Chicago is making strides in getting more black and brown people on bikes, but the Windy City isn’t moving fast enough, according to local activist Oboi Reed. His solution: “bike libraries.”
Reed is the co-founder of Slow Roll Chicago, an offshoot of Slow Roll Detroit. Both groups host community rides to get more people of color cycling. In December 2017, Reed resigned from Slow Roll to focus on his new nonprofit, Equiticity, with an expanded mandate to tackle racial equity, increased mobility, and racial justice in biking. Now he’s working on a program that would give low-to-moderate-income residents the opportunity to borrow a bike—for free—from a community organization, for up to three months.
It will cost $150,000 to operate the bike libraries for a year, Reed estimates, and he’s already lined up a pair of private bikeshare companies to act as partners. The hope is to launch the program this fall.
[For more on this story by CHRISTINA STURDIVANT-SANI, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity...s-to-chicago/556910/]
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