Equity Initiative and Reports

A first-of-its-kind report released in May 2013 by the League and the Sierra Club, "The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity" highlights new data and analysis that show the new majority that elected a president is also playing a key role in shifting transportation demand toward safe, accessible and equitable bicycling in their communities.

"The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity" showcases stories of powerful local efforts opening up new lanes to bicycling in communities too often overlooked by traditional transportation planners and bicycling advocates — and highlights an increasingly powerful and growing constituency that is cultivating new campaigns and bike cultures that address the needs, serve the safety and improve the health of all residents who ride — or want to ride. Read the full report.

Equity Advisory Council member Devlynn Chen worked with the League and the Local Spokes' Youth Ambassadors program this summer to create a case study on the motivations for youth in riding, and how they view bike advocacy. The result? A new report, "Engaging Youth in Bicycle Advocacy," which includes key findings and the promise of further research and engagement with a national survey. Read the full report.

Bicycles have long been a vehicle for social change in the United States, from the Good Roads movement to today’s community rides. But for many of those we’d like to reach, the bicycle’s potential can be dismissed with a few key descriptors: unsafe, privileged, entitled. Our work as advocates often focuses on remedying the historical shift from human-scaled streets to highways, but this exhibit draws attention to another form of separation that is intrinsic to U.S. history: segregation by race. To move forward together, we must understand our shared heritage. Download the report here.

Here at the League, we've been working on defining what bike equity means for an organization like ours. Today we are releasing a report, Integrating Equity in Bike Advocacy, that shares the process we've been developing. This report includes a timeline tracing the evolution of our Equity Initiative, our framework for integrating equity into each League program, and some lessons we have learned. Each of our staff work plans now has at least one equity, diversity, or inclusion related task to be completed in 2014.

Watch the webinar recording that takes a deeper look at this report here.

Can a temporary street closure have lasting effects on everyday transportation habits? The social psychology concept of “unfreezing” habit suggests that it can. What the ciclovía model offers is a way to take our mindset, as people who currently walk and bike, and project it onto the much bigger screen of the street. It’s a way to show skeptics what we have in mind; it’s a way to build a human infrastructure for walking and biking that supports active transportation not as a symbol of luxury or privilege, but as a method for creating healthy and civically engaged communities. Download the report here.

There is a diverse bike movement in the United States. In "The New Movement: Bike Equity Today" we showcase the work of many people and projects around the country leading the way in building a bike movement with social equity at its heart. When diversity becomes a valued part of decisionmaking in bike planning and design, we will have moved closer to bike equity. This report updates our foundational 2013 report "The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity" by fleshing out what demographic shift can mean for the bike movement. Download the report here.

How do we ensure we don't overlook the voices of leaders as important but not imperative? And how do we make sure traditional advocacy organizations value and genuinely incorporate their perspectives — even when it exposes our blindspots or runs counter to our experiences? And those are exactly the questions Dr. Adonia Lugo examines in Who Participates in What Processes: From groupthink to democracy in bicycle policy advocacy — a report based on Lugo's academic expertise, personal experience and participation in the 2015 Youth Bike Summit.

The League commissioned Rachel Prelog, a graduate student in Texas A&M's Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, to write this new report to serve as another resource for those interested in bicycle equity. The purpose of this report is to provide tangible GIS methods for investigating the equity of access to bicycle infrastructure. In order to develop a full understanding of the context behind the methods, it will provide an overview of equity issues and define types of transportation equity paradigms related to bicycle equity. There is no single best way to measure access and bicycle equity for the variety of cities where bicycle equity is in question. Download the report here.

In 2013, the League of American Bicyclists (League) and the Sierra Club published “The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity,” a report highlighting the changing demographics within the bicycling movement. Today, the League is releasing a new report, “Reconnecting to the New Majority,” to update our understanding of demographic trends in bicycling, identify areas of focus to ensure that all people — particularly Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC) — have access to safe bicycling, and further progress actions that promote equity in bicycling. Download the report here.