Hello, Friends of Community Cycles –
2022 was an exciting year where Community Cycles was able to fully embrace and expand our programs for you in advocacy, access, education and sustainability after 3 long years of managing COVID restrictions. Take a look at some of our 2022 achievements:
We Advocate for Safer Commuting Infrastructure:
The Community Cycles Advocacy Committee continued to work on local issues that are important for your safety. These improve commuting infrastructure for all pedestrians and cyclists.
- Advocating for safer road designs in new developments: We are fighting a proposed dangerous entrance/exit to the new CU Conference Center at Grandview Avenue. A thousand more vehicles a day will cross the flagship Broadway bike path. The intersection is unsignalized, on a hill, and has limited sight distances, defying Vision Zero principles.
- Advocating for safer streets: Community Cycles’ lobbying efforts were instrumental in the Boulder City Council decision to make the “Core Arterial Network (CAN)” a top priority. CAN will concentrate on projects on key arterials (where most crashes happen), fixing missing links to complete our Low Stress Bicycle Network and a transit priority bus lane.
- Community Cycles has been lobbying for a rewrite of the city of Boulder’s Design Construction Standards (DCS) since 2015. This year saw success with improvements added that will make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians. The DCS sets the standards for roadway and driveways (think sidewalks widths, turning radii) for public and private roads, driveways and intersections. This applies not just to public roads, but also for all new commercial and residential development in the city.
You can read about these and more advocacy ‘wins’ on our Advocacy blog.
We Offer Access to Bicycles:
As you can imagine, the importance of our programs that get bikes in the hands of people who need them did not slow down at all during COVID. In 2022 we gave away over 800 bikes to low-income children, adults, and families – getting our neighbors necessary transportation and instilling an early love of bicycles, including:
- Partnered with Boulder BCycle to give away 30 BCycle passes to low income commuters.
- Provided 50+ bikes to families affected by the Marshall Fire, so that they are able to get to their jobs and recreate on a bicycle during a challenging point in their lives.
- Served almost 6k customers in our non-profit Bike Shop, including selling over 1300 upcycled bikes. By providing quality used bikes for the Boulder community, our Bike Shop helps fund our mission of giving more people access to bicycles.
Learn more about what our Bike Shop has to offer.
We Offer Bicycle Education:
We have heard from you that you are thrilled that we are back to full capacity in workshops and in the DIY Shop.
- Over 600 hours of workshops were attended, from Maintenance 101 to the comprehensive 6-session Complete Mechanics Series.
- Supporting women cyclists: In 2022 we offered a Women’s Clinic every quarter, where a comfortable environment and instruction is provided by women, for women to learn basic and intermediate bike maintenance and repair.
- Community Cycles participated with the City of Boulder on their kids ‘Bike Rodeos’ and Back to School Day event. We talked to hundreds of kids and parents about how to get kids excited about riding bikes to school. We also assisted on a Skills Course where kids learned skills like coming to a complete stop at intersections and looking both ways before continuing.
Check out what’s coming up on our Calendar.
We Work to Fight Climate Change:
As a nonprofit, we strive to create a closed loop business model. That includes business practices at our shop along with creating a community that comes to us to recycle and upcycle “all things bike.”
- We started a bike tire recycling program in 2022 to keep more rubber out of the landfill. We recycled over 4000 bike tires, in addition to 4000 bike tubes in our existing program!
- We upcycled or recycled almost 3K bikes through the CC bike shop, keeping them out of the landfill and bringing them back to active use in our community.
- We hosted 6 bike drives in various locations throughout Boulder during the year, where we collected around 300 bikes from community members. Besides getting bikes back out into the community, this saved people the individual trips, usually by motor vehicle, to our Shop to drop off their bikes.
Keep up on sustainability efforts by signing up for our e-newsletter.
Heading into 2023: What to Expect and How You Can Help
We have you to thank for the incredible success of our programs in Advocacy, Access, Education and Sustainability by supporting Community Cycles with monetary and bicycle donations and attendance at events like Walk and Bike Month.
Our ambitions remain high for 2023 in all of these areas to create transportation that betters all residents’ lives: physically, emotionally, and economically.
We are anticipating making an impact in Boulder around two improvements in particular, both of which will help connect you to where you’re going and will reduce miles traveled in a motor vehicle:
- Affordable ways own an e-bike and the encouragement to commute and run errands with it.
- Safer cycling infrastructure on both Baseline and Iris streets through the City’s focus on the Core Arterial Network (CAN).
We appreciate your continued support and ask that you please consider becoming a Member. Your Membership shows that you support our work in advocacy, education, access and sustainability, along with helping to fund our programs around those ambitions.
Thanks for choosing to support our organization and becoming a part of commuting and climate solutions.
Sue Prant, Executive Director