People for Bikes
2019 – $12,000 Biking Toolkit for Scoring Cities
The PeopleForBikes Foundation is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of putting more people on bicycles more often and making bicycling better for everyone. PeopleForBikes Foundation programs include PlacesForBikes, helping to build connected networks of bicycle infrastructure in U.S. cities through initiatives including the Final Mile, City Ratings and Advocacy Academy; the Better Bike Share Partnership, a grant-funded collaborative to improve access to and use of shared micromobility systems in low income and communities of color; the PeopleForBikes campaign, a powerful national movement of people who ride bikes and want riding to be safer, more comfortable and more accessible; and Ride Spot, a platform to help people find and share great places to ride.
Since its beginning, PeopleForBikes has been dedicated to helping cities, regions and advocacy organizations at the local and state levels advance, promote and build safe places to ride a bike. In recent years, this focus on infrastructure has been reflected through three integrated initiatives: Final Mile, City Ratings and Advocacy Academy.
Final Mile is accelerating the installation of complete mobility networks in five U.S. cities: Austin, Denver, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Providence. By combining proven advocacy strategies with public communication tools, this effort builds broad support for new, cost-effective mobility networks. In each city network will increase bike riding and reduce single occupancy motorized vehicle trips. The Final Mile matches investments in mobility infrastructure made by its partner cities with support for specific needs identified by those cities. The program also provides a suite of additional resources including public opinion research, paid communications outreach through digital, broadcast and print media, and support for outreach and engagement activities through local non-profit organizations. The Final Mile cities will complete increases to their mobility networks of between 50 and 150 miles by the end of 2022.
City Ratings is a data-driven approach to evaluating more than 600 U.S. cities based on the connectivity of their bicycle networks and the experience of riding for those who live there. Using feedback from everyday bike riders, city staff, open-source maps and publicly available data, each city receives a score from 1-100. Detailed maps from the Bicycle Network Analysis tool helps leaders and staff pinpoint areas for improvement so that investments in infrastructure are leveraged for maximum benefit to the people who use it.
Advocacy Academy is an online video and resource library for city leaders, decision makers and advocates. It provides the necessary tools and information to understand how cities are evaluated through the City Ratings program and how to make cities better for bikes. The first series, Lessons from the Best Biking Cities, includes interviews with key staff and critical takeaways for how and why building a comprehensive bicycling network contributes to a stronger community.
The Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) is a grant-funded collaborative focused on increasing access to and use of shared micromobility in low-income and communities of color. Together with partners at the City of Philadelphia and the National Association of City Transportation Officials, PeopleForBikes launched new programs in 2020 aimed at increasing the diversity of the micromobility workforce, piloting new strategies for addressing barriers to access in BIPOC communities, and providing technical assistance, resources and stories of challenge and success for those working to make bike and scooter share an accessible mode of transportation for all.
Finally, the PeopleForBikes campaign and Ride Spot ensure that the voices of millions of Americans who ride bikes are heard and amplified, and that more are welcomed to bicycling with rides curated for them. The Ride Spot app helps bike shops, advocacy organizations and individual riders map and share local routes while making it easier for other riders to find and follow them. With the ability to add images, captions and anecdotes, Ride Spot Stories turn rides into experiences.
In 2019, the Seed Fund invested in a PeopleForBikes initiative to develop user-friendly templates to help communities measure the economic benefits of street improvements. These templates are an extension of a study conducted in partnership with Bennett Midland consulting and Portland State University to examine the economic benefits to businesses located along corridors where bicycle infrastructure was installed. The study looked at four U.S. cities and used sales tax and employment data to compare improvement corridors to comparable corridors without improvements. PeopleForBikes published study results from the four cities, along with a summary report and study guide with the template to help other cities conduct their own assessments. Across all four cities, improvements in bicycle infrastructure either improved economic indicators or did not change them, results that the partners publicized widely in 2020.