Bike!Bike! Northeast 2019

Building Bike Culture Beyond Downtown. Lessons learned from Scarborough Cycles.

With millions of short trips made each day in the communities outside of Toronto’s core, there’s great potential for cycling – but how can we tap into it?

This talk will summarize what has been learned through the Scarborough Cycles initiative, a four-year community bike hub project that has successfully led over 1,200 people on rides, repaired over 2,200 bicycles, collaborated with over 50 community groups/organizations, and trained over 200 people in cycling skills – in a part of Toronto where there are few bike lanes and only one bike shop.

Earlier this year we published, Building Bike Culture Beyond Downtown: A Guide to Suburban Community Bike Hubs. The guide lays out a targeted approach centered on community bike hubs to overcome local barriers and foster unlikely partnerships.

This will be a 15-minute presentation followed up with 15 minutes of Q&A.

Speaker Bio: Marvin Macaraig (Ph.D.) is a Health Promoter and the Scarborough Cycles Coordinator at Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services, a community health centre with three locations in Toronto. He works to increase suburban cycling by building institutional capacity and addressing barriers. Marvin has extensive experience conceptualizing, completing, and evaluating community projects, and appreciates working on-the-ground at the neighbourhood scale.