Bike Walk Tompkins launches Bike Mentors program

This month, Bike Walk Tompkins launched its new Bike Mentors program, where mentors help both Bike Walk Tompkins and the community by leading bike skills classes, coordinating events and connecting residents with biking and other transportation resources.

Molly Hajjar, bike education coordinator for Bike Walk Tompkins, explained that the Bike Mentors program — supported by the Tompkins County government, the Community Foundation of Tompkins County and the Park Foundation — is an expansion of Bike Walk’s Bike Champions program that ran before the pandemic hit.

Bike Champions was grant-funded with paid positions and focused on bringing in people connected to key groups and neighborhoods in the community to increase access to and knowledge of biking.

As Hajjar described, Bike Champions was put on hold in 2020 due to COVID-19, but that pause gave Bike Walk the chance to reevaluate and expand the program.

“When we were revisiting what [Bike Champions] would look like this year, we decided that we wanted to shift it a little bit so that we could really build a volunteer base,” Hajjar said. “There are a lot of people in the community that have expressed an interest in volunteering in different capacities. And so, by using the Bike Champions program to also open it up to volunteers, and not just make it a paid position, we shifted it to Bike Mentors.”

Of the five Bike Mentors currently with the program, about half are volunteers, while the others are provided a stipend for specifically reaching out to underserved populations.

Bike Walk Tompkins is looking to have its Bike Mentors fill three roles — supporting bike skills classes, providing one-on-one mentorship and creating and planning Bike Walk events in the community.

“What we found in the past is people will come to a skills class, really be excited, do really well, and then there’s very little carryover because after they leave the class, if they’re still a little intimidated on getting out there, they might need somebody to help motivate them, to ride with them, to do some route planning,” Hajjar said of the skills and mentorship roles.

Bike Walk Tompkins faced a bit of a challenge trying to get the Bike Mentors program off the ground. The deadline for Bike Mentors applications had to be extended, ending a couple of weeks ago.

“We were surprised that there weren’t more applications at the start. And I’m not really sure what that’s due to,” Hajjar said. “It may be [that] people sort of coming out of the pandemic can be a little bit more hesitant to be in contact with people. Fortunately, it’s an outside initiative, so that helps. I think people are a little bit more at ease being in close contact with people outside.”

But once the deadline was extended and Bike Walk made an extra push to get the word out, more applications came in, leading to the five current mentors now with the program. Applications are now closed, but Hajjar encouraged community members to reach out to Bike Walk Tompkins if they’re interested in volunteering for any other programs or projects. Visit bikewalktompkins.org/contact for contact options and involvement opportunities.

The Bike Mentors program is also a reflection of the increased interest in biking caused by the pandemic, a trend that continues to persist in 2021. But with that increase in demand comes a shortage of supply, where new bikes are hard to come by. Bike Walk Tompkins has responded to that supply/demand shift by expanding and adjusting its programming, as Hajjar explained, including adding pop-up mechanic stations throughout Ithaca.

“A lot of people are looking at, ‘What do I have? What can I get cheap? What can I actually find?’ and then looking at, how can they maintain those?” she said. “So, we’ve had a number of mechanics and volunteers within the community come together and help us offer those pop-up stations so we can get people going on their bikes.”

Another shift during COVID-19 for Bike Walk has been a focus on advocacy and networking as well as more work around improving walkability in the community.

Bike sharing is also a more recent focus for Bike Walk, sparked after the bike-share company Lime — which previously provided Lime bikes for residents to use — left the Ithaca market early last year. So, Bike Walk Tompkins is looking to “fill that void,” as Hajjar described.

“People really were embracing having that communitywide bike share,” she said “It was really, really key for underserved communities where people may not have access to their own bikes. … So, it has impacted the community. And I think we got a taste of what a bike share is all about, and I think people do miss it.”

Hajjar said that Bike Walk Tompkins is also working to make county roads more bike-friendly.

“We’ve got some sharrows — with striping and painting on the roads that designate that it’s a shared vehicle and bike road — or we’ve got one bike lane down a main corridor, but we’re challenged to really up the ante there and look towards bringing in protected bike lanes and doing some demonstration projects on the streets that we can really improve routes to school and connectors to parks,” she said. “And so, we’ve got a good start, but I think we’ve got a ways to go with that.”

As for the future of the Bike Mentors program, Hajjar said the five Bike Mentors are eager to get started and learn more about their roles.

“I’m really, really looking forward to exploring what kinds of connections the mentors do have,” she said. “It’s a really diverse group, and so, I’m optimistic that we’re going to really expand the connections that we have within Bike Walk Tompkins through these mentors. And I’m really hoping that we also come out of this program with more skilled educators because we need more educators in this community to help bring people up to speed and feel like they’re confident in road riding.”

Hajjar sees the Bike Mentors program as a way to help Bike Walk Tompkins expand its network, reaching communities that it hasn’t been able to previously, and as a way to help expand access to resident resources.

“The biggest thing is just creating people who are confident and safe and understand the rules of the road and have the skills and the support and have access to the resources, bike shops and maintenance,” she said. “And so, I think it’s really important for the community to use this program to leverage expanding the resources that we have and making sure people have access to those resources.”

Visit bikewalktompkins.org for more information about Bike Mentors or any of the other Bike Walk Tompkins efforts mentioned in this article.