Bicycle Times: Advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh turns 10

Our good buds at Bicycle Times Magazine wrote a nice piece about us as we enter our 10th year.

Check it out!


By Karen Brooks,

This is a good time to be a cyclist, or biker, or bicycle lover, or what-have-you, in Pittsburgh. We’re currently in the first week of BikeFest, an annual city-wide festival of rides and related events of all kinds, stretching a full 15 days this year. (An Olympics of bike-themed fun, if you will.) This past Sunday the Fest kicked off with Pedal Pittsburgh, a cool city tour by bike with a couple thousand of our biking buddies, and tonight is the BikeFest fundraising party, always a highlight of the social calendar.

This has also been a bad time to be a cyclist in Pittsburgh. In the last days of July, two bike riders were killed after being hit by cars on a stretch of particularly dangerous street, one of them in a hit-and-run situation. Then in the first days of August, three more people on bikes were in hit-and-run incidents with automobile drivers, including a six-year-old girl. Some blame the recent heat wave or especially exasperating construction detours, and others point to distracted or outright malicious drivers. But the recent injuries and loss of life are a sad undercurrent to our gatherings.

Through all of this, a superb group of people has been elevating our highs and supporting us in the lows: our own homegrown advocacy organization, Bike Pittsburgh. They organize the Bike Fest, and assumed organization of this year’s Pedal Pittsburgh ride to fold it into the fun. They’ve also been busy answering calls from the local media about all the accidents and are trying very hard to make sure that cyclists are portrayed in a good light, not with the typical car-centric bias…

Read the full article on Bicycle Times’ website


Not a member of BikePGH? Join today! We need you to add your voice! Bike Pittsburgh works to protect cyclist’s rights and promote the vision of making Pittsburgh a safer and more enjoyable place to live and to ride. For more info, check out: www.bike-pgh.org/membership

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