We believe that life is much better when we feel happy, healthy, energized and connected to the people and places around us. We believe riding a bike has so many benefits to us individually, to our communities and our world.
We know how good it feels to ride and we want more people to experience this feeling too.
Love to Ride makes it easy and fun for us to encourage our friends, co-workers and community to ride.
If you want more people to discover and experience all the benefits of riding, then join us in achieving our mission to encourage one million more people to take up riding.
Love to Ride is proud to be partnering with PeopleForBikes to design and implement a number of innovative new Bike Challenge formats in 2015. The intention is to develop a new Challenge format that can be rolled out across the U.S. in 2016 and beyond.
The National Bike Challenge
PeopleForBikes are the new operators of the National Bike Challenge starting this year. The National Bike Challenge attracted 50,000 people across the U.S. to participate in 2014, and it is PeopleForBikes’ aim to significantly grow the number of people participating in the Challenge to reach hundreds of thousands of people over the coming years.
PeopleForBikes also want the Challenge to be more focused on encouraging people who don’t currently ride, or who ride very infrequently, to take up riding regularly. To achieve this, the format of the National Bike Challenge will need to change from being focussed on getting existing riders to log their miles. Innovative new formats have been developed by Love to Ride and PeopleForBikes and are ready for trial in 6 U.S. cities.
Love to Ride
Love to Ride are international experts in running Bike Challenges, having run more than 120 Challenges in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand and Australia. The Love to Ride platform has also been designed to support and encourage people new to riding to start riding regularly. On average 30% of Love to Ride participants are new to riding and 2 in 5 of them take up riding regularly each week after participating in a Challenge.
We’re looking to partner with 6 cities in 2015 who want to work with us on running an innovative new style of bike challenge. These Challenges have been developed from international best practice in cycling promotion, behaviour change theory and from Love to Ride’s significant experience in running engagement programs.
Match funding available
PeopleForBikes are providing match funding to cities who want to work with us on running these innovative new Challenge formats. We’re interested in working with a range of cities and with varying levels of ‘cycle friendliness’.
Interested in finding out more?
We already have two of the six cities signed up (Boulder and Atlanta), so there are currently four opportunities left. Please do get in touch by May 22nd if you’re interested in looking at being involved.
To express an interest and get more information, please contact: Thomas Stokell, thomas@lovetoride.org, 310-906-7897.
Casinos, big hotels, wild nights out and hangovers are typically what comes to mind when you think of Las Vegas. When I told some friends I was going to a meeting in Las Vegas about cycling, they actually laughed. “People don’t ride bikes in Las Vegas!”
I wasn’t sure what to expect myself, but after meeting Ron Floth, from RTC, and getting shown around Downtown Las Vegas, I was pleasantly surprised.
Las Vegas x2
Firstly, it’s important to understand that there are two main parts to Las Vegas. There’s the original Las Vegas – ‘Downtown’, and then the much newer area – ‘The Strip’. The Strip is where all the big new hotels and casinos are and where most people stay and visit these days.
Downtown is a much more normal city. Compared to The Strip, Downtown is more chilled out, has about 10x more bike lanes and about 100x fewer drunk people walking around at 7am.
‘The Strip’ – gambling, tourists, hotels, carsDowntown Las Vegas – 5 miles north of The Strip
Bikes on busses
Almost all the busses in Las Vegas have bike racks on the front. About 50,000 bikes are taken on busses each month – pretty impressive.
Like most American cities, urban sprawl is a problem. There are some good and fairly frequent bus routes in and around Las Vegas. With a spread out city, the distances to walk to a frequent bus route are quite far, however, if people travel by bike to a bus stop this increases the number of people who can quickly and easily access a bus route.
Bike Lanes
The Las Vegas valley has more than 400 miles of bike lanes and 180 miles of bike paths.
Bike lanes on both sides of the street. Many North American cities have streets wide enough for bike lanes, unlike many older European towns and cities which can have narrow streets. While fully separated lanes can be the gold standard for 8 to 80 cities, painted lanes can be a relatively inexpensive measure on the path to becoming a more cycle friendly city and increasing ridership.
Here is a bike map of Downtown Las Vegas:
Bike Centre
At the transit centre in Downtown Las Vegas there is a bike centre. People can get their bike repaired, buy a bike, store their bike and take a shower. Having the bike centre so close to public transit has a number of natural advantages.
Positioned next to the main bus station in Downtown is the Bike Centre.You can store you bike safely, rent or buy a bike there.Tools and a pump are available right outside the bike centre.
Nearby cities
Henderson is a 25 minute drive from Downtown Las Vegas and has 175 miles of bike lanes and 7.5 miles of bike routes.
A bike map of Henderson – look at all those off road bike/walk trails!
Recreational Riding
The majority of the riding that is currently done in Las Vegas is recreational riding. When we are discussing how we can get more people riding for transport trips, one thing that we need to consider is the behavior change journey.
For most new riders, going from not cycling at all to riding to work is a mountain to high. Thus starting off riding recreationally can be a key strategy to encouraging cycling for transportation in the long term. Once people are confident and capable riders, they can then consider riding for transportation as a real option for them.
That’s why with our Workplace Bike Challenge program, we get people to take up riding one step at a time.
Cool Bike Parking
Some cool bike parking in Downtown Las Vegas…
In Summary
The Las Vegas case study demonstrates that cities with hot summer climates and urban sprawl can still do quite a lot to encourage riding. With so many lanes, paths, racks on busses, the challenge now is to get more and more people to start riding in Las Vegas which will further increase demand for more infrastructure and facilities for people who ride bikes.
