Basalt offers bilingual bike classes for Latinx residents

Source: WE-cycle.

Basalt, Colorado’s bike share system, WE-cycle, continues outreach to the local Spanish-speaking community in order to give everyone the same opportunities to ride.

WE-cycle has run the Movimiento en Bici program for several years now, which aims to extend bike share to the local Latinx community. The program introduces participants to the sign-up process and works to remove any barriers to accessing the system. All Movimiento en Bici staff are bilingual in English and Spanish.

With assistance from the BBSP mini-grant, WE-cycle is expanding resources to offer classes for adults who either don’t know how to ride or would like a refresher course. The class includes instruction, such as how to pass people on a bike, being on the road with cars, and how to signal.

Source: WE-cycle.

Source: WE-cycle.

Source: WE-cycle.

“We’re making the classes specific to each set of participants, depending on the skill level of who we’re reaching out to,” said Kellyn Wardell, Senior Program Manager at WE-cycle. She says classes are usually oriented either to the novice or intermediate level.

Additionally, participants go on a group ride. WE-cycle encourages use of its bikes outside of courses by recommending routes, such as riding to work or to the grocery store.

WE-cycle is offering eight learn-to-ride classes throughout the Basalt area this season, working with familiar partners Valley Settlement Project and English in Action. The bike share system itself operates from May up to winter time.

The success of the program depends on being at well-attended local events led by WE-cycle’s partners. For example, Valley Settlement Project runs adult classes ranging from literature and ESL, to computers and math. WE-cycle helps incorporate bicycling into the field trip portion of these courses.

“It was important to establish community partners like that,” said Wardell. “We maintain a point of contact with each organization we work with. And we’ve learned a ton from them by being in collaboration and working on events together, like how to best do sharing and marketing. Our partners make sure people actually come.”

WE-cycle also shows its commitment to bike share accessibility by offering free rides for 30 minutes to all members of the system.

Stay tuned for more updates from our 2019 mini-grantees!

The Better Bike Share Partnership is funded by The JPB Foundation as a collaborative between the City of Philadelphia, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and the PeopleForBikes Foundation to build equitable and replicable bike share systems. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or sign up for our weekly newsletter. Story tip? Write stefani@betterbikeshare.org.