Blog
We have wrapped up our first month for the 2014 National Bike Challenge –- and what an incredible 31 days of riding it has been! We finished the month with 36,227 registered riders pedaling nearly 4.6 million miles. Together we pedaled to the moon and back –- 10 times! In a mere 28 days, we surpassed last year’s total of 34,500! We are losing weight, saving money and cleaning our environment together and it’s been amazing.
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Every time I go home to Orange County, California, I go through the same ritual familiar to many of us. People ask me about my work; I tell them about bikes; they respond with a story about how cyclists are a nuisance, and, while they themselves are too enlightened to menace those bike users, they see others doing it. Therefore, bicycling is a bad idea. I sigh mentally and acquiesce, not because I agree with them, but because I know where they’re coming from. I grew up knowing that driving as soon as I could would be best, because car culture reigns supreme.
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We asked the National Bike Challenge riders on Facebook a simple question: In five words or less, describe what riding a bike has done for your life. We were astounded by the hundreds of inspirational responses. From transportation to health to freedom, it’s clear bicycling means a lot of things to a lot of people — and that’s exactly what we’re hoping to foster with the Challenge.
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John Jones III has served as President and CEO of the East Side Riders Bike Club in Los Angeles for more than six years. However, his work around the Watts community goes back much longer than that. Jones has worked very hard to building communities around Los Angeles County through active living and cultural exchange.
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Last week, we announced our latest round of Bicycle Friendly Communities, bringing the program to 303 BFCs in 48 states. Las Vegas, NV, is one of 18 new BFCs, receiving the Bronze-level award. We were struck by Las Vegas’s growth and blooming bike culture. Kristina Swallow, a program manager for the city’s Department of Public Works, wrote this story about Las Vegas’s rise as a Bicycle Friendly Community.
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Santa Barbara is a small town in Southern California whose size, flat terrain, and sunny weather make it a fertile environment for bicycle cultures of all kinds. From Gibraltar Road to the Cabrillo Beach bike path, you can find many groups using two-wheeled locomotion for multiple reasons. Roadies on carbon-fiber bikes ride with their teams, mountain bikers traverse our challenging trails, BMXers practice tricks, and tourists see the sights on rented bikes.
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Melody is originally from North-East Tennessee. She moved to Jackson, Mississippi fifteen years years ago and immediately got involved with community development and service oriented work focused on low income communities in the inner city of Mississippi’s capital. Melody now serves in a statewide role as the executive director of Bike Walk Mississippi, the state’s bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organization.
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A terrible string of fatal bike crashes in the Tampa area in late 2011 and early 2012 left the local bike community reeling. As they shared each awful tragedy with us, we too felt frustrated and powerless. We also realized how little we really knew about the circumstances of serious crashes between bikes and cars, and how woefully inadequate (and late) the available data was at the national level.
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As a person of color, I acknowledge the complexities that people who are marginalized experience because I too live with these experiences every day. I see the cultural diversity that exists within the bicycle movement and comprehend that all groups have different needs when it comes to education and empowerment. We must work together to see that we keep all diverse groups into consideration, so we can all continue moving forward in taking ownership of these safe, healthy, clean and bicycle-oriented linkages.
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The WTS (Women’s Transportation Seminar) annual conference brings together hundreds of women transportation professionals to network and share ideas. WTS has chapters all over the country and some abroad, and they place a big emphasis on early career mentorship.
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