Bublr’s Mission to Promote Bike Share Through Education

Now in its third year, the Savvy Cycling Program is expanding its community engagement through bike classes alongside Milwaukee’s bike infrastructure expansion.

Bublr Bikes, Milwaukee’s nonprofit bike share system, launched back in 2014 with just 10 docking stations spread throughout its downtown area. Despite being one of the most segregated cities in the U.S., Bublr has been able to expand with equity as an integral part of how they operate, now boasting more than 120 stations across the city and the surrounding communities of Wauwatosa and West Allis thanks to their commitment to reaching low-income neighborhoods and communities of color through the Savvy Cycling program.

The Savvy Cycling program began as a three-year effort to strengthen engagement with community partners and fine-tune engagement strategies. Bublr staff work in neighborhoods where 28-49% of households lack access to private vehicles (compared to 17.4% for the city as a whole) to host free classes using the Bublr system. Staff show residents how to use the system while providing tips for safe riding throughout the city. After the 90-minute class is complete, participants receive a bicycle helmet and a 30-day Bublr pass. The classes are tied to community events already taking place.

“The program allows us to go out and meet with our residents, our community members, our neighbors, and give them a brief overview and education of the basics — signaling, going with the flow of traffic, not against the flow of traffic — to make our constituents feel more confident in getting on the bike,” says Laura Bolger, executive director of Bublr Bikes. 

When BBSP announced our latest mini-grant round in March of this year, Bublr saw an opportunity to fill gaps in their 2024 funding to support the Savvy Cycling program in order to continue speaking to Milwaukee residents about bike share. In June, Bublr was awarded a grant to do just that. 

To lead the Savvy Cycling program Bublr hired Daniela Lopez as their new community engagement manager. 

“In a way, we’re looking at it with new eyes, because we have a fresh staff member on it, focusing on some of our expansion work and trying to continue to put stations in lower-income, historically disinvested communities that don’t have access to reliable transportation,” says Bolger.

Bublr isn’t interested in reinventing the wheel, according to Bolger. She says their staff collaborates with partner organizations that are pillars in the community and already have relationships with the residents they are trying to reach.

“Milwaukee is a beautiful city that has lots of historical disinvestment and systemic issues,” says Bolger. “So, as we’re expanding, we are expanding into neighborhoods that have been systematically cut out and had interstates plowed through them. As we are expanding our network, we are trying to repair some of that damage. Knowing that as we move to the south side of Milwaukee, where a lot of our Hispanic population lives, a lot of our material needs to be bilingual. Our community engagement manager is bilingual and able to speak to those residents more directly and clearly [in a way] that we previously couldn’t do.”

According to Bolger, the City of Milwaukee is working on traffic calming, Vision Zero work, and supports protected bike infrastructure. Through a $2.09 million Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant, Milwaukee is also building 50 miles of protected bike lanes by 2026.

“Having a plan in place to ensure that all residents are able to get out and experience what this new infrastructure is going to look like is going to be really beneficial for Bublr, as well as our Savvy Cycling program, so people don’t have to be quite as intimidated,” says Bolger. “If we put in a station, we should be doing Savvy Cycling in and around that area so that folks can feel confident.”