One Street News

January 2012

Vol. 5, Issue 1

1. Velo-city Conference Coming to North America
2. Resources – LA’s Model Street Design Manual
3. Hot Topics – Distinguishing Social Bike Business from Collectives
4. Supporter Spotlight – European Cyclists’ Federation 

Velo-city Conference Coming to North America

The Velo-city conference has been a must-attend for One Street since our inception five years ago. This annual international conference attracts over a thousand top innovators from around the world who are creating communities where everyone wants to ride a bike. But Velo-city is far more than bringing a bunch of experts together. The European Cyclists’ Federation has been organizing the conference for over 30 years so they’ve learned a thing or two about creating an extraordinary gathering.  

There’s always a hint of magic as sessions melt into networking events that flow into group bike rides that lead to exactly what attendees needed to discover for their own communities. Europeans learn new bikeway designs from South Americans as Africans help Americans rethink transportation. Every continent is represented, shrinking the world into a single neighborhood and turning what could have been another stuffy, boring conference into an energized neighborhood meeting where everyone works together to solve that neighborhood’s bicycle problems.

And this year, for the first time in the conference’s history, Velo-city is coming to North America! Don’t miss your chance to join this energizing exchange of the latest and greatest bicycle project and policy innovations from around the world – June 26-29 in Vancouver. But get moving on your travel plans because the early registration fee ends March 31st. 

As always, One Street will be actively involved in the conference with several of our leaders presenting and helping organize activities. We are also launching our second City to Velo-city program to raise funds for scholarships so that Prescott university students and bicycle advocates can attend. In fact, one of the student scholarship recipients from last year, Taylor Kuyk-White is working for One Street this spring to organize the scholarship program and another fun fundraising event, likely the last week of April. We’ll post updates about the event and how you can help the effort as we move ahead.

Resources – LA’s Model Street Design Manual 

Los Angeles brings to mind several distinct images, but likely not model street design. It’s just a mess of dangerous freeways, right? Well, freeways aside, they have taken an enormous step towards changing their city into a place built for people. In their new Model Design Manual for Living Streets you will journey into new ways of looking at streets – how they function, why beautiful streets built for bicyclists and pedestrians help car drivers, how residents can participate in street designs, and even how streets nourish or sap the environment. We’re sure you will find new ideas you can use in your community. And if you like the manual as a whole, you can download your own copy in Word or InDesign from their website and, with their permission, modify it for your own city. Now, that is cool! 

Hot Topics – Distinguishing Social Bike Business from Collectives

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole this winter, taking advantage of the quiet months to tackle One Street’s how-to manual for our Social Bike Business program. I spent weeks at a time completely submerged in topics like social enterprise, hybrid corporate structures, training sales staff, and manufacturing bicycles with steel tubing bought locally. I wandered zombie-like into the bank or post office forgetting why I was there because I’d left my brain with my stack of scribbled notes on micro lending or subsidy programs to help impoverished people buy their own bike.  

I’m happy to report that I have finally resurfaced, without any lasting, or at least noticeable effects. The first draft of the manual sits neatly on my desk with its twelve chapters encircling all those darting ideas I’d been jotting for nearly five years of worked with our local program partners around the world. Our proof-readers will soon begin marking up the draft as I tackle the next challenge of laying out the book for publication.

One thread that carries through the entire book is how to distinguish a Social Bike Business program from volunteer-run bicycle collectives as well as for-profit bike shops. I had no problem making the distinction from for-profit bike shops because a Social Bike Business always prioritizes service to the most disadvantaged people. That means locating in a distressed neighborhood, placing service to struggling people above profits, and not carrying high priced sport bicycling products. Pretty clear I’d say. 

But when it comes to articulating the distinction from volunteer-run bicycle collectives I’m less confident. I think this is because many leaders of bicycle collectives started their organizations for the same general reason One Street has committed to the Social Bike Business program – to help people with bicycles. The distinction happens in practice, not from the original intentions.

Collectives, also called bike co-ops and DIYs, offer free hands-on repair workshops and give away bikes and parts to whoever needs them. This loss of income generation is a major distinction from Social Bike Business that emphasizes proven business practices of generating profits to pay staff market salaries and ensure sustainability. I’ve also noticed that location is not a concern for collectives. In fact, they seem to prefer locations in well-to-do neighborhoods. With no paid staff, collective hours of operation are rarely business hours, formed instead around the evening and weekend availability of volunteers.  

But the striking distinction shows in the people who participate in most collectives. Usually they are young with lots of time on their hands to learn bicycle repair through trial and error; not the most disadvantaged people of their community. Yet these budding leaders of the bicycle movement are the very people who can bring great bicycle programs like Social Bike Business into the mainstream. A few have even approached us for help shifting into Social Bike Business because their leaders are burning out from so much work and responsibility without pay. Also, many of the programs that collectives have perfected over the years such as helping people learn bicycle repair, youth programs, earn-a-bike programs and simply getting folks excited about bikes would all be fantastic additions to any Social Bike Business program. So how can we present the Social Bike Business program as distinct from collectives without offending, or worse, losing the potential involvement of leaders of collectives?

This question is why I chose this as our Hot Topic this month. If you have thoughts on this, please email them to me at sue{at}onestreet.org. Your thoughts could help clarify distinctions and potential collaborations in the manual as well as in our discussions with local leaders around the world. 

Supporter Spotlight – European Cyclists’ Federation