Our 2021 in review

As 2021 comes to a close, we’ve been reflecting on this dynamic year. It brought big organizational changes, opportunities to finally gather in person, and policy wins on the city and state level. We relied on our strong community of supporters to advance these wins.

Everything we did was made possible by folks like you - who share our vision of a connected and equitable Baltimore and back it up with your words, your attendance at public meetings, and your financial support.

We’re sharing big successes this year. Together, we…

1. Celebrated Baltimore City Department of Transportation formally adopting the Baltimore Complete Streets Manual, one of the most progressive in the country

2. Installed traffic calming infrastructure, bike lanes, and pavement art at 33rd & Hillen by Lake Montebello with our partners Baltimore City Department of Transportation, Graham Projects, and Black People Ride Bikes

3. Pushed the Baltimore City Department of Transportation to jumpstart multiple grant-funded Complete Streets projects, including separated bike lanes for Central Avenue, Wolfe or Washington Street, and Eutaw Street, and a Rapid Enhancement Program that will quickly make connections between existing facilities across the city.

4. Advocated and fought for the bipartisan passage and veto override of the Transit Safety & Investment Act, securing $2 billion in state funding to address MTA maintenance needs and stabilize service.

5. Supported successful legislation to classify Vulnerable Road Users in Maryland and provide better guidance for investigating and charging grossly negligent drivers.

6. Secured Mayor Scott’s support of the Baltimore Greenway Trails Network as one of his first-term equity goals

7. Fixed 210 bikes and spoke to 250 people in the community through our Mobile Bike Shop

8. Met 100+ neighbors at six Bike Leaders’ Breakfasts in new locations around Baltimore

9. Brought 400+ folks together at Friday Night Lights’ in the summer at Druid Hill Park and Lake Montebello for bike races, hikes, yoga, bike workshops, and more

10. Organized our 7th Annual Cranksgiving, in which 210 riders came together and donated $3000+ of groceries and 1400 pounds of fresh produce to the Franciscan Center and Moveable Feast

We want to continue building on all of these wins. In 2022, we want to double down on our programming efforts and meet people where they’re at in Baltimore. We want to keep our elected officials and agency leadership accountable to our Complete Streets goals. We want to grow our organization and build capacity. But we need your help to make it possible. 

The best way to sustain Bikemore is by starting a monthly donation today. Our monthly donors save us time from fundraising so we can focus on our advocacy and programming and demonstrate to bigger funders that many people are invested in this work. Whether it’s $5/month or $100, every dollar counts.

This form will make a donation to Bikemore in Action, our 501(c)(4); these funds are unrestricted and can be used for advocacy. To make a charitable donation, click here.

As always, thank you for the support. Happy holidays! 

Introducing our new board members, Nia and Eli!

Bikemore’s Board is an enthusiastic group of people who care about Baltimore's transportation, community, and infrastructure. Our board shows up and speaks up to support events, people, and work that helps our city and neighbors thrive. Ultimately, the Bikemore Board is integral to supporting our work through steering our strategic priorities and fundraising.

We’re excited to announce that we have two new board members joining us: Nia Reed-Jones, and Eli Pousson. Here’s a little bit about them:

Dr. Reed-Jones is originally from Ypsilanti, MI and has resided in Maryland for over 16 years and Baltimore for 4 years. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biology from Talladega College and a Doctorate in Biology with a concentration in Microbiology. Dr. Reed-Jones is currently a Biologist at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM). In addition, to her work at the FDA she is also an avid cyclist and co-founder of Black People Ride Bikes, Inc, (BPRB) a Baltimore-Based non-profit advocacy organization established in 2019 in Baltimore whose mission is to bring cycling awareness to the black diaspora by building a community of black cyclists with a focus in exploration, health, and advocacy. BPRB is all-inclusive to every age bracket, cycling discipline, socioeconomic background, ethnicity, identity, and experience level but BPRB was established to shine a bright light on People of Color in cycling, a mostly White-Male Dominated sport. Neiunna is also very active in her community as the Vice-President of Friends of Carroll Park, a continuous attendee of the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Commission (MBAC), contributing partner/grant awardee with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a community partner on the Lake-to-Lake Project (A Baltimore City Cycling Infrastructure Initiative) and a level one Coach for the Patterson Park Girls Mountain biking team. When Dr. Reed-Jones is not on her bike or doing community work, she enjoys yoga as a member of the Be More Yoga Community, watching Netflix, cooking vegan food, playing games, hiking, traveling, and spending time with friends and family. She is looking forward to bringing her knowledge of unserved communities within the Greater Baltimore City Area that typically go overlooked when it comes to safe cycling infrastructure and public transportation to the Bikemore Board of Directors. She will also bring her viewpoint and experiences as an avid Baltimore Cyclist to the Board.

Eli Pousson is a historian, planner, cargo bike riding family biker, and a Harwood neighborhood resident. Eli has helped organize the annual Baltimore Family Biking Open House since 2017. Eli also spends every day in April posting online about picking up litter and is always ready to talk to friends and colleagues about how to use 311. Since 2020, Eli has worked as a program coordinator and planner at the Neighborhood Design Center where he is focused on empowering community organizations to push for safer streets, stable housing, and clean parks. Prior to joining NDC, Eli completed an MPH at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he focused on the health effects of demolishing vacant housing and started a partnership with the Department of Transportation to pilot play street program in Baltimore City. He’s very excited to join the Bikemore board and support the organization's essential work to make all-ages bicycling in Baltimore safer and easier for everyone. He’s found that one of the greatest joys in life is teaching a kid to ride a bike—but, in his words, “we need safe streets in every neighborhood for every kid, every grandparent, and every person to walk and bike safely.” He looks forward to teaming up with board members, Bikemore's hard-working staff, and our generous community of volunteers and members to advocate for safer and happier streets all across the city.

Giving thanks for our 7th Annual Cranksgiving

Photo credit: Azania Rizing Photography

This year's Cranksgiving was happily a mixture of the “old” and “new”.  Last year, after rethinking how such a dynamic event could happen safely admist COVID-19, we were grateful to combine some of the elements for this year’s 7th Annual Cranksgiving. And our community showed up in large numbers!

• 210 riders participated in 56 teams

• 43 volunteers checked riders in, and counted & organized food

• $2500+ of groceries donated

• 1400 pounds of fresh fruits from Hungry Harvest donated

• $440 dollars raised directly for Moveable Feast & the Franciscan Center

• 4 checkpoints run by partners

• 22 local businesses donated prizes

• 6 sponsors provided funding for the event

Last year gave us an opportunity to be a little more creative with how Cranksgiving would logistically happen. We adopted a two manifest arrangement of stops so riders could end directly at one of our food partners - The Franciscan Center or Moveable Feast. Manifests were sent out virtually, and participants rode home after dropping off their food.

This year’s Cranksgiving allowed us to keep what worked last year; we kept the two manifests, meaning that we had a total amount totaling 17 checkpoints across the city — we'd like to believe that this is just one minute contributing factor to having more exposure and visibility of cyclists of all types on the road across the city for such a valuable cause.

This also meant this year’s event needed more support than ever to make possible, and we are so grateful for the volunteers, businesses, and their creativity that really made the event. Hungry Harvest joined us for a second year to set up a produce pick-up checkpoint, REI hosted a cornhole at the Washington Monument, Cutlass Velo hosted a ringtoss checkpoint at St. Mary’s Park, and A Few Cool Hardware Stores set up a checkpoint at Waverly Ace Hardware to promote their PPE Drive for Moveable Feast. Volunteers stationed at parks ran challenges from guessing a word in American Sign Language to naming parts on a bike.

Cranksgiving is truly a community event. It was an idea originally planted in a Facebook group, planned by friends, filled with support from Baltimore businesses — all to benefit those facing food insecurity this winter, and done by people on bikes. Bikemore is really grateful we get the chance to harness your energy into a positive force for Baltimore.

Check out photos from the photobooth on Facebook!

Love community events like Cranksgiving? You can keep them going by supporting our work Bikemore and making a donation today.

Cranksgiving Sponsors

Prize Sponsors

cranksgiving benefits

Special thanks to

Charm City Meadworks for hosting our after party, Hungry Harvest for donating produce, Cutlass Velo for hosting a checkpoint, REI for hosting a checkpoint, and a Few Cool Hardware Stores for hosting a checkpoint. Thanks to Brian O’Doherty for taking Cranksgiving photobooth pics!

Making every day count

Photo Credit: Side A Photography

We usually like to share the highlight reel - big wins, happy moments, times when lots of us are together and celebrating. This Giving Tuesday, we wanted to share the everyday work that Bikemore does fundamentally change the way that our city thinks about our streets and public space.

Changing entrenched systems doesn't happen overnight; while you may have heard about our Lake2Lake project or Cranksgiving, we’ve also…

• Spoke to over 250 residents about traffic-calming and bike infrastructure at 31 Mobile Bike Shops

• Participated in over 200 hours of Community Meetings to support infrastructure projects in neighborhoods around Baltimore

• Participated in over 100 hours of Baltimore City Dept. of Transportation and Dept. of Planning meetings

• Supported over $100 million in transit, bike, and other planning grant awards

• Attended 250+ hours of statewide transportation coalition meetings to pass the Transit Safety & Investment Action, a bill for the largest investment in MTA in generations

This is the work we do regularly. We show up to make sure there's always a voice to advocate for equitable, accessible, and transformative Complete Streets infrastructure. And to make it possible, we need your regular support. 

The most sustainable way to support Bikemore is to set up a monthly donation. If just 366 people started a donation today, you would collectively fund one third of our annual budget. You would make Bikemore possible.

We’re really proud of our everyday work, because it means that we’re planting seeds in communities throughout Baltimore -- and that’s where true change happens.

Donations made through this form provide us unrestricted funding of our advocacy work, through our 501(c)(4) Bikemore in Action and are not tax-deductible. To make a charitable donation that may be tax-deductible, click here.

A win for Lake Montebello - celebrate with us!

A digital rendition of some of the proposed infrastructure, and potential crosswalk art. Photo credit: Graham Projects

This Spring, we were awarded a $50,000 grant from NACTO with our partners Baltimore City Department of Transportation, Black People Ride Bikes, and Graham Projects. Together, we envisioned a process of gathering community input and providing education on traffic-calming alternatives that would make our public parks safer to access and roads less dangerous for all.

This week, new bike infrastructure, curb bump outs, traffic islands, and pedestrian crosswalks will be installed at 33rd & Hillen, a large intersection that leads to the main entrance of Lake Montebello. For many years this has been a danger zone for bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists alike. This installation is one step closer to a long-term vision of how we can rethink and redesign street space in Baltimore, creating space with people in mind - not just cars.

In November, Graham Projects will install accompanying traffic calming art (like in the photo above!) to make this infrastructure vibrant and visible.  You still have the chance to vote for your favorite design - just cast your vote today! These designs were inspired by dozens of submissions we gathered at community events and online.

Now, we’re inviting you to come celebrate this new infrastructure and art at our Lake2Lake Play Day next Saturday, November 6! Bring your friends and family for an afternoon of fun activities including a hike in Herring Run, yoga for all-levels, kids games and a dancing forest, photo booth, food, music, and more!

This kind of work doesn’t happen alone. We need support - from our community partners, city agencies, and you. The best thing you can do today is start a $10/month donation. Your support is what enables us to collaborate, pursue national funding for our local projects, and make change in Baltimore.

See you there!