Letter from the Saddle
This spring, Bike East Bay celebrates our 50th Anniversary as bicycle advocates for Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The first meeting of what was then known as the East Bay Bicycle Coalition took place at Westlake Junior High School, near Lake Merritt in Oakland on March 20, 1972. The issues of street safety and access to transit galvanized Bike East Bay’s early founders and remain core pieces of Bike East Bay’s advocacy agenda today.
Growing from this narrow focus of representing the interests of bicyclists, Bike East Bay today is part of a larger movement to improve mobility and build a more sustainable and equitable future. Bicycling works best as part of a larger transportation ecosystem. This is why we fight for better walking and transit as much as we do better bicycling.
We know that people will choose to ride if it feels safe and convenient. Yet, safety means different things across various identities and communities. For Black and Brown people, police-based traffic enforcement may seem like more of a threat than a way to reduce traffic violence. While bicycle advocates have historically focused heavily on building bike infrastructure, we now recognize the importance of building human infrastructure — the networks of social support that help encourage people to ride.
Bike East Bay works to remove racial, social and economic barriers to bicycling through education and engagement strategies. For example, we’ve focused on training women and people of color to be bicycle education instructors (see page 3) so that people from diverse backgrounds feel safe and seen when they show up to a class. We partner with affordable housing advocates and developers to prevent more people from being displaced. We’ve won funding for community bike shops and Black-led ride groups.
Bike East Bay also has a lot of fun doing this work. Fifty years later to the day of the first meeting of the East Bay’s bike advocates, Education Director Robert Prinz rode 50 miles around Lake Merritt in commemoration (see photos on page 5). Many members joined the ride as well and together you raised funds for better biking.
At the heart of Bike East Bay, we are all passionate about sharing the joy of biking. You too can share the joy during Bike Month this May. Shake off the pandemic isolation blues with fun events where you can ride together with new friends and fellow members. Be sure to join tens of thousands of people from around the Bay Area for Bike to Wherever Day on Friday, May 20, 2022. Plan your Bike Month starting on page 7.
