How To Build a Biking Culture That Makes Your City Stronger
Did you catch Tiffany Owens Reed’s piece, “3 Ways National Bike To Work Day Can Miss the Mark” a few weeks ago? In it, Tiffany remarks that she loves biking, but in the absence of sufficiently safe infrastructure, she finds that sort of annual event “annoying and ingratiating.” Her main points — that it ignores the reasons people don’t bike, assumes that people want to bike in the first place and lets public officials off the hook — all resonate with me.
Tiffany goes on to suggest a few things that would demonstrate real leadership and be more effective, such as installing temporary bike lanes and taking the time to talk to people and really understand their thoughts about biking. She concludes, “Maybe Bike to Work Day can be fun for folks living in cities with great infrastructure who’ve simply never taken advantage of it. But for the majority of us, Bike to Work Day isn’t going to magically make biking more desirable, safe or efficient.”
I agreed with Tiffany on all of this. My city has been adding protected bike infrastructure, but very slowly in a piecemeal way. Often it’s placed where it’s easiest to build, not connected to anything or aligned with common destinations. While some elected officials are happy to support Bike Week, which is a grassroots initiative, others have made public remarks referring to advocates as “bicycle Nazis.” The recent hit-and-run death of a Winnipegger biking to work tragically validated people’s safety concerns over unsafe streets for cycling.
However, while I certainly have my moments of being frustrated about biking in my city and profoundly sad over the regular incidents of violence that injure and take the lives of folks on bikes, I am also filled with appreciation for the community of tireless, dedicated and generous biking advocates in Winnipeg.
Strong Towns isn’t explicitly a pro-bike organization (just as it isn’t an anti-car organization). However, if people want healthy and productive places, they must acknowledge that safe, useful and pleasant biking conditions are critical, just as safe, useful and pleasant walking conditions are. That’s because giving people more choices for how they can get around is key to a financially sustainable city.
While my community waits and pushes for our city to build a full network of safe cycling infrastructure (and generally make streets safer for everyone), here are a few examples I've seen of folks doing what they can to improve things:
Bike Week
Like many places, Winnipeg’s biking community has long hosted a Bike to Work Day. After a few years, its grassroots steering committee made a conscious choice to “focus on promoting bike riding for everyone rather than limiting its target audience to commuters. Why? Because our goal is to help change the culture of riding bikes and make it normalized and more accepted as a form of transportation.” Thus, Bike Week was born, with the slogan “It’s for everyone”.
Today, Bike Week is an epic annual occasion with a massive slate of events, and there truly is something for everyone. Learn-to-ride workshops, scavenger hunts, lunch ‘n’ learns, themed group rides (coffee and ice cream, anyone?), and kid-oriented events. Bike Week Chair Dave Elmore explains that “we’re trying to reach those people who are interested, but concerned. What we want to do is get them to make the cross-over to being more interested, and less concerned.”
Group Rides
One mainstay of Bike Week — and a popular year-round initiative by Winnipeg’s biking community — is group rides. I know from firsthand experience that a group ride can make biking seem more feasible by showing you safe routes to different places. This is important because the safest routes for bike riders often don’t coincide with the route you’d drive by car. On top of that, they’re just fun! Someone will usually have music going, everyone is in a good mood and the refreshing feeling of safety in numbers is hard to convey. You chat, enjoy the scenery, and get fresh air and exercise. It reminds me of the pleasure of going for a leisurely Sunday drive with a friend, just on bikes.
Bike to Work Day can be instrumental in people becoming regular bike riders. I heard a neat anecdote from one Winnipeger who said, “The first couple of times I ever biked to work was on Bike to Work Day. ... Yes, one year apart! All the free cookies and swag got me out the door, but the real lightbulb moment was joining a group ride that overlapped with my route to work.”
There’s also something really powerful about how conspicuous a big group ride is, especially one full of diverse riders of all ages, bike types, clothing styles, etc. It combats the idea that only certain types of people ride bikes.
Active Towns founder John Simmerman puts it this way: “It’s important to see stereotypes broken and there’s power in visibility. … Group rides like this normalize what riding a bike can look like for people who may typically not see themselves as ‘cyclists.’”
Bike Buses
One particular type of group ride is the “bike bus.” Imagine a school bus traveling through a neighborhood, picking up students along the way. A bike bus functions the same way, only everyone's on a bike. The bike bus is led by volunteer parents or school staff; sometimes, there may be support from the local police department. It’s not uncommon for groups to have 50 or more riders! Bike buses build cycling knowledge and skills, and also reduce traffic around schools. Win-win.
The bike bus concept is quickly spreading throughout North America, including here in Winnipeg, where the nonprofit organization Bike Winnipeg offers school-ride marshal training. This equips parents and teachers who want to volunteer in a bike bus with the skills and support to do so safely.
Practical Support
Over and over, I’ve seen folks involved in Winnipeg’s biking community make sincere offers to support anyone who wants to ride more. Whether they're giving tips on route planning, sharing trouble spots to avoid, offering advice on gear, or anything else, this spirit of care and encouragement seems to be at the core of the community.
Often, I see folks reaching out to proactively support bike riders (and prospective riders) who may need help the most but are unlikely to look for it. One teacher I know offers pop-up bike repair clinics at his school over the summer because he knows the students and families often rely on bikes as transportation and may not have the means to access conventional bike repair services. Another group hosts learn-to-bike classes for newcomer women, with bikes to practice on and childcare provided.
The Benefits of Building a Biking Culture
Why do all these things matter? It’s not because biking is some superior or virtuous type of transportation in and of itself. I think building a biking community and culture matters because it increases the number of folks who humbly observe where people struggle and do the next smallest thing to make their place better. In the same way that people can see their neighborhoods more clearly when they're walking, getting around by bike helps to reveal how human-scaled and people-oriented a place is or isn’t.
It means helping people develop a more robust and precise vocabulary for what street design elements need to be improved.
It means empowering people of all ages, abilities and genders to see themselves included in the easy-to-overlook reality that public space isn't mine or yours: it belongs to everyone.
It’s not enough to simply tell people they could bike. Providing safe infrastructure is essential to getting more folks on two wheels, but many towns and cities are still works in progress in that department.
To make sure your city gets the infrastructure it needs, it’s essential to build a biking community and culture. That’s how you make connections to coordinate advocacy. It’s how you become more visible. It’s how you find others to make your ideas a reality.
At the end of the day, no one can build a protected bike lane on their own. But the small actions of everyday people building a biking culture can create visibility and demand, which in turn puts pressure on a town or city to respond. Winnipeg’s bike community exemplifies the bottom-up, incremental action that’s key to building a stronger town.
Emma Durand-Wood likes walkable cities, front porches, street trees, bumping into neighbors, riding her bike, downtowns, and any excuse to check out a new coffee shop, bakery, or shop. A Winnipegger by choice, she lives in Elmwood with her husband and three children. You can connect with her on Twitter @emmaewood.