Alamosa Bicycle Coalition

The Alamosa Bicycle Coalition began as a grassroots community initiative in 2019 through a series of community conversations and surveys around how bicycle services could help to address transportation needs in the rural area of the San Luis Valley, especially among low-resource community members and other diverse stakeholders not well-represented in Alamosa’s bicycling culture.

Bicycling opens important transportation, recreation, and health opportunities lacking to many in our low-wealth rural area, where there are no public transportation systems and many do not have access to other vehicles. Many face economic and knowledge barriers to acquiring and maintaining reliable bicycles to meet specific and often basic needs, whether a ride to work, school, community activities, healthy food shopping, or important social service and health appointments. Our goal is to open up greater cycling opportunities and related benefits – physical, social-emotional, and economic well-being – to those previously excluded from or on the margins of cycling. This encompasses youth and adults who have limited or no access to vehicles and/or drivers’ licenses - including those living in shelters, community correctional facilities, and within our immigrant communities. In addition, we provide doorways for women and non-binary folks, LGBTQ+ and folks for whom English is not the primary language to engage as a full part of the bicycling community. ABC has several different strategies to address these inequalities including our pop-up maintenance events, which allow us to increase our accessibility, removing barriers to receiving a bicycle, and training and incentivizing folks generally on the margins of the bicycling community to join in facilitating events.