Thank you to local Stanford student, Emerson Prentice, for writing and sharing this article about SVBE.
The Silicon Valley Bike Exchange recognizes transportation as an essential human need.
You may have food, shelter and job security, "but how are you supposed to get from all those places?" said Kelly Boyett, Program Manager for the nonprofit known as BikeX. Since 1993, BikeX has served this need by giving away more than 10,000 bicycles. Most of the donated bikes are repaired by volunteers and distributed to unhoused people, the very poor, or day-laborers through a variety of recipient organizations. Others are sold to support the repair shop.
“I have one [bike recipient] who was homeless a few years ago, and he had gout in one foot that was so swollen,” recalled Lawrence Purcell, a senior member of Catholic Worker House. After the man got his bike, he began riding from Mountain View to Los Gatos. He "just felt free, you know?" Purcell said.
“[Transportation] is an often overlooked basic human right. You have food, shelter and job security, but you're also missing transportation. How are you supposed to get from all of those places?” said Kelly Boyett, the Program Manager at BikeX.
The Volunteers
The Bike Exchange relies on volunteers, of which it averages 604 per year, and donated bikes to fight back against the struggle for transportation. Donations range from brand-new, carbon fiber road bikes to barely usable children’s bikes from the 1980s. Volunteers at the Bike Exchange collaborate, working through a 22-point checklist, to refurbish them all.
“It's a community here,” said Nathan Dobson, a volunteer who’s been at BikeX for a year and a half.
BikeX also looks to promote its other main goals of sustainability and education through repair workshops. Last year, the bike shop diverted 16 tons of metal and four tons of rubber that was headed to the landfill.
“I'm always learning. There's always more to learn too,” said Helen Hsiu, a bike-enthusiast volunteer who’s been at BikeX for four years. She noted she’s been able to form valuable connections with new volunteers and other retirees through her service.
Volunteers come to BikeX because of a common love for bikes. No matter their background, they recognize that a bike means much more than just its two wheels.
Some come in with years of bike repair experience, like Dobson, who started repairing bikes in Rochester, New York his senior year of high school. Others are "halfway towards knowing how to turn a wrench,” Dobson said.
After bikes have been worked on and gone through two rounds of quality assurance, they are ready to go. They are either given to one of a dozen recipient organizations BikeX collaborates with, who ensure they get in the hands of those who need them, or sold in the shop to build revenue. Boyett said the shop donates approximately 60% of the bikes they repair and sells the rest, looking to sell the higher-end bikes.
Revenue can then go towards the purchasing of helmets, locks and lights for recipients, which Boyett recognizes as essential to the process of providing a safe means of transportation. Bike sales have allowed BikeX to continue working as a non-profit, sidestepping potential grant hurdles other organizations have suffered recently, noted Boyett.
Recipient Organizations
Each recipient organization has their own methodology for distributing the bikes they receive from BikeX.
“There's usually a case worker behind every bicycle that goes out…because we're not professionally trained social workers, we’re mechanics,” said David Fork, one of BikeX’s founders.
Catholic Worker House gets 20 to 30 bikes from the Bicycle Exchange about five times a year. Purcell said they don’t worry about recording who gets bikes or preventing “double dipping.” They have given out approximately 2000 bikes since 1975.
“Many of [the Catholic Worker House guests] arrive on bikes that we gave them. Because the terrain of Redwood City, in the lowlands, where most of these people are, is flat, the bikes are very helpful as a primary means of transportation,” said Purcell.
Volunteers repairing a bicycle at Bicycle ExchangeCatholic Worker House is also notably not a nonprofit, unlike many of the other organizations BikeX works with.
“What we do is just very small. And we are not solving the homeless crisis, we are not solving the transportation crisis,” said Purcell. Catholic Worker House looks to support its guests through whatever means necessary, donated bikes being one of them.
Hope’s Corner, a different recipient organization, looks to give bikes to guests who are actively using its facilities, which also include shower and laundry services, and limit the number of bikes each guest can receive.
Kevin Thompson, the main person of contact for BikeX from Hope's Corner, said the story of the bike program at Hope’s Corner started after getting a bike for one day worker in Mountain View.
From there, Thompson said “Everyone's like, ‘Can I get a bike?’ ‘Can I get a bike?’ ‘Can I get a bike?’ And I just was like, ‘I had no idea that was a necessary thing.’”
The program grew greatly from there to also include an extensive bike repair program. This year Hope’s Corner is looking to repair 700 bikes. Repair is a space BikeX is also hoping to grow into in the future.
A Community Bike Shop in the Bay Area Bicycle Ecosystem
Silicon Valley Bike Exchange is one of many community bike shops in the area. A community bike shop is any shop that works to make biking more accessible. According to Fork, BikeX was a catalyst for the opening of many of these shops in the area. BikeX directly helped open Good Karma Bikes in San Jose.
“It was only after a number of years that I realized that there are community bike shops scattered all over the country and they all have slightly different business models,” Fork said. “They've all evolved in slightly different directions.”
BikeX partners with and donates small sums to Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, an organization that focuses on the advocacy side of transportation accessibility. This supplements BikeX’s work as a charity organization. The distinction between the two was made clear to Fork through the process of establishing BikeX as an official non-profit.
“I like to think of our region as having a bicycle ecosystem that has many different species that all participate in that ecosystem,” said Fork.
In the coming years, BikeX hopes to expand into affordable bicycle repair. This work would continue to chip away at the transportation problem, as this type of repair isn’t widely available in the area, according to Boyett.
'Till then, BikeX will continue to provide a life-altering means of transportation, free of charge, to those in need, bringing people one ride closer to a new life.
“We try to be an oasis in the middle of a desert,” said Purcell.
