Dear Friends and Patrons of Adaptive BIKETOWN

Welcome to Adaptive BIKETOWN’s first newsletter of 2022! We hope these letters keep you in tune with our work all throughout the year. You can expect to hear success stories, news on upcoming events and other opportunities for community engagement that uplift Adaptive BIKETOWN’s mission.

First, we want to thank you all for your generous input and support as we continue to grow our public adaptive bike-share. We began 2017 as the nation’s first adaptive bike rental operated in conjunction with bike-share, and we helped inspire new programs in the Bay Area, Chicago and Detroit. Because of your support, we remain strongly seated in the saddle and can happily share some of our successes as we enter our fifth year of running this essential program. 

• Our fleet has expanded from 12 adaptive cycles to 27, all meeting different needs! 6 of these were purchased over the last two years and have e-assist functionality.
• We recently purchased another side-by-side tandem bike -- a fan favorite for friends to ride together.
• Our Trio Bike Taxi is also a favorite, allowing someone to comfortably pedal around any family or friends experiencing a disability.

Free Adaptive BIKETOWN is BACK!

In 2022, Adaptive BIKETOWN will offer free one hour rides for anyone experiencing a disability or are unable to ride a two wheeled bicycle. Come in any time this year to be fitted for an adaptive cycle of your choice, and take it out for a spin!

Adaptive BIKETOWN Updates With all these new improvements, we are extremely eager and excited to have folks start riding again in the spring! Before that, here are some updates and milestones we have accomplished in the past year. As the graph below shows, after a year of uncertainty, we bounced back in 2021 with a total of 260 rides averaging 2 hours and 10 minutes for each ride. The picture to the left shows Ryan Ross who manages Kerr Bikes and Adaptive BIKETOWN, fitting an Adaptive BIKETOWN user for the Electric Fat Tad cycle.  Through a generous grant from Nike and additional support from Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, we were able to offer free one-hour rentals between July and October. During this period Adaptive BIKETOWN users took 200 free rides. We built many new  relationships with patrons, and cannot thank the community and our partners enough for their support! We had a very successful adaptive resource fair in partnership with Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon, where 14 riders went on 27 different rides over 3 hours in order to experience our adaptive bikes out on the road. We were lucky to have some amazing vendors attend this event and received very positive media coverage that helped connect Adaptive BIKETOWN to several new patrons who have since come to try our services.

Total Rides: 260   Total Hours: 558   Average Ride Time: 2hours 10minutes

Thanks to our partners

We hope to replicate this process in 2022 with a survey and public community work group sessions. We are exploring partnerships, events and so much more! We are excited to hear from all of you in any capacity and will be building a calendar of events to share out with the community in coming months. As always, we can be reached at info@kerrbikes.org with any questions or comments. Once again, thank you to all our partners and we can’t wait to see what the future has in store for Adaptive BIKETOWN!

Adaptive BIKETOWN 2022 Public Work Group 

When we launched in 2017, we had a dedicated work group that met twice a month for six months before the launch of our program. Together they helped us understand the needs of people living with disabilities, the equipment necessary to meet those needs, and how we can best serve the community.

The next phase of the Adaptive BIKETOWN program is to regroup, understand our community's needs, and move forward with their input. If you are interested in joining our public work group for Adaptive BIKETOWN, we want to connect with you! We will be meeting over 3 to 4 one-hour Zoom sessions starting in April. Please fill out the survey below and include your contact information at the bottom of the survey if you would like to participate in this public work group. We look forward to hearing from you!

Click here to take our Adaptive BIKETOWN Survey!

Our first 50 responses will receive a $20 gift card

It is the policy of the City of Portland that no person shall be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination in any city program, service, or activity on the grounds of race, color, national origin, disability, or other protected class status. Adhering to Civil Rights Title VI and ADA Title II civil rights laws, the City of Portland ensures meaningful access to City programs, services, and activities by reasonably providing: translation and interpretation, modifications, accommodations, alternative formats, and auxiliary aids and services. To request these services, contact the Portland Bureau of Transportation at 503-823-5185 or 311 (503-823-4000), for Relay Service & TTY: 711.