Outride's reputation is built on Riding for Focus, a six-to-eight-week middle school cycling program running in more than 400 schools across the U.S. and Canada and reaching roughly half a million students each year. The organization’s roots trace back to Mike Sinyard, the founder and chairman of Specialized Bicycle Components, reading a 2012 Bicycling article titled "Riding Is My Ritalin." Recognizing his own undiagnosed ADHD after reading, Sinyard then called the researcher quoted in the piece to ask what it would take to prove the theory. That call then led to the creation of the Specialized Foundation and later, Outride.

What makes the organization stand out is that it funded the science alongside the programming, rather than after it. Working with Dr. Allan Reiss's lab at Stanford, Outride-supported researchers used functional near-infrared spectroscopy, an imaging method worn under a helmet and wired to a pack on the rider's back, to monitor blood flow in adolescents' brains in real time while they rode. The 2019 findings, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, showed improved prefrontal cortex oxygenation and cognition in teens with ADHD following riding a bike. A follow-up study found that while riding, the brain activity patterns of teens with ADHD came to resemble those of their peers without it. A 2023 study of more than 1,200 middle schoolers found measurable gains in psychosocial well-being after the program, holding up against established risk factors including gender, socioeconomic status, sleep, and screen time. A review published this spring synthesized 87 studies connecting cycling to attention, reaction time, and cognitive performance.

That's the story I knew going in: a link between bikes, PE class, attention, and behavior, with a real body of literature supporting it.

PeopleForBikes is a proud supporter of Outride, so I arrived already believing in the work. What I didn't expect was how much of the day would be about the other end of the lifespan, or that the two halves would turn out to be the same argument.

Claire Day of the Alzheimer's Association opened with a line that reframed the whole afternoon: about a quarter of the blood from every heartbeat goes to your brain. We've all heard some version of “What's good for the heart is good for the brain.” Now, the research is catching up to the intuition.

Day then walked through the U.S. POINTER study, a two-year, five-site trial testing whether combining lifestyle interventions, aerobic and resistance exercise, the MIND diet, cognitive training, and cardiovascular risk management produces more benefit than any single factor alone. Participants in the structured intervention showed a statistically significant cognitive advantage over the self-guided group. In practical terms: roughly two years were knocked off the cognitive aging clock.

The part that stuck with me is that the benefit held regardless of age, genotype, ethnicity, or existing cardiovascular risk. Everyone got the upside.

Then, the cycling-specific data. A 13-year study of more than 480,000 participants linked active commuting, cycling prominently among the modes, to a 19% reduction in dementia risk and a 22% reduction in Alzheimer's risk. For younger-onset dementia, the reduction ran as high as 40%.

For an industry that has spent decades making the case that bikes are good for people, this is a different kind of argument. Those aren't vibes, they’re data-driven facts. 

Gene Girimonte followed with the personal angle. Girimonte spent years as the primary caregiver for his husband, who was diagnosed with both Alzheimer's and vascular dementia in 2011. Exhaustion, weight gain, high blood pressure, no focus — he described every warning sign of caregiver burnout. Then, he walked into a bike shop with leg braces and a cane, unsure whether he could still ride, and walked out with a bike.

Thirty thousand miles later, he rides 135 miles a week and raises money for the Alzheimer's Association on annual solo tours. Girimonte put it plainly: cycling replaced a sense of helplessness with hopefulness.

Carol Kachadoorian runs the 50+ Cycling Survey, the result of five years of longitudinal data from riders across the U.S. and Canada, ranging from age 50 to 90+. As far as I can tell, it's the only sustained data set of its kind. A few findings worth calling out:

Cycling supports identity and purpose, not just fitness. People aren't riding to hit a heart rate zone. They're riding because it's who they are.

Riding adapts rather than ends. One 76 year old in Kachadoorian’s data is doing 40-mile rides multiple times a week. Another 76 year old decided she's done with 40-mile rides, but is riding differently instead. Both are still riders.

E-bikes extend the riding timeline. While they’re both an independence tool and a safety tool, a meaningful share of riders still resist them, which is a positioning problem as much as a product one.

Caregiving quietly erodes ride time. Carol is a caregiver herself. She has less time to ride and has lost her riding partner. It’s not a churn reason anyone captures in a survey field, but it's real.

Safe places to ride drives everyday decisions. She moved into a new senior living community and won't ride the street out front after two near misses. It took her weeks to find a safe route to the grocery store.

Her sharpest point was aimed at planners and engineers, and I'd extend it to product teams: start designing for the full range of riders, including the 76 year old still doing 40-mile weeks and the one who changed what their riding looks like. Longer signal crossing times. Lower curbs. Better signage at decision points. Design for the riders you actually have.

Dan Burden made the same case by living it. He's 82, rode from Alaska to Argentina in 1972, helped launch Bikecentennial and the TransAmerica Trail, and now leads walking audits and works with Blue Zones on built environments. He rides with electric assist these days in Port Townsend. He also offered the statistic I've repeated three times since hearing it: children today average about ten minutes of outdoor time a day. Prisoners are guaranteed one to two hours.


Lauren Schuck brought the conversation back to the beginning of the lifespan and the core of Outride's work.

Schuck started with mechanism rather than outcome — what is it about a bike, specifically? Communication, because you're riding in a group of 30 and you need hand signals and awareness of the rider ahead. Resilience — the confidence that comes from the first pedal strokes you ever take. Time in trees and a dose of awe. Social connection, or the opposite — time alone with your own head. All of these characteristics stacking on top of the physical activity, not instead of it.

Then comes the access gap, which is where it stops being abstract. One-in-four students entering Outride's programs have no access to a bike at home. At some schools, that number reaches 80%, and it skews higher in urban environments. Fifteen percent arrive with low riding confidence — they either don't know how or don't feel safe trying. And as Schuck pointed out, nobody volunteers for a ride they don't feel confident taking.

Riding for Focus is built to close both gaps at once. Schools apply for a grant and receive a fleet of bikes, helmets, and a six-to-eight-week curriculum that runs inside PE. Pre- and post-surveys track confidence, well-being, screen time, and physical activity.

The results she showed were the most persuasive material of the day.

At the Craig School in Southern California, which serves students with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and executive function challenges, the share of students reporting they didn't know how to ride a bike went from 23% to zero. Confidence climbed more than twenty points. Riding at least once a week outside of class rose from 27% to 46%, and students who never rode dropped from 55% to 23%. The program didn't just teach a skill — it changed behavior after the bell.

In Wisconsin, teacher Ryan McKinney compared students in a cycling and action sports intervention against a standard enrichment class. The cycling group had markedly fewer office referrals, both minor and major, and showed gains in reading and math. His district was sold. He's been running it for years and now gets kids riding before school.

And across Outride's aggregate school data, there's a clean positive association between how often students ride and their reported well-being. That relationship holds when you control for gender, socioeconomic status — and total physical activity. Something specific is happening with riding that isn't explained by exercise alone.

The closing panel, moderated by Outride's Chazz Robinson, is what I'd want every brand and retailer in this industry to hear. Three practitioners, three completely different operating environments, and a shared answer about what implementation really costs.

Shawn Byrd teaches PE at Flat Rock Middle School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and runs the program for roughly 500 students on an A/B day rotation, so every kid rides at least once a week. Five hundred permission slips came back, and then she had to figure out how to teach helmet fit, bike fit, and pre-ride checks to classes of 30+ students. Her solution was to train four or five student leaders per class and have them teach their classmates, with the rule that if their classmates didn't pass, they didn't pass. Students came back to her frustrated. She sent them back to reteach. "That's what teachers do," she said.

Then her district mismanaged $50 million and there was no money to repair bikes. She called a contact in the local bike community, who fixed what he could himself and took the rest to a shop and paid for the repairs out of pocket. Her assessment of the program's impact: the kids are on bikes, so now the teachers want to be on bikes, too. The culture of the school changed.

Lisa Chee works in health promotion and disease prevention for the Indian Health Service in the Navajo Area — a service population of roughly 240,000 people across 27,000 square miles spanning Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico that’s about the size of West Virginia.

She used funds from the Special Diabetes Program for Indians to bring five modular pump tracks to the Navajo Nation. It took two years. Because Navajo Nation land is held in trust, she had to identify lease holders willing to host a track, then coordinate across federal, state, and tribal jurisdictions, each with its own policies. As a federal entity, IHS couldn't move the dirt itself — so land lease holders did the site prep, Outride supported installation, and Silver Stallion sent crews to assemble the tracks. In February, she was driving through snow to meet delivery drivers at roadside and lead them to sites too remote to find.

When the last track went in, kids from an after-school program were waiting on it. One asked how long it would be there. She got to tell him it would be there whenever he wanted to ride.

John Glodek has taught physical and health education for 23 years at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Germantown, Maryland, and has run Riding for Focus since 2018. His school has close to 900 students. Only four or five ride bikes to school.

His challenge wasn't logistics. It was trust. Taking 32 middle schoolers off campus for a 47-minute period and bringing them back safely isn't something an administrator approves on day one — it took years of practice, lessons, and demonstrated competence. What he's built since has changed the community around the school. Drivers now see a controlled, predictable group of middle schoolers on the road every fall, and they stop to tell him they're glad the program is back.

He also told a story about a sixth grader who spent four days unable to get started and stopping on the bike. Every day, he told her he'd give her one more day. When she finally rode, the entire class stopped and applauded. Her parents emailed him — they hadn't had time to teach her, and school was where she got the chance.

When asked what she wished more people understood, Lisa Chee said she wished people knew how holistically cycling changes a person. John Glodek said he wished more people simply believed in the power of the bicycle for kids growing up right now. Shawn Byrd said her motivation is the students who see her on morning duty and ask whether they're riding today.

Four things I'm taking back to the industry:

1. The 50+ rider is a growth segment, not a retention problem. We tend to treat aging riders as leakage from the funnel. The data says they're highly motivated, identity-driven, and willing to adapt — if the product, the fit, the service model, and the route network let them.

2. Brain health is a policy argument. We already make the economic, and safety cases for infrastructure. Dementia risk reduction reaches audiences our usual framing doesn't, and as the population ages, that argument only gets stronger.

3. Access is the constraint, not interest. One in four kids without a bike at home is a market fact as much as an access fact. The Craig School data shows what happens when you remove the barrier: kids don't just learn to ride, they keep riding on their own time. Riding for Focus goes open access by the end of the year, which lowers the cost of entry for any community that wants to run it.

4. The programs run on our industry's back, often informally. A bike shop volunteer paying for repairs because a school district went broke. Specialized supplying equipment. Silver Stallion sending crews into remote communities. Mechanics being trained because there are suddenly more bikes to keep running. That ecosystem is currently held together by individual goodwill. It could be held together by strategy.

We've spent a long time in this industry saying bikes make life better. We're now at the point where we can say how, by how much, and for whom, from a sixth grader in Germantown who'd never been taught to ride, to a caregiver in Sonoma County who wasn't sure he still could.

PeopleForBikes is a proud supporter of Outride. Outride's Riding for Focus curriculum is slated to be fully accessible to the public for free by the end of the year. The Alzheimer's Association's lifestyle tools from the U.S. POINTER study are available through its Rethink Your Brain resource.

Your Brain Is Better on a Bike — and the Evidence Is Getting Hard to Ignore

PeopleForBikes’ Legislative Guide for Safe and Connected Bike Infrastructure, a component of our Great Bike Infrastructure Project, is a valuable resource for elected officials and local advocates, showcasing the most effective ways to advance bike infrastructure through state and local legislation. To help build more bikeable communities across the U.S., we’ve already explored the how and why behind funding bike infrastructure and mandating Complete Streets policies. In the latest edition of our blog series, we’re reviewing the third legislative strategy to create great places to ride — advancing bike infrastructure through climate legislation. 

The construction of bike infrastructure can play a powerful role in states’ climate policy agendas. With more state-level support behind the construction of bike infrastructure, more people will replace car trips with bike rides, reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the process. 

In the U.S., transportation is the highest emitter of GHGs at 29%, with most of those emissions (57%) coming from passenger cars and light-duty trucks (pickups and SUVs). More bike infrastructure can not only drastically reduce dependence on using vehicles for transportation by making bicycling a safe and attractive choice for people, but it also carries a host of economic, equity, health, and safety-related benefits that support thriving communities. 


Why should states include bike infrastructure in their plans to address climate change?


Bike infrastructure reduces greenhouse gas emissions by reducing vehicle miles traveled. Fifty-three percent of car trips made in the U.S. are three miles or less, and 28% are one mile or less. Transitioning close-to-home trips from cars to bicycles is possible and can significantly reduce the number of miles driven in personal vehicles.

Electrifying vehicles is essential, but it’s not enough. Reports from California, Hawaii, and Minnesota show that states must reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to meet GHG reduction goals. Even with the most optimistic assumptions about electric vehicle adoption, GHG emissions from cars remain too high without reductions in use. 

Active transportation infrastructure expands equitable access to low-cost, sustainable forms of transportation. Studies show that it is six times more expensive to travel by car than by bicycle.


How are states prioritizing bike infrastructure within their climate agendas?


There is a growing policy movement among states (including California, Colorado, and Minnesota) that not only sets GHG reduction targets but also makes requirements to evaluate large-scale transportation projects based on their potential GHG emissions. If a project does not fit within the states’ GHG reduction goals, they either have to modify the project, cancel it, or integrate low-polluting projects such as infrastructure for bikes or transit. 


This policy framework is already successfully shifting money away from high-polluting transportation projects and saving states’ money in the long run. 

Thanks to Colorado’s GHG rule, the state has already shifted $1.5 billion from road expansions to multimodal projects, with $900 million dedicated to expanding bike, walk, and transit networks. 


In 2024, three states (Illinois, New York, and Maryland) proposed similar legislation, and this trend is not expected to slow down. This useful policy tool allows states to meet their GHG reduction goals and helps them re-envision their transportation systems to ones that are safe, equitable, and convenient for all road users. 


What should states consider when prioritizing bike infrastructure within climate legislation?

Include specific VMT reduction targets. Communities cannot meet GHG reduction targets solely through electric vehicles without also reducing the miles those vehicles travel. 

Prioritize expenditures — like bike infrastructure — that provide co-benefits. Replacing short, gas-powered car trips with electric car trips may reduce GHG emissions, but it won’t provide the health, economic, safety, and happiness benefits that replacing those trips with bicycles will. 

Prioritize investments in traditionally disinvested and marginalized communities to help redress past inequities. 

Establish strict requirements for accurate reporting to measure and track the impact of various strategies relative to goals. 

Include transparent accountability measures that allow the public to ensure compliance.

Include electric bicycle (e-bike) incentive programs. Several U.S. states and cities have passed e-bike incentive programs to lower transportation-related GHG emissions. To learn more about e-bike incentive programs, check out our E-Bike Incentive Toolkit.

If you are a bicycle advocate, policymaker, or a community leader, PeopleForBikes wants to help make it easy to champion the inclusion of bike infrastructure in your state’s climate plan. To learn more about the best talking points and access resources and policy examples to advance bike infrastructure through climate legislation, check out our resources below:


Watch our webinar recording on this topic

Review our Legislative Guide for Safe and Connected Bike Infrastructure 

Read our Supplemental Guide for Advancing Bike Infrastructure through Climate Legislation which includes data-backed talking points to help you advocate for change in your community 

Advancing Bike Infrastructure Through Climate Legislation

When you pass a group of kids on bicycles, it’s hard not to smile — there’s something innately joyful about the sight. There’s also an underlying assumption that everything about the act, from the socialization to the time spent outdoors engaged in physical activity, is good for them. New research affirms that gut feeling.

Published on October 12, 2023, in Frontier in Sports and Active Living, a new study from researchers at Loma Linda University (LLU) reveals the positive impact of cycling education on the psychosocial well-being of students. The research is the result of a collaboration between LLU and the youth cycling nonprofit Outride, examining the impact of Outride’s in-school cycling programs on the mental health of middle schoolers. 

"Our findings were incredibly encouraging,” says Dr. Sean Wilson, LLU professor and senior author of the study. “A large proportion of students had a positive learning experience and continued interest in cycling,” 

“As a learning organization, we really want to understand how bicycling can improve the lives of youth in their communities,” says Dr. Esther Walker, senior research manager at Outride. 

Anonymous surveys were collected before and after the program in 20 schools in North America, with psychosocial well-being quantified using the WHO-5 Well-Being Index and the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC-17-Y). The former is a short, five-item, self-report questionnaire that assesses positive well-being and primarily assesses for depression, while the latter is a widely used measure of psychosocial functioning, with lower scores representing greater well-being. According to the study, participation in R4F was associated with improved psychosocial well-being among middle school youth in the United States. 

“It was really encouraging to see such a positive student response to a cycling-specific physical education program,” says Fletcher Dementyev, a research fellow at LLU and first author of the paper. “This result motivates us, and hopefully others, to continue investigating and developing cycling as a pathway to improved health and well-being in adolescents.”

“By providing access to bikes, a safe environment to learn to ride, and the confidence to ride independently, we can really help to create healthy pathways,” says Walker. “As youth are facing worrying levels of physical inactivity and mental health challenges, finding those activities that get them excited to participate is really important.”

PeopleForBikes’ 2022 Bicycling Participation Report reflects this trend: While 49% of youth ages 3-17 rode a bicycle at least once in 2022, ridership among younger Americans has continued to drop since 2016.

“Our program data shows that access to bikes at home, as well as safe places to ride, is not equitable across the student population,” said Walker, noting that programs like R4F, which take place during the school day and provide all necessary materials, gives everyone the opportunity to learn a skill they can use throughout their life. "While bicycling can certainly contribute positively to one's day-to-day life, to see large-scale improvements, we need changes in policy and reductions in systematic disparities in access to nutrition, health services, safe environments, and beyond.”

As school systems, educators, policymakers, and healthcare professionals work together to address the mental health challenges facing today's youth, this study provides valuable insights into the potential of cycling programs to enhance the mental well-being of young people across the U.S. University-backed research is showing the benefits that come along with getting more kids on bikes. Communities should listen.  

Interested in learning more? Follow Outride on Instagram and Facebook to stay up-to-date with their work to improve the well-being of youth through research-backed cycling programs.

Research Highlights the Positive Impact of In-School Cycling

When in Washington, D.C., Congressman Earl Blumenauer doesn't drive. That’s an incredible feat considering Blumenauer is 75 years old and has served as a Democratic representative for Oregon’s 3rd congressional district since 1996. For decades, the congressman has commuted to Capitol Hill and around town by bike, living his values while simultaneously advocating for bicycling at the national level.

During his tenure, Blumenauer founded the Congressional Bike Caucus, fought to extend commuter benefits to cyclists, and co-sponsored the introduction of the E-BIKE Act in 2021, which though it has yet to pass, has inspired a proliferation of e-bike incentives at the state level. This Congress, Blumenauer reintroduced the E-BIKE Act alongside the Bicycle Commuter Act, which would offer tax benefits to Americans commuting to work by bike, and the Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Active Transportation Act, which would unlock Highway Safety Improvement Program funding for projects that connect two pieces of safe cycling infrastructure.

Blumenauer’s efforts have also directly improved his daily commute: Over the course of two years, he successfully lobbied to get two miles of protected bike lanes built on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol, a powerful symbol of integrating bicycling into our nation’s the transportation ecosystem. 

“The key for me has been to take the bicycle, the most efficient form of urban transportation ever designed, and be able to try and help people understand its power,” says Blumenauer, who regularly positions bicycling as a way to create a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable world. “The ability to be able to make that case, to engage people, to show what a difference cycling makes — that’s something I'm very proud of.”

Blumenauer was a featured speaker at PeopleForBikes’ recent SHIFT‘23 conference in Bentonville, Arkansas. We interviewed the congressman ahead of the conference to talk about federal support for bicycling, the need to close the de minimis loophole, and — in line with this year’s conference theme — all things electric bikes.

Your focus has always been on leaving a better world for our children. Can you speak to that and how a push for bicycling makes sense in that context?

The bicycle is such a powerful tool and we need to make sure that it is integrated in both domestic and foreign policy. As I’ve said, the bicycle is the single most efficient form of transportation ever designed. It liberates young people, it costs relatively little to access, it's better for congestion, and it allows the rider to burn calories instead of fossil fuel, something that is important if we're going to fight climate change. There are also a great number of positive economic impacts.

There's so much money that is, for example, consumed parking cars. We have some estimates that there are six, eight, ten parking spaces or more for every vehicle. Those spaces give the illusion that we provide “free parking” — well, that is paid for with higher rents, more air pollution, and problems with stormwater runoff. Parking spaces cost $8,000-12,000 per parking space, and if it’s structured parking, we’re talking about $20,000-30,000 per space. “Free parking” is extraordinarily expensive.

You can easily park eight, nine, or ten bicycles in a space that would just be one car. And part of what we are finding is that people who bike are actually better customers. If you're biking at 10 or 15 miles per hour, you're more likely to pull over and explore something. You're more likely to have lunch or shop as opposed to when you're whizzing through a neighborhood at 40 miles per hour.

We know that parking reform is key to building bike-friendly cities, but I think it's hard for the average person to see the connection. How do we talk about bicycling more holistically in the context of some of our nation’s most pressing issues?

When parking is removed, that makes it much easier to finance and build affordable housing. There are so many of these elements that are ingrained in the way that we do business. Less parking means more choices and healthier air. You have to show people the impact the bicycle can have.

More bike utilization gives us a way for us to reduce the challenges for housing. It's a way to reduce congestion since every bicycle that's next to you when you pull over a stoplight is a car that’s not in front of you. Bikes provide a healthy alternative to cars and the more people take advantage of it, the more they're sold, which naturally helps build momentum.

What do you think are the chief impediments when it comes to getting people to bike in the first place?

A big part of it is having safe cycling infrastructure. Traffic safety is a huge problem in this country and the carnage on the road is really painful. The more we invest in improving that cycling infrastructure, the more people will actually use it. The bicyclist and the pedestrian are the indicator species of livable communities.

Part of what needs to happen — and I’ve been involved with this work in my congressional district in Portland — is that we need to redesign roads to be more bike-friendly. We need to lower speed limits and create bike boulevards. One of my proposals that was enacted included creating a $1 billion Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program to fund projects that help prevent death and serious injury on roads and streets.

These are things that really make a difference to individual commuters, but they also provide a sense of safety and security so that those commuters then want their family to cycle with them. And when they do, they're healthier and they're happier. They also save money and are making a difference for the health of the planet.

What are you currently working on to address these challenges?

Between the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, we’re putting in the resources to ensure local bike projects qualify for federal funds and that much-needed infrastructure gets built. There’s been a 70% increase in funding to create and maintain bike lanes and sidewalks, and we’ve also made it so that shared micromobility like bike sharing and scooter systems are eligible for federal resources. Bike infrastructure is something we’ve dramatically underinvested in in the past and there’s now more funding for it than ever before.

We've also had a proposal to allow electric vehicle charging station credit to be used for two and three-wheeled electric vehicles. There's a lot of talk about the infrastructure for electric cars, but we need the same thing for electric bikes. 

There’s also a piece of legislation that I’m going to introduce soon which would allow people to cash out on their employer-sponsored paid parking. Meaning, that if an employer gives them a free parking space, the employee has the right to take cash instead of that space. It’s about letting the employee make the choice about whether they’re going to drive, take transit, bike, or use shared micromobility — it’s about leveling the playing field so that our default isn’t unlimited free parking. 

What else is giving you hope when it comes to bicycling?

For decades, we’ve basically surrendered to the single occupancy vehicle and that’s had devastating effects on communities. With its Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant Program, this administration is actively trying to heal communities that have been harmed by freeway projects, which have divided neighborhoods and only increased congestion. 

The new vision is a low-carbon, equitable future, which makes a big difference for people of color and low-income households who have been on the receiving end of historical harm. Part of what I hope we'll be able to make more progress on is being able to provide more cycling opportunities for low-income and people of color.

I’ve also been watching with delight some of the work that's being done around the country to broaden the range of people who are involved in bicycling. Whether that’s by putting diverse faces in cycling leadership positions or companies focusing on equity. It's making a difference and there's more that we can do going forward.

Electric bicycles are outselling analog bikes and electric cars, and it seems like every state is coming out with an incentive program of its own. How are e-bikes changing the conversation around bicycling in the U.S.?

An e-bike makes any cyclist into a bike commuter — the barrier to entry is so low, you can immediately begin cycling. There are a number of people I know whose second car is an e-cargo bike so that they can shop and schlep the kids around. We also see more and more companies looking to e-cargo bikes for deliveries. It makes a huge difference to congestion in our communities and to the environment.

It's really remarkable what an e-bike does in terms of ease, in terms of safety, and in terms of dealing with challenging geography. It has also been remarkable watching the number of people now who are using e-bikes, who got introduced to them with bike share.

I must admit, I was a little bit of a snob, holding out on buying an e-bike. But a recent vacation I took had me cycling in areas that were challenging for me on a conventional bike. The next day I took an e-bike and it was magic. So I am a fan. I'm planning on getting my e-bike this fall.

Do you think there’s still hope for a federal e-bike incentive?

I think we have an excellent chance at some point but nothing much is passing in this Congress. We're just trying to hold on to what we passed in the last Congress and get it implemented. But I think the handwriting is on the wall: E-bikes are extraordinarily popular, and they’re expensive for low and moderate-income people. An e-bike tax credit is a way to avoid that.

Many low-quality, uncertified e-mobility products are coming into the U.S. under ‘de minimis,’ the regulatory loophole that allows products under $800 to be imported without being inspected, taxed, or forced to adhere to safety standards. Can you speak to the Import Security and Fairness Act and how it aims to close this loophole?

Over two million packages arrive in the United States that are directly shipped to consumers, uninspected, and untaxed. Oftentimes, we're quite confident they’ve used forced labor. Of these packages, we also have inferior quality e-bike batteries coming in, which have been catching fire.

We're working hard to make sure that we close the de minimis loophole so that countries that are not market economies and are on the watch list do not qualify. People recognize the inequity of the loophole and there’s more interest in closing it from businesses. I think that's a very, very good sign.

Is there anything else you’d like to leave us with?

I don't believe that we have to declare war on the automobile, but we also don't have to surrender to it. There are all these little tiny decisions that we collectively make to prioritize cars, which are not really little tiny decisions when you multiply them by hundreds of thousands of times across the country. We need to move away from cars shaping our communities towards communities being able to shape the vision they have for the future. 

Congressman Blumenauer Is Bicycling’s Biggest Advocate

PeopleForBikes’ 2022 U.S. Bicycling Participation Report found that of the 66% of U.S. adults who did not ride a bicycle in the past year, 14% had never ridden a bike at all. In terms of youth participation, “Last year, we measured a gradual but repeated drop in ridership among youth ages 3-17,” says Patrick Hogan, senior research manager at PeopleForBikes, noting that his team is still working to understand why we are seeing this trend. “While about 49% of youth ages 3-17 rode a bicycle at least once in 2022, ridership among younger Americans has continued to drop since 2016.”

Riding For Focus (R4F), Outride’s middle-school-based bicycle education program, is pushing back against that trend, providing schools with everything they need to get students riding, including bikes, helmets, teacher training, and a comprehensive bike education curriculum.  While Outride’s research shows that an average of 10-20% of middle school students did not know how to ride a bike before participating in R4F, most students feel comfortable riding after participating with 91% of students showing interest in continuing to ride after the program.

Outride recently announced 55 new R4F grant recipients, expanding the program to nearly 300 schools across North America. R4F is grounded in research highlighting the positive benefits of bicycling for the social, emotional, and cognitive health of youth. Beyond giving students the confidence to ride comfortably and safely, Outride’s applied research demonstrates how bicycling enhances student motivation, focus, and overall well-being. 

At a time when youth face high rates of anxiety, depression, and other challenges, Outride has an unwavering commitment to empowering young people through the power of the bike. “Youth need an outlet for freedom and joy,” says Riding for Focus Program Manager Lauren Freeman. “There's no better way to address some of the challenges they face than by riding bikes.” 

Heart rate tracking shows students achieving close to half of their recommended daily physical activity levels during a Riding for Focus class. Participating students also report decreased screen time, higher levels of well-being, and an increased desire to continue riding bikes outside of school, especially with friends. 

Outride remains dedicated to serving communities where the need is greatest. R4F grants are prioritized to schools in communities that serve students with high rates of free or reduced-price lunch. By focusing on these areas, Outride aims to address systemic inequalities and ensure equitable access to the benefits of bicycling. 

See the full list of Outride’s new Riding For Focus grantees below: 

Academy of Visual and Performing Arts — Fort Worth, TX 
Adams-Young Middle School — Detroit, MI 
Akwesasne Freedom School — Akwesasne, NY 
Allegro Charter School of Music — North Charleston, SC 
Anansi Charter School — El Prado, NM 
Appling Middle School — Macon, GA 
Baldwin High School — Milledgeville, GA 
Baptist Hill Middle-High School — Hollywood, SC
Beckley-Stratton Middle School — Beckley, WV
Beyond the Bell — Sioux City, IA
Bridging The Gap Advocacy Community Center — Laurens, SC
Cali Calmecac Language Academy — Windsor, CA
Calistoga Junior/Senior High School — Calistoga, CA
Colorado City Unified School District — Colorado City, AZ
Commodore Perry School District — Hadley, PA
Concord School — Concord, VT
Connaught Public School — Collingwood, ON, Canada
Curtis Middle School San — Bernardino, CA
Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School — Deer Isle, ME
Fox Creek Junior High — Bullhead City, AZ
George Street Middle School — Fredericton, NB, Canada
Georgia Hi-Lo Trail — Sandersville, GA
Ignacio School District — Ignacio, CO
Irving Middle School — Pocatello, ID
James Hart School — Homewood, IL
Jeehdeez'a Elementary — School Pinon, AZ 
Jefferson-Douglass Academy — Detroit, MI
Knightsbridge Middle School — New York, NY 
Lukachukai Community School — Lukachukai, AZ
M209 Hamilton Grange Middle School — New York, NY
Mesa View Middle School — Farmington, NM
Mother Teresa Middle Schoo —l Regina, SK, Canada
North Sanpete Middle School — Moroni, UT
Pittsburgh Sterrett Classical Academy 6-8 — Pittsburgh, PA
Polson Middle School — Polson, MT
PS/IS 187 Hudson Cliffs School — New York, NY
Rundlett Middle School — Concord, NH
School District of Ashland — Ashland, WI
Searsport District Middle High School — Searsport, ME
Shihiya School Enderby, BC, Canada Silver Stallion — Gallup, NM
Simle Middle School — Bismarck, ND
South Bend Bike Garage — South Bend, IN
South Miami K-8 Center — South Miami, FL
Sumiton Middle School — Sumiton, AL
Summit Elementary — Kamloops, BC, Canada
Superior Heights Collegiate & Vocational School — Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada 
TeWinkle Middle School — Costa Mesa, CA
Uintah Middle School — Vernal, UT
Warm Springs Middle School — Berkeley Springs, WV
Washington-Parks Academy — Detroit, MI
West Burlington Independent School District — West Burlington, IA
White Oak Middle School — Silver Spring, MD
Whitewater Middle School — Charlotte, NC
Xet ̓ ólacw Community School — Mount Currie, BC, Canada

In addition to its research projects and Riding For Focus program, Outride provides grants to a broad range of youth cycling initiatives through the Outride Fund. Outride recently announced grants to 39 cycling organizations across the U.S., bringing their investment to nearly $2 million dollars in support of 212 community cycling projects in over 40 states.

In 1984, when Will Chavez was 17, he signed on to participate in a month-long, multi-state, 950-mile bike ride. A member of the Cherokee Nation, Chavez grew up in Eastern Oklahoma where he’d spend summer days riding a one-speed motocross bike with his cousins, exploring nearby Marble City and the local creek, where they’d go swimming. By the time he was finishing high school, Chavez was invited to participate in the inaugural Remember the Removal Bike Ride.

Founded by Mike Morris and Mose Killer, the Remember the Removal ride was envisioned as a way to better involve youth in their Cherokee culture. The school in Marble City only goes through eighth grade and about a third of kids often drop out when it comes time to transition to high school. Morris and Killer saw a need to cultivate leadership qualities in Cherokee youth, as well as help them build self-esteem and confidence to face life’s challenges. The pair settled on a bike ride that would not only test the youth mentally and physically but also allow them to honor their shared history.

The Remember the Removal Bike Ride retraces the Trail of Tears, a forced displacement campaign from the U.S. government that doubled as a form of ethnic cleansing. Between 1830 and 1850, some 60,000 people from the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their homes in the southeastern United States and relocated west of the Mississippi River. The relocation to less fertile land took months, and more than 4,000 people died from exposure, disease, and starvation.

The Trail of Tears is actually a network of different routes  — Remember the Removal riders stick to the northern route.

By recreating the original route as a bike ride, Cherokee leadership hoped to expose youth to the hardships their ancestors faced when they made the same trek on foot decades before. That first year, Chavez joined 19 other students and ride coordinators on bikes, while support vans and a school bus followed with tents, food, and other necessary supplies. The group visited historical sites as they followed in their ancestor’s footsteps, averaging 60 miles a day. For Chaves, the trip was life-changing. 

“Before the ride, my self-esteem was not good and I didn’t have much confidence — that all changed after the ride,” says Chavez. “I credit the ride for giving me the confidence to take on numerous challenges like joining the army, finishing college, and having a career in journalism. The ride changed me because it forced me to go past my limits – physically and mentally. So, afterward, I had the fortitude to not give up when things got tough or when it seemed like a task was impossible.”

For the last 27 years, Chavez has been an assistant editor for the Cherokee Phoenix, which was first published in Cherokee and English in 1828 in New Echota (present-day Georgia), then the capital of the Cherokee Nation (the paper’s offices are now headquartered in the new capital, Tahlequah, Oklahoma). In addition to his full-time position, Chavez has worked as the coordinator and trainer for the Remember the Removal Bike Ride for the last four years. 

In addition to the inaugural ride in 1984, Chavez also participated as a mentor in the second iteration of the ride, 25 years later.

“In 2009, the chief at the time decided to bring the ride back and he consulted some of the original riders, asking how we did things,” says Chavez. “Except for 2020, it’s been going consistently since then.”

Today, the ride remains a youth leadership program for tribal members aged 16-24, with applications opening each year in September (there are also two mentor riders each year, for those 35 and older). The program interviews are comparable to a formal job interview — applicants are scored and selected by a panel at the end of October, before attending orientation in November. 

"When I was chosen to be on the ride, I felt a sense of pride grow within me," says Whitney Roach, who completed the ride in 2021. "I not only get to represent myself and my family, but I get to represent my ancestors who were forced on the Removal…I [had] the opportunity to retrace their steps in remembrance of their strength and resilience."

Selected participants sign a contract, committing to six months of rigorous physical training, clocking miles but also learning how to clip in and use a bike with drop handlebars and lots of gears. There’s also a cultural training component that includes Cherokee lessons.

“Most of our youth don’t speak Cherokee these days so that’s part of the training,” says Chavez, adding that the cohort’s formal introductions to the tribal council are always in Cherokee. “They learn the language, the culture, and the history of the Trail of Tears. They end up with a really good background of what happened so that they’re prepared when they go out on the road and people start asking them questions.”

Along the ride, which starts in Georgia, riders visit significant sites, including New Echota, the former Cherokee capital; Kituwah Mound, the original Cherokee homeland; Blythe Ferry, where Cherokees gathered during their forced removal; Mantle Rock in Kentucky, where the former Trail of Tears route is a hiking trail; and many, many unmarked grave sites. 

“There are so many points in history when the Cherokee people could have disappeared like some other tribes,” says Chavez, noting that in addition to surviving the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee survived a smallpox epidemic that decimated the tribe in the 1700s, the American Civil War in the 1800s, and the seizure of lands and destruction of tribal government the pushed the tribe into poverty in the 1900s. “Yet, we are still here today. From the standpoint of being a Cherokee person, the ride made me even more proud of who I am and even more proud of my ancestors for what they endured and survived,”

A body of research, published from 2020 to 2022, highlights the benefits of the Remember the Removal Bike Ride for participants’ physical, emotional, social, and cultural well-being. Past riders that were surveyed showed improvements in their diet and exercise habits, as well as their mental health, with reductions in things like stress, anxiety, depression, and anger. Perhaps most importantly, those surveyed also demonstrated improved social and cultural connection to one another, their Cherokee identity, and fundamental Cherokee values.

Participants from the 2019 Remember the Removal Bike Ride walk down a preserved section of trail used by Cherokees in Tennessee during their forced removal some 180 years ago.

Over the course of three weeks, the youth ride anywhere from 40 to 70 miles a day, some much more difficult than others (particularly those in Missouri, nicknamed “Misery” due to its constant heat, hills, and rough roads).

In 2021, the riders switched from using road bikes to gravel bikes, which makes traversing the mountains and backroads much easier. The Cherokee Education Department pays for rider’s helmets, shoes, sunglasses, a bike computer, custom cycling kits, and bikes, which are Fuji this year but have covered the gamut of quality brands over the last decade. To receive the kit, riders are required to pass a grueling 60-mile road test — friends and family are then invited to watch them receive their kits, an event with a strong ceremonial element. When participants complete the ride itself, they get to keep their bikes.

In an average year, Chavez takes 8-10 riders, although this year it’ll be a group of six, having lost two to injury. Interestingly, since 2018, the Remember the Removal riders have been trending female, and since 2021, the cohort has been completely female. 

This years Remember the Removal cohort, which will begin their ride on June 5.

“Elders and council members have been asking, where are all the boys?” says Chavez, noting that male youth just aren’t applying. “Obviously, the girls aren’t afraid to do it — it’s tough and these girls want to take on the challenge.”

At the end of May, Chavez accompanied the riders to North Carolina, where they met up with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who also has a team of six riders. While the two tribes share a lineage, there are still a few differences in language, which can become apparent in the call signs used, all of which are in Cherokee. After a training ride together to get on the same page, the group will travel to Georgia, where they’ll begin the Remember the Removal Bike Ride on June 5, traveling nearly 1,000 miles through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

Upon completion, the riders will join more than 200 alumni, many of whom are still as committed to the ride as Chavez is, showing up to help with training, mentorship, or on-route support. It makes sense — after all, Remember the Removal is first and foremost a spiritual journey. Not only does it test the endurance and emotions of those who participate, but it directly connects them to their ancestors. In riding, they remember where they came from and find the strength to go on.

If you’re interested in following the riders’ journey along the northern Trail of Tears route, tune in to the official Remember the Removal Bike Ride Facebook page. 

This Annual Bike Ride Connects Cherokee Youth to Their History

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