Year In Review 2023

Taking a retrospective ride through this year’s accomplishments, and how your support helps keep up the momentum!

Just like navigating the streets of Pittsburgh, this year has been an exhilarating journey filled with vibrant connections, great communities, and some hills to climb. As we pedal through this year in review, we’ll ride past the milestones and transformative moments that defined BikePGH’s work and benefited our community over the last 365 days. As always, thank you for being a part of the collective momentum that has propelled us forward!

Click here to keep the momentum going

2023 Highlights include:

Advocacy

We expanded our Advocacy department with the hiring of our Advocacy Manager, Seth Bush! He hit the ground running (or is it walking), and immediately enrolled in the AmericaWalks/AARP Walking College, of which he just graduated from!
A year of Concrete: It took a village of dedicated advocates and coalitions, but the City installed concrete separation along the Penn Ave bike lanes in Downtown. Also, the City’s first concrete Jersey-Barrier protected bike lanes opened on Forbes Ave in Frick Park, a significant upgrade from the originally proposed flex-post separation.
From Beechview to Homewood and everywhere in between, we completed a project with DOMI that installed 500 new bike racks over the past two years.
We surveyed all the primary candidates in our long running Bike Walk Vote campaign.
Coordinated a solid Pittsburgh contingent to speak to Senators Casey and Fetterman, and Representative Lee in DC about how the Federal government can make biking and walking better during the National Bike Summit.
Our push for more Complete Streets Policies in Allegheny County expanded when Dormont became the eighth Allegheny County municipality to adopt one. Additionally, the City of Pittsburgh relaunched their Complete Streets Advisory Group, dormant since 2019.
It’s something that people don’t like to talk about, but parking on the sidewalk is a problem. So we launched an awareness campaign to increase the dialogue and to get people to Stop Parking on the Sidewalks.
We trained 25 advocates over the course of our Advocacy Training series launching 6 new campaigns for safer biking and walking ranging from traffic calming, to new bike lanes, to improvements for city steps. Participants learned how to identify problems and opportunities for walking and biking safety in their communities by organizing a “walk audit”, how to shape their ideas from that experience into winnable campaigns, and develop strategies to run those advocacy campaigns effectively.
Other infrastructure wins include new bike lanes on Stanton Ave (and hopefully more on the way), a new Neighborway between the Chateau Trail and Riverview Park, and a new underpass at the 40th St Bridge, with a traffic-calming street mural in front of the library on the way! The City now claims close to 120 miles of on-street bike lanes and markings.
Safe Trips in the Strip campaign makes progress! Strip District changes are coming with the city proposing four new projects to help make biking, walking, and transit better. These changes include new bike lanes on Smallman St and Penn Ave, which are currently in the draft 2024 Capital Budget

Education

Our Know Your Bike classes in partnership with Free Ride provided 32 students with the skills and knowledge to troubleshoot and maintain their own bicycles.
Pittsburgh’s delegation to the National Bike Summit joined educators and advocates from across the country to network, learn, and lobby congress to make our roads safer and to encourage sustainable modes of transportation.
BikePGH produced our first ever hardcopy “E-BikePGH Guide” to answer all of your questions about this exciting form of bike transportation.
Our 9th edition of The Pittsburgh Bike Map hit the streets on Bike to Work Day featuring more information and bike infrastructure than ever before.
We relaunched our Earn-a-Bike program with ACTION-Housing which enabled fifteen young people enrolled in the program to earn their own Cannondal Treadwell 2 commuter bikes with lights, locks, helmets, and all the information they need to bike around Pittsburgh safely.
Our Confident City Cycling program expanded to five classes from May through September. Throughout the season, ten LCI instructors instructed over sixty participants to become safer and more confident riders. We’re excited to host an LCI seminar to certify even more instructors next year.
Hundreds of kids and families enjoyed on bike activities at our three OpenStreetsPGH Kids Hubs.
BikePGH engagements with school partners reached five hundred students in 2023 including Sterrett Classical Academy who received an Outride grant of 30 Specialized mountain bikes, helmets, and curriculum.
Operation Illumination distributed over 500 front and rear light sets and 200 helmets via its four pop up events across Pittsburgh and through partnering with community organizations and schools. We were excited to offer rechargeable lights for our final event of 2023 and for all Operation Illumination events moving forward!

Events

To keep moving during the winter months, our WMNBikePGH program hosted a free weekly yoga series at Open Up for cyclists who were women, queer, trans, non-binary or other underrepresented gender identities.
Pittsburgh could not wait to get back outside this summer! We set event attendance records all summer long at OpenStreetsPGH, PedalPGH, and the WMNBikePGH Group Rides.
The return of Bike to Work Day with a full day of programming was the kickoff to the 2023 summer season of events – expanded morning and evening commuter cafe events encouraged residents to hop on their bike and take a ride using active transportation no matter the time of day.
OpenStreetsPGH in May featured a brand new route connecting the North Shore to the South Side and attracted an attendance of over 18,000! June’s event was nearly the longest OpenStreetsPGH route ever – taking a 4.2 mile new route through Northside, Strip District, and Lawrenceville neighborhoods and brought a record breaking 22,000 participants to enjoy a day of people-powered fun.
The final of the year was another brand-new route in July, creating a car-free connection between the communities of Bloomfield and Oakland for the first time and drawing over 15,000 attendees.
The 30th Anniversary celebration of PedalPGH saw our highest registration numbers since 2020 – together over $275,000 was raised for safer biking and walking from 3000+ riders and the generosity of our sponsors.
The fifth annual Bike to Campus Week was held in partnership with Pitt, CMU, Chatham, Point Park University and introduced students and faculty to all the bike-friendly amenities that each college has to offer. BikePGH was proud to help equip the next generation of riders by helping host over 10 events across the participating campuses, including a student-focused Operation Illumination that distributed over 120 front and rear light sets to those in need.
The Annual WMNBikePGH Summit presented by Dollar Bank featured keynote speaker Keshia Roberson and brought together the community to learn from and uplift each other for the tenth year in a row.

Membership and Community

Bike Pittsburgh was honored to be the recipient of the inaugural Sanctuary Award from SanctuaryPGH as well as the Canfield Award from the Lawrenceville Rotary Club in 2023.
The Business of Biking Happy Hour Series is back in action! Business network members gathered quarterly at local Pittsburgh businesses to discuss innovative active transportation incentives, showcase green company practices, and highlight anything they’re proud of, fostering a healthy community network of businesses who care about our mission
At the BikePGH Business Awards we recognized the following Business Members who went above and beyond to help us create a safer, more accessible place for all Pittsburghers:
- New Business Member of the Year – ACTION-Housing
- Business Member of the Year – Millie’s Homemade Ice Cream
- Organization of the Year – Open Up
- Small Business Champion – Velo.ai
- Bike Industry Member of the Year – Cannondale
Streets Are For People Award for DOMI for their work going above and beyond this past year.
We hired 15 folks who love all things biking to help us spread our mission in collaboration with POGOH in the BikePeople Outreach Associates Program. We could not have reached the community this past summer without their dedication and enthusiasm!

Staff and BikePeople attended over 100 community events in 23 neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh, distributing hundreds of copies of our official Pittsburgh Bike Map, bike education guides, and engaging many more people in our work to transform Pittsburgh into an even more mobility just city!
Over 160 volunteers supported BikePGH, OpenStreetsPGH, and PedalPGH, helping with important tasks that ensure our community events are safe and successful.
Our event racks provided free bike parking to 11 community events, including iconic summer music festivals such as Pittonkatonk, Millvale Music Festival, and North Side Music Fest. We even provided racks for the Swiftys to get to Taylor’s concerts on two wheels!
We provided a bike valet for the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh’s Juneteenth Celebration, and the WYEP Summer Music Festival.
We donated BikePGH merchandise to over a dozen Pittsburgh nonprofits in support of their fundraising efforts.
BikePGH now has over 3500 members & donors!

We’re making it better to get around Pittsburgh by foot and on wheels, and we need your help!

Now through the end of the year, we’re sharing stories of people whose lives have been improved thanks to BikePGH’s advocacy for improved mobility infrastructure. If these stories resonate with you and you want to contribute to the transformation, please help us reach our fundraising goal now: