BikeMatchDC celebrates one year of getting butts on bikes. Here’s what we learned. 

Mutual aid has been a backbone for our communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. These programs have helped many neighbors survive, and in some cases, even thrive. BikeMatchDC is a mutual aid program specifically focused on transportation. Since we launched on March 30, 2020, we have been connecting people in DC who have an extra bicycle with people who need a bike.

As our city came to a grinding halt last year, essential workers who had relied on public transit were looking for a COVID-safe way to get to work. Drivers were staying home and our streets were quiet. Essential workers and others quickly discovered biking on our wide-open streets became a quick, safe, cost-efficient way to commute… if these workers could find and/or afford a bike. Based on a similar idea in New York City, BikeMatchDC was born.

As co-founders we scrambled to figure out a way to quickly build out a program that was safe, (both COVID-wise and personal safety-wise) impactful, and easy for people to participate in. While Rudi built our intake process, Rachel worked on marketing the program through our social media channels. We needed to make sure we reached both bike donors and potential recipients. We also worked with a lawyer to make sure we had an ironclad participation waiver. For simplicity’s sake, we ended up hosting the program under Rachel’s LLC, Wonk Policy & Communications.

As soon as we launched our website, we were connecting people who had safe, working bikes they no longer used with essential workers and others who needed to get around. Bikes were matched with recipients as soon as they were submitted.

We’ve matched bikes with:

• Hospital staff – nurses, doctors, and importantly, support staff like janitors
• Food delivery workers
• Grocery store workers
• Mutual aid volunteers
• People who live in food deserts that needed a bike to get to the grocery store or run other critical errands

In the program’s first month, we matched 60 bikes. This past week, we’ve matched 10 more bikes. To date, we have matched nearly bikes with nearly 200 essential workers, made hand offs in every ward, as well as in Maryland and Virginia.

As bikes were flying off the shelves at local bike shops, we continued to source bikes from both neighbors and strangers. Some companies pooled together their employees to find bikes. Bikes for the World in Rockville donated upwards of 50 bikes to the program. Local bike shop, BicycleSPACE, even set up a sponsorship for community members to buy new bikes for our recipients, and we even received a grant from the Awesome Foundation to get more bikes. As quickly as we can get our hands on bikes, we’re matching them with essential workers. To put it frankly, we have been busting our butts to get more butts on bikes (and we still have a backlog of requests)!

More space is needed in the District to bike safely

Demand for bikes is high, but —and there’s always a but — the District hasn’t kept up with the bike boom and we still don’t have enough safe spaces to ride. While the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has built some protected bike lanes during the public health emergency, connections are sorely lacking.

The Crosstown Cycletrack, for example, provides a vital east-west connection and also access to numerous hospitals. However, the western side of the cycletrack dumps you onto Kenyon Street, a two-lane road with speeding drivers, and the eastern side dumps riders on Michigan Avenue – just a few blocks from where a delivery worker on a bicycle was killed earlier this month. And have you tried to bike to any of the other hospitals or essential services like grocery stores or COVID testing sites?

In wards 1, 2, parts of 4 and 6, there may be some infrastructure – mostly painted bike lanes which offer bicyclists a false sense of security, and a growing number of protected bike lanes. But biking to these services especially in wards 3, 5, 7 and 8 leaves a lot to be desired.

So, what have we learned in the last year?

There’s an oft-quoted line from Field of Dreams – “if you build it, [they] will come.” In BikeMatchDC we built a system to get bicycles to those most in need of them but least able to afford them. We are helping hold up one end of the bargain. But the same line applies with safe infrastructure for people who want to ride a bicycle. In the District our bike infrastructure isn’t a proper network – it lacks true connectivity. In neighboring areas there is a similar disconnected system of sharrows, painted lanes, protected lanes, and multi-use paths. This hodgepodge of infrastructure is confusing, unsafe at times, and doesn’t make it easy for bicyclists to go the distance. Yet, the number of people riding bikes here in DC and around the world has ballooned.

Last year, AARP conducted a survey of bicyclists over the age of 50. Respondents echoed what advocates have been saying for years: “Older bicyclists want access to a high-quality bike network where ‘everyday cycling’ is supported and there are fewer potential points of conflict with motorists.”

Thanks to the glut of new and “renewed” people riding, our existing systems are strained with some nearing the breaking point. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen people go outside to ride and recreate where they feel safe - on trails and streets with bike lanes that provide physical separation from drivers. The volume of users in these confined areas leads to crowding, especially on multi-use paths. There’s no room to spread out, user conflicts arise, and social distancing can’t happen. Crowding and disparate geography makes it difficult for essential workers to rely on these car-free routes to commute

And now, at our one-year anniversary, BikeMatchDC is at a crossroads. We have exhausted the available donor bikes – this isn’t a bad thing, per se, but an obstacle to providing bicycles. We still have a fairly deep waitlist for bicycles, to the point where we haven’t accepted new bicycle requests. We hope to reopen this soon, but the supply of bikes to give needs to rise.