Half the residents of north Portland’s Portsmouth neighborhood are kids, and 80 percent of households with kids live in poverty.

Bikes are simple, inexpensive machines that can be a big part of those kids’ lives — but bikes often need repairs and tuneups, not to mention friendly folks to talk about how and where to ride. Four years ago, the Community Cycling Center opened a Bike Repair Hub in the middle of the New Columbia mixed-income housing community to try and solve that problem.

It’s a shed with tools and a staffer, next to an awesome skills course. But staffers cost money, and the CCC wants to double the number of hours that the Hub can be staffed this summer — enough to fix 50 bikes per week, they say.

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The New Columbia Bike Hub opens in 2012, offering basic bike repair tools, assistance and equipment loans in the North Portland development.
(Photos: J.Maus/BikePortland)

In 2008, Portland’s nonprofit bike shop kicked off an initiative to be known for more than reliable used bikes and Christmastime giveaways. And it succeeded.

The Community Cycling Center‘s 2010 report Understanding Barriers to Bicycling, based on interviews with dozens of residents of the New Columbia and Hacienda low- and mixed-income housing developments, is regularly cited around the country as a key piece of research about the ways bicycling decisions vary by race and ethnicity.

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