Bicycle boost: Salt Lake City wheels forward with initiative to donate cycles

The cold weather has never seemed to stop Mayor Ralph Becker's cycling.

On a mid-December day last year, the Salt Lake City mayor joined his Provo counterpart on a 50-mile trek in a snowstorm as part of a friendly wager.

With winter again knocking on the door, Becker remains focused on bikes.

In the last month, the mayor and City Council have taken a number of strides that have cycling enthusiasts excited about biking in the capital city.

Council members earlier this month approved a deal to donate up to 400 bicycles found or confiscated by the city police department each year to the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective.

"It provides people with a low-cost, sustainable form of transportation that's environmentally friendly," said Dave Iltis, chairman of the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Committee. "It's healthy and it doesn't use gas."

The collective refurbishes the used bicycles and puts them back out in the community. Most of the bikes go to low-income and refugee families.

"Everyone needs to get around," said collective director Jonathan Morrison. "And car ownership is not cheap."

Last year, the police department had 175 unclaimed bikes, roughly the number of bicycles the collective donated to one refugee organization.

"It's not an end all," Morrison said of the deal. But it is a start.

The collective gives away bicycles to people with endorsements from various goodwill organizations. The group also trades bicycles for time.

People in need of bicycles can earn a ride by fixing flats or working on other bicycles the collective needs repaired, Morrison said.

The program affords the chance to ride for people who cannot afford to buy.

And the more people on bikes the better, Iltis said.

"By putting more people on more bikes in more places throughout the city, that helps to raise awareness of people on bikes," he said.

Iltis, who also edits the magazine "Cycling Utah," lauded a number of the city's other commitments to bikes, including the addition of 38 miles of new bike lanes this year and a commitment to the "complete-street policy," which requires nearly all new city streets to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians.

This week, Becker announced the hire of Becka Roolf, who left her Vermont bicycle-consulting firm to take over bicycle-pedestrian efforts in Salt Lake City.

"In a time of budget cuts and various other financial crises, it's really impressive to me to see Becker and the City Council hiring a full-time (bicycle-pedestrian) coordinator," Morrison said. "That puts us head and shoulders above many, many other cities in the country. It's a great city to be in."

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