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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.
I’m here today to talk about a mutual aid program specifically focused on transportation: BikeMatchDC. Since we launched on March 30, 2020 BikeMatchDC has been connecting people in DC who have an extra bicycle with people who need a bike to get around.
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. Based on a similar idea in NYC, BikeMatchDC was born. Drivers were staying home and our streets were quiet. Essential workers and others quickly discovered biking on our wide-open streets was a quick, safe, cost-efficient way to commute… if these workers could find and/or afford a bike.
As soon as we launched our website, we were connecting people who had working bikes they no longer used with essential workers and others who needed to get around. As soon as somebody submitted a bike, we connected them with a recipient.
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 match 60 bikes. This past week, we’ve matched about 10 bikes. To date, we have matched 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 our local bike shops, we continued to source bikes from neighbors, strangers, some companies pooled together their employees to find bikes, Bikes for the World in Rockville donated upwards of 50 bikes to the program, our friends at BicycleSPACE set up a sponsorship for community members to buy new bikes for our recipients, 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)!
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 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.
We, DC, had an opportunity to transform – to reimagine transportation in our city during the pandemic. We knew from the day the public health emergency was declared that biking was going to be one of the safest, accessible ways to get around. Bike shops fought to be declared essential businesses. More than 700 advocates signed a petition begging the Mayor Bowser and DDOT to give us safe spaces to bike, walk and recreate. As cities across the world and North America made space for people – Oakland, Montreal, Bogota, Paris… The District government threw up its hands. Even the National Park Service responded by closing Beach Drive, Anacostia Drive and Fort Dupont Circle to drivers.
Eventually, DDOT spent money on pretty Slow Streets signs that are unclear to users, easily knocked over and often placed where they can’t affect anything. Slow Streets were supposed to be self-enforcing and create safe spaces for people to walk and roll while maintaining social distance. Like our protected bike lane network, Slow Streets a disparately placed. Users are often subject to drivers who don’t understand the concept. Slow Streets should have been a backbone for our BikeMatchDC recipients who were already putting so much on the line just to show up to work every day, and they failed.
As you recall, at the Slow Street Roundtable this committee held in November, DDOT said they were putting up additional signage for drivers. I’m sure by now you’ve seen the flimsy additions of the red map of the District with “Slow Streets Pilot” written on it. This still doesn’t tell drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians – anybody really – what these streets are to be used for. Our neighbors in Montgomery County signed their Slow Streets with yellow diamond with a bike and pedestrian on it.
The short of this is that DC really dropped the ball on the transportation front when it came to responding to the pandemic. The demands and desires were very clear early on. The roads were devoid of cars. Examples of the possibilities were popping up all over the world as we all settled into our new realities. DC let down all the people who took up biking – for transportation and recreation – during the pandemic.
But we can still change and we can still make safe spaces for people to bike as we roll toward re-opening and the new normal. DDOT needs to continue to build out the protected bike lane network and focus on connections – connecting protected bike lanes to one another, connecting bike networks between ward – especially East of the River, connecting bike lanes to essential services, schools and amenities. There’s no reason why people who took up biking during the pandemic should be compelled to drive – especially to school or to work. Study after study has shown: when you build safe spaces for people to bike, they will come on bikes (and scooters and skateboards and other forms of mircomobility!). We’ve seen this in the “before-times” (like Amsterdam, Beijing or Tokyo), and we’ve seen this during COVID-times (like in Paris). Now is our chance to make it a reality here in our beloved Washington, DC.
