Guest Article: The next chapter of Bike Loud is here

This post was written by Bike Loud leaders Hami Ramani (@hamiramani), RJ Sheperd (@rjsheperd), and Kiel Johnson (@kiel_by_bike).

Change is coming to Portland’s bicycle advocacy scene. Bike Loud PDX is adapting to become a more effective and more vocal force to shape Portland’s bicycling policy. This month we are launching our first neighborhood chapters, which will bring Bike Loud PDX to the local level and onto the streets.

Inspired by the successful Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, we are starting three local neighborhood chapters, SE/East, NE/North, and West Portland. Since our founding seven years ago, we have learned that local people know what their neighborhood needs to become a better place to ride. These chapters will empower those local advocates and provide energy for citywide efforts.

Three successful months of Pedalpalooza show that there are still lots of people in Portland who care deeply about bicycling and how it can make this city a better place. We hope to harness some of that energy to reverse the trend of our stagnant bicycle numbers.

In an effort to center community and the most efficient and low impact mode of travel – the bicycle! – we have organized weekly rides to the Saturday PSU Farmers Market and a monthly NE Portland farmers market ride over the past ten months. These rides have become a respite for many folks seeking an all-ages and all-abilities way to get out and safely engage with Portland and Portlanders. Our rides are explicitly about supporting local farmers, makers and bakers while helping advocate for safer streets for all road users.

Through this experience we hope to activate a broad group of people who use their bikes/trikes to move about town. We want to see these Portlanders empowered to make changes at the hyper-local level to help affect policy at a citywide (or countywide) sphere.

There is a deep urgency that informs our efforts. The climate crisis is happening right now and we need an all-hands-on-deck approach if we are going to make this a world that dramatically limits greenhouse gas emissions. We will focus on building partnerships with all groups connected to addressing climate change and we will have a strong presence in our region’s conversations around how we adapt to a world with a changing climate.

The power of the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted the deep-rooted inequities in our society. We are committed to working for improved transportation equity and access to a high quality citywide bike network that allows people to conveniently move around on the cheapest and most efficient mode of transportation available, the bicycle.

And we need you!

BikePortland is an important component of building knowledge and connecting people to the stories of how bicycling makes people’s lives better. Our aim is to create a space beyond the virtual world for people to use that knowledge to make their community a better place. We hope you will join us and follow along as we fight to make Portland the best place to ride a bike in the world. We are currently looking for new board members to help steer this next chapter. If you are interested email bikeloudpdx@gmail.com.

We need your passion and energy. Please join our newsletter and stay informed about our activism.

— Hami Ramani, RJ Sheperd, Kiel Johnson
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