Year in Review 2021

Thank you for keeping our wheels turning!

While 2021 was not the year any of us expected, all of us at BikePGH are incredibly appreciative of our biking and walking community. Your ongoing support allowed us to keep working every day to create safer streets for all. We cannot continue the work we do without generous donors and members like you.

2021 Highlights Include:

We wrapped up the ambitious 2-year MoveForwardPGH partnership with the City of Pittsburgh and Healthy Ride Bike Share. The program sought to rapidly implement the City’s 2020 Bike (+) Plan and provide some marketing muscle behind the street changes. Almost 20 miles of new bike infrastructure were installed with this program, including the creation of a new traffic calmed street type, the Neighborway. Even more miles are planned for 2022.
We placed approximately 200 new bike racks in business districts throughout Pittsburgh in order to provide more bike parking spaces to people visiting these places for shopping, dining, and entertainment on bike
More than 1,850 people participated in this year’s hybrid UPMC Health Plan PedalPGH, helping us raise crucial funds for better biking and walking.
We held our 8th Annual Women & Non-Binary Bike Summit presented by Dollar Bank, featuring virtual workshops by Ann Nguyen, Marley Blonsky, Kailey Kornhauser, and Kiran Herbert, as well as a celebratory group bike ride to Millie’s Ice Cream.
As the world of live events began to open up, we hosted an OpenStreetsPGH as a “mini-event,” opening 2 miles of city streets in Hazelwood for socially-distanced recreation.
Worked with Councilman Bobby Wilson to get a policy unanimously passed at City Council to add bike lanes to the official list of places in the Pittsburgh municipal code where people cannot park their cars.

Advocacy

We hosted 20 community meetings to build out new infrastructure under the MoveForwardPGH banner.
The City installed more than 9 miles of safer infrastructure in 2021 — 5 miles bike lanes (1 mile protected) and 1 mile of Neighborways, bringing the total bike infrastructure to over 100 miles.
We worked with community members to launch 5 new neighborhood bike/ped committees.
Launched the Safe Trips in the Strip campaign to connect the Penn Ave bike lanes to the surrounding communities
Our We Walk We Bike We Vote campaign interviewed Pittsburgh’s Mayoral and Council Candidates.
Hosted 6 online advocacy workshops to keep our advocates informed and engaged in a new virtual setting.
In partnership with Pitt and CMU, we hosted the 3rd Bike to Campus Week as a hybrid event. This week-long series of activities featured online workshops as well an in-person fair for students to get involved with local biking organizations, rent Healthy Ride bikes, and test e-bikes.
On November 21, we honored World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Victims, displaying white shoes, canes, and other items to represent and memorialize neighbors who we’ve lost in local traffic fatalities. Family members of those lost and community members gathered for a moment of silence.
We launched a brand new Grassroots Advocacy Toolkit to help teach people in the community how to advocate for safer streets.
Did community outreach and planning on behalf of the City of Pittsburgh and our partners at Buchart Horn for the placement of nearly 200 new bike racks in business districts throughout Pittsburgh.
Got a “no parking in bike lanes” bill passed!

Education

We hosted 5 bike light giveaways in Brookline, Friendship, Northside, Homewood, and Garfield and distributed lights and supplies at The Homewood Community Health & Wellness Summit, Bike to Campus Week, The Obama Academy Sponsor a Commuter Program, and the Ruach Bike Club Slow Roll.
This year’s Operation Illumination program distributed more than 400 bike light sets and over 50 helmets and u-locks.
We produced 38 educational videos, from short how-to’s focused on new bike infrastructure to full-length webinars associated with the WMNBikePGH Summit, OpenStreetsPGH, PedalPGH, and Bike to Campus Week. Our videos were viewed over 12,000 times in 2021!
In partnership with Pittsburgh Public Schools and Children’s Hospital, we launched the Strider All Kids Bike program. Over 150 students learned to ride in their gym classes using Strider’s curriculum and 14x bicycles that can be converted from push bikes into pedal bikes as students’ skills progress.
We sponsored 5 Obama Academy students to become bike commuters, providing them with a Confident City Cycling Class as well as their own personal bicycles, locks, lights, and helmets.
Our partnership with Environmental Charter School (Bike ECS) Middle School continued in the fall, where we assisted weekly with planning, curriculum, bike maintenance, and ride leading. BikePGH also lent a fleet of bikes to Arsenal Middle School for use in their Phys Ed classes and electives.
We teamed up with DOMI’s Safe Routes to School program to encourage safe walking and bike commuting practices as a response to the district bus driver shortage.

Membership & Community Events

We now have 3,177 member-donors in our biking and walking community, and 545 people have chosen to support our work for safer streets as Sustaining Members.
Our business member network now includes over 50 businesses across the Greater Pittsburgh region.
The Women & Non-Binary Program (WMNBikePGH) hosted 10 workshops both in-person and virtually, covering everything from how to fix a flat to how to bike the GAP.
105 Volunteers took on socially-distanced tasks like testing the new PedalPGH routes, handing out bike maps at OpenStreetsPGH, and lending a hand at the office.
We turned Bike to Work Day into Bike Anywhere Week, encouraging Pittsburghers to try biking to work, go out to eat, or meet up with friends on two wheels. The weeklong event offered Zoom workshops and coffee meetups, social media takeovers, bike light giveaways, as well as 2 Commuter Cafes in Lawrenceville and East Liberty.
The 8th Annual Women & Non-Binary Bike Summit presented by Dollar Bank featured virtual workshops by Ann Nguyen, Marley Blonsky & Kailey Kornhauser, and Kiran Herbert as well as a celebratory group bike ride to Millie’s. All Summit participants received a free copy of the Bike Girl Magic ebook and a swag bag complete with bike lights, tire levers, a patch kit, ride-friendly snacks, a WMNBikePGH water bottle, and the Pittsburgh Bike Map.
As the world of live events began to open up, we hosted an OpenStreetsPGH “mini-event,” opening 2 miles of city streets in Hazelwood for socially-distanced recreation. The event brought 2,000 participants from across the city to explore the closure and enjoy a variety of exciting free activities along the way.
Our largest fundraising ride – UPMC HealthPlan PedalPGH – sold out this year! With the help of supporters like you, we raised $210,000 towards our work! Over 1,850 registered riders tackled PedalPGH’s hills on 4 different routes to safely experience our beautiful city on two wheels.
In partnership with MoveForwardPGH and Spin, we celebrated Park(ing) Day with an open-air cafe on Penn Ave. Passerbys were delighted to find free danishes and coffee as well as repurposed spaces for art, play, and activism!
We hosted our Inaugural Women & Non-Binary Camping Trip! Participants biked 26 miles along the GAP Trail from Golden Triangle Bikes to Dravo’s Landing. Participants were able to experience their first bike overnight trip in a safe and supportive environment, complete with s’mores and a night under the stars.
For the 20th year of the Bicycle Film Festival, BikePGH hosted the virtual tour stop in Pittsburgh and offered sliding scale tickets to the 90 minute short film format to be enjoyed from the comfort of your home.

Make a Difference Today

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