Strategies for Engaging Community, produced in coordination with the Better Bike Share Partnership, provides guidance for practitioners seeking to build meaningful relationships with communities they serve as they plan for and operate bike share systems. Bike share is fundamentally a tool to increase access to opportunity and mobility in a city; having coordinated and sustained public engagement is central to developing programs and plans that realize bike share’s promise. Strategies for Engaging Community provides guidance for cities, advocates, and operators working to achieve this. It lays out three broad goals, with specific outreach strategies and actions for each.
1. Increase Access to Mobility
Social and economic health and opportunity is directly tied to mobility. As such, ensuring access to mobility services is a core goal for cities. As cities and advocates look to bike share to provide meaningful, reliable transportation options in urban areas, addressing inequitable access is key. This section explores a variety of actions that can be taken to increase and improve access to bike share. In particular, it provides examples of strategies and actions that U.S. cities have used to reduce financial and physical barriers to bike share use.
2. Get More People Biking
A core responsibility of public engagement efforts is to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. For bike share systems, this means providing frequent opportunities for people to ask questions and share their thoughts. It also means employing a wide variety of methods to give different people multiple opportunities to engage in ways that are comfortable, easy, and don’t require extra work on their part. This section explores a variety of actions that can be taken to get more people riding by focusing on strategies to teach and empower new and existing riders and create opportunities for in-person interaction and engagement.
3. Increase Awareness and Support for Bike Share
Building public support for bike share requires intentional, inclusive, strategic local partnerships and communications that connect bike share use to community interests and needs. This section explores a variety of actions that can be taken to build support for bike share systems by focusing on strategies to build partnerships with local organizations and create multifaceted marketing campaigns.
