Bend Bikes Mission
We love our community, we love riding our bikes to work, school, and the grocery store, and we want everyone else to love it, too! But that requires people to feel safe on a comprehensive network of bike-friendly routes in every part of Bend.
We are a grassroots organization that engages with and advocates on behalf of a coalition of families and people who bike in Bend with City leadership, staff, and other key decision makers. We believe that our community requires strong leadership that understands: (1) inclusive, sustainable, and equitable transportation planning for our community requires all people to feel safe biking to school, work, the grocery store, and across town; (2) we should prioritize protecting the most vulnerable, like children who ride bikes; and (3) reducing traffic benefits everyone and helps keep all people safer.
Inclusive, sustainable, and equitable transportation planning: Low income residents and communities of color are the most likely to live far away from public services, jobs, and schools; are the least likely to be able to own a car; are the least likely to have multi-modal transportation and bike infrastructure built in their neighborhoods; and are the most likely to be inequitably impacted by transportation policy and planning. Transportation planning has historically and continues to demolished Black and low income neighborhoods to make way for highways, and well intentioned initiatives like Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths rely heavily on bias-prone traffic enforcement and fines that would disproportionately impact low income drivers. Inclusive, sustainable, and equitable transportation models not only embrace that mobility does not require owning a car, but they prioritize the needs of low income residents and communities of color.
Protecting the most vulnerable users of our transportation system: 1.25 million people die every year on our roads primarily due to human error. Low income people and people of color are disproportionately the victims of traffic crashes and collisions. People, especially children and older adults, who bike are particularly vulnerable when roads are designed for the efficient movement of cars.
Reducing traffic benefits everyone: Every car we take off the road not only extends the lifetime of our roads, but also extends the lifetime of the very people who bike. Each person who rides a bike reduces traffic for those who do rely on cars and bikes create virtually no greenhouse gases, smog, or other air pollution because they require no fuel (except a hearty breakfast).