The surge of GObike

                                 

By Darius Crolle

Thea Hassan is the public relation representative for GObike Buffalo, a non-profit organization, who recently talked about the biking advocacy group’s main goals and agenda. She also discussed the different ways they wish to accomplish these goals and the progress they have already made.

Q. What is Gobike Buffalo’s main agenda. What does your organization wish accomplish?

Thea: We are a non-profit organization founded by Justin Booth back in 2008 that focuses on educating the people on the importance of cycling through different advocacy efforts, including infrastructure improvements and other various community programs.

Q. Has there been a lot of support from the local communities?

Thea: Yea, for sure. Things have been going great thus far. We have gained a huge boost of momentum from the Buffalo residents, many of whom come to are weekly programs

Q. What takes place at these programs?

Thea: We have a bit of everything.  Some of our workshops involve bike maintenance classes where we teach people how to fix and maintain the quality of their bicycle. We also go into various high schools to educate students on how to take care of their bicycle and how to ride safely in the streets.

Q. That’s cool, I wish that was around when I was in high school.

Thea: Yea it’s so much fun, I wish it was around when I was in school too.

Q. Are you guys responsible for the annual Slow Rolls that have been taking place weekly throughout the city of Buffalo?

Thea: Actually we are not, that is a separate event. However, we have recently contributed to the slow rolls and supported them. So you can say that it falls under our umbrella.

Q. I have notice the recent influx of bike lanes on various streets including Elmwood, Linwood, and Delaware. Did you guys have a hand in that?

Thea: Yes we have. We did that by advocating for the city-to-city Complete Streets Act to add more bike lanes to the city. That actually falls under our Bicycle Master Plan which included adding 300 miles of new bike lanes by 2020.

Q. I have noticed in particular that there are a lot of them present on most streets on the West Side besides Grant. Is there a specific reason why that is so?

Thea: I’m not sure about that, however, we do have specific quotas and I don’t think Grant Street is included at the moment.

Q. What are some of the streets that are targeted for the new bike lanes?

Thea: Let’s see, Elmwood, Delevan, Main, North and South Division, and Niagara.

Q. Recently we received a bronze rating for our bicycle friendly community. Who’s responsible for handing out those certificates?

Thea: That was given to us by the League of American Bicyclist and was a big accomplishment considering that most cities don’t even receive a certificate.

Q. That’s interesting. What are some ways you think we can improve that rating to, let’s say, silver?

Thea: That’s funny that you say that because we have recently started a GOSILVER campaign that’s aimed at improving cycling in five areas.

Q. What are the five areas?

Thea: We have this saying called the five E’s, which are engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation, and enforcement. Our goal is to reach silver status by 2017 or maybe even sooner.

Q. That’s amazing, do you think the city is on pace to reach that goal?

Thea: Absolutely, the support has been tremendous and we are confident that it will continue on for the next few years.