ACTIVE LIVING
The Active Living program enables Bike Fort Collins to leverage its passion for bicycling to promote and improve health, inclusion and safe access to active transportation, and a sense of community in northern Fort Collins communities.
ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION
The catalyst for starting the Active Living program was a grant Bike Fort Collins was awarded in 2016, where it committed to a multi-year program engaging the north Fort Collins community–specifically the Poudre Valley Mobile Home Park (PVMHP)–to increase the number of people walking, biking, and using alternative or active transportation.
Since then, while we have concluded the work associated with that grant, our work to promote and improve health, inclusion and safe access to active transportation, and a sense of community in northern Fort Collins continues—particularly in marginalized and/or low-income areas. We have been working with the Larimer County Department of Health & Built Environment and the City of Fort Collins’s FC Moves department on the following initiatives:
SPANISH BICYCLE RESOURCES AND SERVICES
Bike Fort Collins developed a bi-lingual Spanish Bicycle Resource page for the Spanish speaking community that provides online resources and links to topics such as: how to find the right bike, safe riding resources, and bike safety for kids.
Additionally, BFC has created three videos, in what will hopefully become a series, demonstrating how to ride a bicycle safely from various historically underserved communities to area middle schools—all recorded in Spanish. The intent of these videos is to help residents become familiar with and ultimately comfortable with riding their bike to school. These videos are available for viewing on the Spanish Bicycle Resources page. Read More
Finally, BFC is working with Larimer County to provide bike repair sessions for area mobile home parks and/or historically underserved communities. We provide a location and set times within a given week that a bike mechanic will be available to help tune-up and perform repairs to get inoperable bikes back up and running. Read More
ASHPALT ART / PAINT THE PAVEMENT INITIATIVE
In summer/fall 2020, Bike Fort Collins convened representatives from the City of Fort Collins’ FC Moves, Art in Public Places and Traffic Operations departments with an idea/goal to use painted streets in the form of artwork to help calm traffic, and ultimately make our streets safer.
Our initiative prompted the three departments, under FC Moves’ leadership, to create an online process for individuals within communities to apply for approval to paint a section of street in their neighborhood. The process represents a great community building opportunity, as it requires submitting signed petitons from all impacted residents of the painted street; it requires submitting a design, again that the community all agrees on; and requires submitting an installation and maintenance plan for the artwork/project.
As a way to test this new process, FC Moves engaged BFC as a partner in a grant it received from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to help test/use the new process and lead a few communities from historically underserved areas in—coming together as community, identifying a section of street, working with an artist(s) to conceive what the street could look like, and executing the project. See the video below and Read More
PAINT THE PAVEMENT
An initiative to calm traffic and make streets safer with Asphalt Art
E-BIKE PILOT PROGRAM
The City of Fort Collins selected Bike Fort Collins as a partner in a grant sponsored by the Colorado Energy Office (CEO) for the Can Do Colorado Spring 2021 e-Bike Pilot Program designed to help low-income essential workers by improving their access to e-bikes. The program is providing eligible participants with an e-bike and package of bike accessories at no cost.
To qualify, each participant had to classify as an essential worker and earn a wage 60 percent or less of the Area Median Income. Participants also had to agree to download and use the CanBikeCO app to track all their trips – including those taken on the e-bikes they received – for two years after receiving their e-bike. The recipients were identified through the City’s partnerships with non-profit organizations, including Colorado State University, La Familia, Neighbor 2 Neighbor and The Matthews House.
To administer the grant, in addition to BFC, the City partnered with Northern Colorado Clean Cities (NCCC), CSU’s Parking and Transportation Services, and Recycled Cycles (a BFC business member and Membership Business Partner). BFC’s role was in helping produce bicycle safety videos that are required for each recipient to watch as a condition of receiving their e-bike, to try and ensure their safety as they go to use it. The program’s goal is to help expand e-bike access in Fort Collins while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and maximizing air quality benefits, and in doing so improve the overall health of the individual recipients and the larger community. Read More
LATEST NEWS & INFORMATION
Visit our News-Blog for the latest news on our Active Living programming.
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SAFE ROUTES
TO SCHOOL
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BIKE SHARE?
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