How Can We Elevate Bike Equity Among Latinos in the US?

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Increasing opportunities for biking is one way to help Latino communities get healthy. The League of American Bicyclists recently came out with a new report titled:  The New Movement: Bike Equity Today which addresses this topic.

According to the report,  diversity in biking already exists and continues to grow but there is still a need for involving more Latinos and underrepresented groups in bike advocacy. Examples from groups working towards equity, throughout the country illustrate that there is no magic formula for getting communities excited about biking.

There are however, several ideas and lessons learned for turning the tide on how roads can be developed and opportunities for biking expanded.

Ideas for initiatives such as earn-a-bike and apprentice programs throughout the country have already proven successful in getting more diverse populations involved. Providing culturally relevant and bilingual materials to ensure that immigrant populations also have a voice is another way of bringing a more diverse group of partners to the table.

While many minority populations might never ordinarily attend a bike advocacy meeting, they do attend workshops where they can learn a skill like how to repair a bike or fix a flat tire. Community members also want a chance to have their voice heard, so encouraging dialogue and leading training sessions in Spanish is another way to involve underrepresented groups in the dialogue about biking.

“If we want bicycling to become a normal part of transportation in the United States, we need to include this country’s diversity in our advocacy strategies,”said Adonia Lugo The League of American Bicyclist’s Equity Initiative Manager. ” When diversity becomes a valued part of decision making in bike planning and design, we will have moved closer to bike equity,”

Read more about this in the Streetsblog USA blog, read the full Bike Equity Report report here.

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