By David Callahan

The surest sign of Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s success is the number of people riding bicycles.

More cyclists help create Healthy Streets. The moment someone begins riding a bike, a street’s health begins to recover. For starters, riding a bicycle has an immediate, positive effect on a community. It conveys a message that all are welcome -– indeed, belong – in traffic, and it demonstrates how easy bicycling really is. Bicycling – like walking – also humanizes traffic, causing motorists to re-evaluate how they drive.

There also is a macro benefit that CBF cultivates. Our work is to boost the numbers of bicyclists in the region and to represent these individuals as a constituency with specific needs – improvements that result from partnership with local and state governments. Each rider represents a demand for the services and improvements that CBF pursues. Through bicycling, each individual adds hers or his voice to this effort, bringing the streets and trails they ride to the attention of transportation policy-makers.

Demand is political power. But we’re only partially successful unless we cultivate proportionate demand for Healthy Streets from all communities and ethnic groups, among men and women equally. In the 2006 Top 10 Initiatives, we recommit ourselves to the task of getting more women and people of diverse ethnicities to make bicycling a regular part of their lives and to energize them as constituents in the Healthy Streets campaign. Doing so strengthens our cause because it makes our voice universal and draws policy-makers’ attention to more neighborhoods and routes.

Of CBF’s 5,000 members, 62 percent are male; 84 percent of all members are white and 2.7 percent are black. By contrast, the U.S. Census shows that in the Chicago metropolitan area, women make up 52 percent of the population, and African-Americans comprise 19 percent of the seven-county region’s population.

So what is being done?

CBF attempts to build diversity recruitment into all aspects of its work. Three of our Top 10 Initiatives (Go Healthy!, Build and Ride, and Sunday Parkways) are based on direct interaction with Hispanic and black communities, with equal outreach to males and females of all ages.

CBF’s community liaisons engage specifically with Hispanic and black communities to promote bicycling in diverse neighborhoods. These liaisons use CBF as a clearinghouse to facilitate cooperation among people with shared interests and to lay ground for coalition-building. For example, CBF is working to ensure that Southland municipalities that have black populations are part of the constituency to bring the Cal-Sag Trail into being.

CBF strives to develop leadership roles for women and black and Hispanic members. Hiring women and people of color and diverse ethnicities also is a top priority for CBF staff.

At the Annual Member Meeting in October, CBF staff and board members heard a great deal of interest in Initiative 5. Diversity is a value in which we all have a stake. Please join in making CBF and bicycling more diverse. Volunteer your thoughts, your time, your skills, and please support CBF with a year-end contribution.