking bonds to voters in that period of time for fear that people wouldn't tax themselves. Of our two bond proposals, one passed by 58% and the other by about two-thirds. The first one was really to bring mass public transit to our city in a way that people would actually use. 

We went to voters and said, “Let’s not focus on one transit line, let’s focus on the city and adopt a whole regional plan.” It required people to vote to increase their city property taxes by about 20.4%. But we were able to do that because people recognized that we needed to get this done. That was a $7.2 billion project and at the same time it was going to the voters, it was suggested that surely we could free up half a billion dollars to actually improve active transportation projects in our city, which would only complement and support the other proposition on the ballot.

We had the infrastructure in place. The elections were in place. The campaign and the messaging were supportive of one another. Advocates were supportive. We figured we should do them both while the time was ripe and fortunately, we were successful.

So this support from the public helped accelerate the buildout? 

We set what we thought were pretty ambitious goals and frankly, I would've been really proud if we had just met those original goals. But then we had a community that indicated that it was ready to open up the pocketbook and really develop these multimodal choices faster. At the same time as we were getting our community together to approve a multi-billion dollar urban rail system and transit overhaul, it became apparent to us that we could also accelerate the goal we had of building up the bicycle network. It was popular and people wanted us to do it.

How have different players in the city come together to make this happen?

It took a lot of grassroots work — a lot of the bicycle advocacy organizations in our city really helped position our community to be able to do this. We have some very strong bicycle advocacy organizations in this community — smart folks, strategic folks — that have always been pushing this agenda. But I think Austin really did come together on this and part of it is it fits with the culture of who we are in this city. Things happen fast when cities and communities are being their best selves, and this is just who we are.

How has the city built support for the network from residents that do not bike or will never choose to bike?

There are some people in our community that say that they're never going to give up their cars. And to those people, I say, "Great, but wouldn't you like all the other people in their cars to get off the roads so that you have more space? Let's give more options for the people that you'd like to see leave our roads.” That one's hard to argue with. 

The other thing we hear a lot is that's not going to happen in Texas. That it’s possible in a Scandinavian country, but not here. So we show people that in the early seventies, those countries were as car-centric as we are today. 

You also hear from people that no one will ever do this in Texas because it's just too hot and that the climate doesn't lend itself to it. And I say, “I hear you on climate, it can get a little warm here. Go ahead and get yourself an electric bike.” Then I show them a picture I took in Oslo, Norway, where it was below zero and the snow was coming down pretty heavy and people were dressed warmly and still using their bikes. When people are used to doing something because it’s easy, convenient and safe, they keep doing it, no matter the weather.

Austin is rare in that it’s coordinated between city transit organizations, advocates and the community. The city is promoting bikes, but in concert with transit and even drivers — why is that a winning strategy?

When you address the issues of transportation and mobility — and if you really are putting a certain effort into driving equity and opportunity — then you have to take a holistic approach. There is no one mobility solution that's the answer for everyone or in and of itself. It has to be an integrated system. You can pick pieces of that system but that’s going to leave people out. 

Our challenge is to have a comprehensive mode shift. The good thing about moving forward holistically is that the transit people are supporting the bike programs and vice versa because we’re all supporting the same concept. Seventy percent of the people that are traveling to Austin downtown right now are doing it alone in their cars. We can't survive that way on lots of different levels. The way we get from 70% to 50% by 2039 isn’t just bikes and it isn’t just transit. It isn’t just one thing — it’s everything. 

How do safe and equitable mobility options benefit Austin's larger goals?

There are so many things that are going right in Austin right now — it's kind of a magical place. It's the fastest-growing large metropolitan area in the country and has been for the last five years. We are just hitting on so many cylinders, but we’re not hitting on every cylinder for everybody. If we're going to be able to preserve the magic that is Austin — the kind of the culture that keeps things weird and supports innovation — we have to maintain diversity in our community. And that is the hardest thing to do when you become the “it” city because so many people want to come and everything becomes so expensive so fast. 

A mass public transit system and an all-ages and abilities bicycle network are both great for people's lives. These are all things that enable everyone to participate in a community, which is really important to our economy because our economy is all about the people. It will also help us to meet our goals around climate change. For Austin to get to a zero-carbon footprint by 2040, it's going to require us to take another look at how we're doing transportation, getting more and more people in fewer and fewer vehicles. This work fits in with that. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you see in Austin when it comes to large-scale, equitable mode shift?

There are challenges in any community, Austin included, when it comes to achieving real equity. To a large measure that's because so many of the systems and institutions are built around systemic challenges like racism. Those things are built-in. So if you actually want to change things, you have to be pretty disruptive. 

We're trying to do that in this city with homelessness and policing — disruptive change — to rethink how we do those kinds of systems. The same thing is true for transportation. And that's hard because people like to live with incremental change. I would say that the biggest challenge is recognizing that there's a lot of inertia working against you and that sometimes the needed change is going to have to be disruptive, and that can be tough for any community.

What’s your 10-year vision for Austin? Paint a picture of life and the city’s streets for us.

Twenty years from now, I hope life on the street just looks active and involved, with lots of people doing many different things and the streets being used in a variety of ways. I want everyone in Austin to have the ability to be able to come together and to move with one another and talk to one another in an environment that is safe, friendly and accessible to everyone. We have a lot of that already in our communities, we're just not using our streets in all the different ways that they could be used. That’s changing in many ways right now.

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