The Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) is an effort led by the City of Philadelphia that works to ensure that Indego bike share is accessible to all Philadelphians. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia is a non­profit advocacy and education organization working as part of the Better Bike Share Partnership to support bike share and biking education.

The Better Bike Share Partnership is funded by the JPB Foundation.

Our Better Bike Share Partnership team joined the Office of Adult Education to plan out a reunion in order to connect all participants from all the Digital Skill and Bicycle Thrills (DSBT) cohorts in one big community building to celebrate each group’s success.

The Digital Skills and Bicycle Thrills program helps participants learn digital and computer skills while also learning about biking safety in the city using Indego. The program lets participants have the opportunity to join in on a group ride to put what they’ve learned about urban biking to practice.

The reunion took place at the Capital One Cafe in Center CIty, where the DSBT team and participants celebrated the personal connections that have been created through the program’s courses and community rides. Members were able to connect with others to share their experience and relate with one another.

“Meeting other people from different DSBT groups was great, seeing diverse people from different areas and who also do different things. Some were new to biking and there were those who biked but never try in the city,” said Dorothy Malone from the most recent cohort.

Dorothy enjoyed the community ride and picked up more about biking in the city. “There were people who know how to bike and those who try biking. I don’t ride in the city often with my Indego bike, but to when I do, I bike near places and learned to walk the bike and use box turns that we learned from the ride,” added Malone.

The Better Bike Share team took participants on stroll from the 15th and Pine Indego Station to Washington Square Park, not only to retouch bases on their biking skills that each cohort offers, but also to get participants take advantage of membership that the cohort offered after they had completed the entire program.

“This year the Digital Skills and Bicycle Thrills connected 56 Philadelphians who have participated in this years Digital and Bicycle Thrills 2017,” said Shazia Hashmi program coordinator for the Office of Adult Education. Hashmi accompanied the members on the group stroll and as they arrived at Washington Square Park, you could hear participants cheer “I-N-D-E-G-O” and “Here we GO! – IndeGO!” as they showed off their indego bikes.

The program has successfully impacted communities since its launch in 2016. The DSBT program has been presented in six KEYSPOTs through philadelphia since April 2016. Since then there have been 74 graduates since the program started. The course completion has a rate at or above the 60%, noted Hashmi.

Each cohort takes place in different parts of Philadelphia, connecting and introducing community members to a new source of transportation “The course is great! I think what it really added interest to the course the fact that we did the group rides, I hope they continue to do rides. I really enjoy my time with the program, kudos to all the organizers and the staff at the Bicycle Coalition, the bike share and the rest involved in the program because it allowed me to learn more about a different transportation system,” said Malone.

Here at the Better Bike Share Partnership, we want to thank all participants that took the time to come to this event, the Better Bike Share team looks forward to creating more impact on each individual who strives to ride more with us, and each Digital Skills and Bicycle Thrills cohort.