At its heart, transportation itself is a community experience. The average trip in a car in the U.S. is within a 5-mile radius of our homes, typically for the purpose of shopping at a local market, picking up or dropping off children at school or activities like soccer practice or piano lessons. These activities, largely community-centered, account for more trips in automobiles than for any other purpose. With their ease of use, low cost, and flexibility, bicycles simplify the urban errand and make life easier for people in cities-in America and around the world. As if by magic, navigating a city center becomes comfortable and easy, and amenities of a busy downtown become more accessible on a bicycle, and thus less stressful and more enjoyable.
Bicycles are the liberators of space in our communities.
As we ride in cities everywhere, we transform streets from dark, inaccessible stretches of pavement to prideful places more accommodating to life on a human scale. We literally lighten the load of our streets on bicycles, thus easing the stresses and strains that our streets must bear everyday. In so doing, we gently liberate our communities from the heavy burden of traffic, congestion, pollution, social strife, and struggle. We reconnect to life in our communities by setting our community spaces free, opening them up to our hearts and minds. We take back our cities when we ride our bikes.