Participants in a Bike it Forwards event organized with Chinese Newcomers Service Center.
We’re already off to a strong start at making bike share work for low-income San Franciscans with over 500 Bike Share for All members signed up for $5 annual memberships. And our engagement work is just beginning.
The goal of community engagement is to be on the ground, talking to local residents about transportation and mobility while also collecting feedback on how the city’s current bike share systems meet people’s needs. Our outreach team will also sign up more eligible Bike Share for All members, and all this work is thanks to funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
We’re proud to announce that two established community organizations are joining the coalition to lead this work in San Francisco: SF Yellow Bike and Chinese Newcomers Service Center (CNSC). To ensure that we’re bringing everyone into the conversation, this program requires multilingual outreach and materials, and earlier this week, we held our first Cantonese-language training for this program with CNSC.
“Chinese Newcomers Service Center has been working to help new immigrants since 1969 to provide communities with social, economic, workforce and business services to transform their lives,” said Wilson Hoang, CNSC program coordinator. “The bike culture in China is massive and for most people it’s their primary mode of transportation but when they arrive in America they find that the streets are dominated by cars.
“We hope that by spreading the word about bike share we can encourage the immigrant population to start biking again and assuage some misconceptions about biking in San Francisco,” Wilson added.
CNSC’s main location is in the heart of Chinatown. With large Chinese immigrant communities there, but also in southeast neighborhoods including Portola and Visitacion Valley, CNSC plans meet people where they’re at with targeted events around the city.
Joining CNSC is our 2015 Golden Wheel Awardee SF Yellow Bike, who describe themselves as a “grassroots, pop-up, do-it-yourself, community-building machine.” Based out of their shop in the Tenderloin — the neighborhood with the lowest car ownership rates in the city — the SF Yellow Bike team are natural ambassadors for biking. With both organizations rearing to go, we will hit the ground soon to begin the conversation over the coming weeks.
Want to stay in the loop with Bike Share for All as this program develops? Sign up for updates today as we welcome more people to biking.