Inspired by the Câmbio Verde in Curitiba, Brazil, Taylor Lahey organized a bike donation drive in which all participants get tangible value out of the exchange.
Links
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was hosted and transcribed by Ian R Buck, and was edited by Stina Neel. Many thanks to Taylor Lahey for coming on the show. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:02] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.mn Podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful Uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck. What do a municipal recycling program in Brazil, an illustrated children’s book, and a bike exchange in Santa Cruz, California have in common? Taylor Lahey, a bike advocate from California, is the connecting thread between these three things. And on a recent visit to Minneapolis, we got to sit down and chat about it. Let’s jump in.
[00:00:39] Taylor: Yeah, so I went and studied the Câmbio Verde and that is a community city program, city-wide, that was created because there were informal roads built and the city couldn’t get trash trucks in them. So what the city did was work with these neighborhood leaders and asked if they would be willing to pick up the litter that was being created and brought to a location where the city could pick them up. And the leaders agreed to it and thus started a movement where people would pick up this litter and earn bus tokens at this point in time. This is around roughly the 90s to early 2000s where people would earn bus tokens, but this program had many different forms. It went from litter to produce, litter to school supplies, and today in 2025, it is recyclables for local produce. I thought that was beautiful. I think it’s really elegant to be honored and acknowledged for your work and be given something in exchange to help meet your means. So in that case, it was public transit. And you can imagine some of these neighborhoods where they lived on informal roads, they might not have the most wealth. It means a lot to have a free transit ride. So I thought that was really special. It’s the kind of place I want to live. And to me, I felt like I was, I jokingly say, it’s almost like I was looking at a celebrity. And to them, they’re just like, this is my Wednesday afternoon. I’m just looking at my produce. So I observed that, I came back and wrote a children’s book based on it. And I also just couldn’t really sit still. I’ve kept thinking about what would it take for this to come to life where I live in Santa Cruz or just anywhere in the United States. It felt so foreign. And it just explored this different kind of value exchange, like a local economy, or just different ways for energy and resources to move around. During 2023, I self published the book, and I was just selling the book. And one day I actually went to the local Waldorf School. And they said, yeah, you’re going to read this to our classes. But would you be willing to design a service project for us? And I had been kicking around this idea of, you know, what would be that one resource that we could base a community exchange around. So I thought…
[00:02:59] Ian: I don’t have the same problem of like…
[00:03:02] Taylor: not to the same degree, you’re right.
[00:03:04] Ian: But like, yeah, the city has wrapped their heads around how to do a trash pickup.
[00:03:09] Taylor: That’s right. And unfortunately, we don’t recycle directly in my part of California. So we have recycling, but we don’t actually create new products. We don’t have a recycling plant. So in Curitiba, they actually do the recycling there. They create new products for local businesses to create drinks, jams, whatever. And so I’m just thinking about Santa Cruz. And what makes it unique is a lot of people love biking. And that’s fantastic. And a lot of people own multiple types of bikes. And sometimes they outgrow it. Sometimes they have a repair they don’t get to. And it just kind of ages and sits. So I thought, well, I have that I have two bikes I’m not using. I judge other people in the area do. I told this to the Waldorf School teacher. And she said, “you think you can make that happen?” And I was like, “sure.” Thus began this recruiting, you can imagine like the Avengers of like local Santa Cruz, assembling all of them and pitching them on a one day event, where we do a pop up event similar to the Câmbio Verde, the green exchange in translation in English, and have it just be a compilation of work, donation, refurbishing, and giveaway. The goal would be to do it all in one location. And everyone that participates would get something in return. And the first big partner I was secured was B Cycle their own by Trek. It’s an electric bike share. They were giving out these free rides to our ride passes. And I noticed that they were giving them in the UC Santa Cruz University of California Santa Cruz. And my first big insight in community exchange was I finally got a hold of the manager, I pitched the whole story and the whole plan. And they said, “Yes, absolutely. Do you want like how many do you need? 100, 200?” I didn’t think it would be this easy. Look, we are just getting started. I’m the only manager here that we have a bunch of mechanics. We need initiatives like this to activate our community, the greater community, just so people start trying the product. It’s like, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I could take that. I could take it and run with it. That’s kept snowballing. I know we’re going to get more into the details, but that’s how those three are connected. Just honestly, seeing a vision of what modern society can be modern living can be and wondering and doing the courageous thing of like, well, what if we just do it? Like, maybe just try it. And I also had, I’ve never community organized any event before. It’s just, I felt like I had a responsibility to, I learned about the story. I learned, I studied the frameworks and create diagrams and learned about it deeply. And it’s like, it’d be a disservice not to try.
[00:05:48] Ian: Yeah, and so you wrote a whole event summary and, you know, tips for future possible organizers who want to like, re-implement this kind of thing in their own communities. And I was reading through that and I appreciated the diagrams where you essentially flow charts of like, you know, where is the value coming in from each party? Where is the value being exchanged by each party and flowing out of the system? How would you characterize the flow of the original Câmbio Verde? Like, in your version, it is a, it is a community run thing, but like, like the city isn’t directly involved. You know, this is all kind of like, ground up grassroots, whereas like, the municipally run thing down in Brazil is a little bit more, it seems a little bit more centrally organized.
[00:06:36] Taylor: Right. No, that’s absolutely right. In, in the Câmbio Verde, the city of Curitiba buys surplus yield from these, the local farmers. It’s very like, it would be so difficult to do that on a grassroots level. Right. In Santa Cruz, well, first off, Santa Cruz just has a great, active public and private nonprofit sector. Just overall, people are willing to donate their time. They see the good in opportunities like the one I pitched. And that was a real gift. Like I didn’t expect it to be so easy. And, and to go along with this, like really, just a really active bike culture overall comes with a lot of nonprofit bike, bike nonprofits. And the community bike collective is who I worked with, and they had already had a program where they would collect bikes over time. And when they reached critical mass, they would hold an event at a, at somewhere, and they would recruit a bunch of mechanics and they would fix them all up. And sometimes they would even coordinate a recipient group. So it’s very similar to the bike exchange. The difference being that it was done over time and it was centralized around the community bike collective. So insight number two, I guess, would be that when designing a community exchange, or maybe even community organizing community events in general, is how do you just tap the superpowers of those already in your community? And so when I saw that, I was like, well, okay, if you’re on board, could we get the housing authority? Because they have low income residents that might need these bikes. So like, yeah, I mean, let me get on that. And sure enough, they got added to the equation.
[00:08:09] Ian: And one of your, one of your tips in the document was like, try something small first that’s not directly advertised publicly. And so that you can control like how many variables you have going on at the time, you know, so in your version, you had donations coming in from families of the Waldorf School, you had bike mechanics from this specific community co-op sort of.
[00:08:34] Taylor: It’s a nonprofit called the Community Bike Collective, but go on.
[00:08:38] Ian: Yep. And then the recipients were specifically people who lived in the Housing Authority buildings. Yeah. If we were to scale this up, if I as an individual had a bike at home that I wanted to donate, what would that like, what would the experience look like? And how would that differ from me bringing my bike to like Free Bikes 4 Kidz, right? Which is the kind of thing where, like you said, centralized and spread out over time. So like, I as a donor wouldn’t see any of the rest of the process because I drop off the bike and then I leave and then that’s it.
[00:09:17] Taylor: That’s right. So with the bike exchange actually really accomplishes is, well, not it really accomplishes. What it does is it actually activates a place in the public and it takes place in the public. And the coordination that goes with that allows people to get things done in a more efficient way. It’s a very productive process on top of it being an excuse to get together and, you know, offer something to someone and as well as, you know, get a little something out of it, meaning like, I maybe I don’t want that bike anymore. And so you get a little bit of both this reciprocation, this reciprocal nature of the participation. The biggest thing would be, it’d be potentially taken care of in the same day. And it would spread out that responsibility across multiple entities rather than Free Bikes 4 Kidz. A lot of the liability would just sit on Free Bikes 4 Kidz in that situation. And don’t get me wrong, Community Bike Collective still had to deal with the waivers. They still registered bikes, but it was, it was, it took a lot off their plate to guarantee bikes moving the same day. It didn’t mean they had to go bring it back to storage. And that’s a, that’s a big deal. You know, bikes are, they’re not easy to move. If you have them, you have a lot of them.
[00:10:32] Ian: Yeah. Easy to move one at a time. Sure. If you’re, if you’ve got your butt on the bike.
[00:10:37] Taylor: Right. That’s right. So big difference. I have to say that there’s very human aspect to what happened in the proof of concept. Because right now, like it’s still more efficient. Of course it’s still more efficient to go to Free Bikes 4 Kidz. They operate, you know, daily and they have people, you know, willing to communicate with you. This was a proof of concept of event, event. And it wouldn’t be effective without some sort of regular cadence. You can imagine if, if a bike exchange was happening quarterly every half year, it wouldn’t be a big deal to look at a bike that you’re not using and say, you know what? I’m going to wait till May and I’ll just bring it out in May and roll it out and just know what’s going to get taken care of and brought to someone else in the community. So right now it’s these individual actors, these individual players in our community are still more effective. But what the bike exchange offers or any community exchange offers is there is a connector component, a community organizer component that kind of lays out the playbook and sets roles and helps people slot in and guarantees like we’re going to have this many bikes, we’re going to have this many mechanics, we’re going to have this many recipients and that’s what really the magic is, is just this communication and coordination.
[00:11:48] Ian: There was pizza involved I hear. That’s very important.
[00:11:50] Taylor: Yeah, I learned a lot about mechanic culture and I thought at first like, “really, these guys just want pizza and beer?” And I thought that was a little stereotypical. I was like, “maybe they want like, I mean, you could get them salads” or I don’t know, they’re just like the community bike collectors like, pizzas are going to be great. They’re going to love it. I’m like, okay, I’ll make sure one of them is gluten-free, but otherwise are we good with, you know, just like seven pies? They’re like, yeah, that’s great. That’s more than they expect most of the time. So that was, it was really pleasant working with mechanics and what was really fun was we set a goal to do 50 bikes in one day and, you know, some of that of course has to do with how many donations we get from the Waldorf School, but what happened was the community bike collective just went all out, went to thrift stores, grabbed a bunch of bikes and we got 70 bikes there that day and we had to tell the mechanics like, hey, it’s four, like, we got to stop working. It’s 4pm. You’ve been working since 10, but they were really motivated and we’re really grateful for it. Yeah.
[00:12:50] Ian: Now, given that these donations were coming from like families at the Waldorf School, was it, I imagine it was mostly kids’ bikes. Was it exclusively kids’ bikes? Was that a requirement of the event or were you also doing adult bikes and stuff?
[00:13:03] Taylor: We had teachers participate, so there were some adult bikes. A lot of them were children’s bikes, but we got 23 from the Waldorf School and then whatever, it’s a 47, no, 37 from the bike, the community bike collective and those were all varied different types of bikes and there was some inventory already with the community bike collective they just brought out. It was also, it was a service to the community bike collective to just get rid of all their inventory. So yeah, it just allowed itself to, the situation just allowed people to empty inventory and just get it redistributed to those who need it.
[00:13:42] Ian: Yeah. So the community bike collective, what usually happens with those bikes that were in their inventory?
[00:13:50] Taylor: So they sit in a storage space and they’re logged, they’re registered. If that is done ahead of time, they try to for sure and when there’s too many of them, they hold an event, they promote it and they partner with a company like the Housing Authority and they bring it to a location where mechanics are willing to go. Sometimes it’s in different parts of the county where I live in Santa Cruz and they encourage people to come get those bikes. The difference between that process versus the Bike exchanges, there’s a priority to have, to hold the Bike Exchange in a relevant location that’s frequented or convenient for the recipient community so that it just makes it super easy to participate. You just, if you can make it really, really easy, then you’re more likely to have success and there is more work on the back end for sure, but with the added help of a community organizer and teamwork, it’s just a little bit more likely that you can land that position in the county.
[00:14:50] Ian: Now, one thing that I noticed about this process is that both because of the time component where donations were happening in the morning and then the bikes get worked on and then they get delivered to the recipients and also you had two different locations and I think the document said that that was partially to protect the privacy of the recipients. The donors and the recipients never actually meet each other, which stood out to me because in the past when I have had a spare bike and saw somebody in a Discord server who was like, hey, I need a bike to go, expand the amount of jobs that I can look for and everything and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s meet up, I’ll give you the bike, we’re about the same height and meeting this guy and both showing him, hey, here’s my old mountain bike, here’s X, Y and Z things that you need to know about it, but also just getting to have that human to human connection was really important to me. What were your thoughts on that aspect of removing that meeting?
[00:15:57] Taylor: That was, I totally understand why that had to happen. It was a must and at the same time, I think that’s where all the community magic would happen. The trust, the safety, the collaboration that we are aching to see in our modern living, in our cities and our towns, that’s where I think all that starts to get cultivated. So it was understood, made a lot of sense, but I think we, I still want to feel that. I still want to know what it looks like. Ideally, it would be in one location. I foresee where I envision a time where a bike exchange happens where someone that actually got a bike from the bike exchange rolls it back into donation and someone on a whim just goes, wow, a free bike and I can imagine mechanics over time building like an awesome reputation in the community as that person that got me my first bike ride or got made my community to work so much easier. We got our first bike for free instead of having to pay for it. You just see it really compounding in community reputation, community trust, all that.
[00:17:06] Ian: Yeah. So if you did this again, yeah, would you, if you were expanding this out to be fully publicly accessible and you’re not limiting, oh, recipients are only going to be from the Housing Authority properties, would there be that chance for people who are donating and people who are receiving like meeting each other, even if they’re not necessarily like one bike is going from person A to person B, but having the full community there and being able to meet each other and food and a whole party and whatnot?
[00:17:40] Taylor: I mean, I would love that. I think the way we had to work through our partners, we had to, we’re using community, we’re using the Housing Authority’s parking lot and that was awesome. It was a lot more central than some of the other places the community bike collective had hosted their fixing, bike fixing parties and that was a great benefit. There was trade-offs. I would absolutely love to see this even more local. It may not have to be as many bikes, but maybe it could be within more proximity and that way there’s actually opportunities to create relationships we’re going to see more often and I think it’s totally doable and to do that, I would recommend basically the amount of community centers, parks, schools is another good one. I’ve thought of like what if there was a, it’s elementary school, like a fifth or sixth grader passing down their smaller bike and it goes just further, further down and then there’s just something, whether if it’s like not having to pay dues for a field trip or you know, like there’s some sort of like maybe it’s a musical instrument, like due that gets written off or something, because you gave a bike to a younger kid in the school. I think even smaller could prove to be more elegant because I just judge we have a lot of stuff and we could take care of each other if we start thinking that way. In terms of bigger, I would try, I would definitely try to just keep it as local as possible and that actually would require more relationship building really. For instance, the community bike collective, the president and the vice president live in Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz proper is where they’re based and then the headquarters is in Watsonville. That’s a, I think it’s like 20 miles, it’s far enough where they’re having to go back and forth and they, they had to, you know, we had to move some of the bikes back the first day and that’s a haul. If we could keep things as local as possible, no one gets has to hang on to anything, that I believe would be a really like effective bike exchange.
[00:19:47] Ian: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love the idea of that being within like a school community or something. Yeah, really specific like that. That makes a ton of sense to me.
[00:19:56] Taylor: Yeah, I have another example. I went to UC Davis, another bike capital as far as college campuses go and they currently, I met with the bike burn. It’s a on-campus bike service. They fix bikes, sell bikes, all that. Okay. And the manager, they told me about how there’s a program, not a program, there’s a lack of a program where upperclassmen, they graduate, they don’t want to deal with their bike anymore. Oh, sure. And that’s irresponsible. But if there was some sort of coordination and those were pulled in and just held for three months and then brought to the lower classmen, it would again, the elegance there, the efficiency there, the 100 foot, the 1000 foot view would be like, that’s the most logical thing to do. Yeah. And so yeah, being getting to know your community that you’re serving really well and creating strong relationships and having a place that might impound bikes be like, hey, can we hold these for a bit? Because we could just give them away if you’re open to it. It would decrease the amount of work and admin and penalties that might have to be issued to students. It would be smart. So I think there’s, this is why, while I could keep perfecting the type of event, the type of bike exchange I did, there’s really smart ways to just try to get to know your community and see what resources do you have, what kind of space you have, what kind of, what amount of bikes you might have, where can we store? Where can we store bikes? Where are the mechanics located and try to optimize around some of these variables?
[00:21:28] Ian: Yeah. I’m thinking about outside of the bike community, things that I’ve seen that are kind of similar to this and the retro computing community comes to mind with like, they host events every once in a while that are like, just everybody brings whatever old computers they have and people are excited about it and kind of showing off to each other and then everyone, some people are willing to give away and other people want to pick one up and start experimenting with it and stuff. And it’s like, find your passion.
[00:22:01] Taylor: Isn’t that special? To see all these gadgets that were loved pooled together and find another home, find another person that you just get a quick intuition hit that, I think they’re going to take care of it. I think they’re going to do something great with it. If I am giving it away to them, I don’t necessarily need to sell it. I got what I wanted out of it. Let’s see what they could do with it and know that if you’re in a place where if you want to do the same, sure, I could pick up a computer part and tinker in with it. And I think if that’s understood in that community and that community culture, then there’s just more sharing. There’s more collaboration. There’s more offering of resources for free.
[00:22:35] Ian: In the college context that you were mentioning, that reminded me of when I studied abroad for just one semester up at in northern Sweden, Luleå Technical University, and the apartment that I and most of the other international students were living in was, I don’t know, a 30 minute walk from campus. And a lot of people bought themselves a bike just for that one semester to use to get to and from campus. But I didn’t do that because I was like, number one, I was like, I don’t want to have to deal with figuring out who to sell this to at the end of the semester. What if I’m not able to sell? What am I going to do with this frickin bike? So I’m looking at this big pile of bikes. Most people didn’t even lock theirs up outside of the apartment every day. And I was like, “what if we all just had an agreement that anybody could grab a bike when they wanted to go to campus? And then when you come back from campus, you just bring another bike with you. And if we’re all chill about it, it would be fine.” And it wasn’t until after I got back to the states and moved back to the Twin Cities that I found out about Nice Ride. And I’m like, oh, bike, yeah, bike share, that, yeah.
[00:23:48] Taylor: Yeah, totally. I think what’s really fascinating about that is there’s just a different layer in which we move resources and goods in. You could do it in the market or you could do it in the community. And just rules are just a little different in that setting. And so I think that’s really fascinating to call out. And that’s kind of where the bike exchange operates.
[00:24:09] Ian: Yeah, yeah. Should we talk about the book a little bit? So you wrote this book after witnessing the Green Exchange in Brazil before implementing the bike exchange in Santa Cruz. So I understand that there’s a little bit of magical realism in the book. What happens? Is it trying to impart a lesson on the kids who read it? What are we going for here?
[00:24:35] Taylor: So the magical realism you’re pointing at is called the glow. It’s honestly the feeling when you are immediately just open and happy for someone else’s well-being. And it could be right after you do something kind. And within that, within the context of the book, it could be kindness. It could be the belief that we’re stronger together. It takes a village. There’s some of those cliches. And what’s also at hand, what’s also at play within the book is that what was special about the Green Exchange during that time is there were other programs in the city, and those bus tokens started getting used like money. And that is where I thought, again, on a societal level, outside of picking up litter and exchanging it for bus tokens, to just do anything that benefits the collective and have some sort of acknowledgement, some sort of thank you for your energy and time, and to get rewarded to meet your basic means, that’s cool. We don’t have that here. We have different forms of it. And sometimes it’s for literal money. I’ve seen that locally. But for transit ride, which there’s an abundance of, there’s a lot of space in buses. And if you can’t get on one bus, just wait for the next one. The idea of different organizations offering what they have an abundance to solve for things, to solve for the things we need, and underutilize work to pick up the trash is just smart. It just feels like the gaps are getting filled by what we have. We look inward to solve some of these problems. So I really loved, I really wanted to challenge, what is the meaning of money in this case? Because there’s a moment where, oh my God, like the bus tokens became something you could spend in stores and you could buy groceries. And in fact, in the story, the child is wearing these old ratty, old sandals and old tattered sandals and they break. And finally you start thinking, well, I could just buy new ones. I could just buy new sandals, new shoes, whatever that looks like for me and whatever I want. And it’s in the end where an elder, an old man in the book says, is that really what this is all about? Do you think the glow, do you think the bus token is really about just making money? Take a look, like look at this quality of life. And the ending of the story to give it away a little bit is turning back and looking at what this exchange, the city program had done over years. And seeing people safely walking back and forth within the neighborhood, going to the city via the bus, kids playing in the grass where they couldn’t have done before. And the glow especially shines bright from the child who thinks that, oh sweet, I could just buy shoes now. And realizes that this is more, this is something more beautiful. And it does include magical stuff like bus tokens becoming money, but it’s not without this foundation of working together. And I really want to challenge like, well, what would it be like to choose to operate that way rather than on another financial system, a capitalist system or any other system?
[00:27:52] Ian: Yeah, because the really remarkable thing about that model is in the bike exchange, donors are bringing something that has a recognized value, right? A used bike is still like, it is something that I could sell used if I wanted to. Whereas like, exchanging waste for produce or for a bus token or whatever, that is like, the private market would never ever give you anything in exchange for that, right? The private market makes you pay for the privilege of having this waste taken away in a safe manner, which is like mind blowing forward thinking there.
[00:28:36] Taylor: Well, there is, I totally agree, but you have to know that during that point in time in Curitiba, the city’s carrying capacity just wasn’t able to account for that amount of litter. So it started affecting everyone’s water quality and the city, as a good city does, is responsible for that. But you’re right. I mean, litter is enough of a problem, Santa Cruz, there are a number of trash pickup non-profits that take care of that and try their best. What it really misses is a civic obligation that we could all do something about it. But I also think coming with that civic obligation is some civic, like reciprocity, some sort of civic kickback of like, you know, that recognition and we have it. We have bus lines, we have different, we have Go Santa Cruz, which encourages people to take their bike and they get rewarded for it. There are these things around. It’s a matter of connecting them and making sure it’s really convenient to participate.
[00:29:34] Ian: Yeah, here in the Twin Cities, I think you’re going to love this. We have Metro Transit runs an adopt-a-stop program, where by pledging to go out to the stops that you’ve adopted and pick up trash and, you know, just make sure that like, nothing’s broken. If there’s anything major that you can’t handle on your own, you know, you message Metro Transit to let them know that they need to send some staff out. And in return, they send you 10 free rides every month. And, you know, you get like your name or whatever little message you want above the, you know, saying like, this is adopted by so-and-so. And it’s a beautiful little community forward recognition of that work.
[00:30:20] Taylor: That’s great. Yeah, I do love that. I’ve actually heard about that when I did my talk earlier this week with BikeMN. It just came up as just something in our conversations. I agree. It’s really, I keep using the word elegant. I think it’s really elegant.
[00:30:33] Ian: And any listeners who haven’t heard our episode about the adopt-a-stop program can go back and look. That’s probably like a year and a half ago we did an episode about that. Great little program. I probably should have asked this towards the beginning, but here we are. Taylor, what is your relationship with bikes? Like, how did you come to bike commuting or the bicycle, you know, community in general?
[00:31:01] Taylor: So I grew up right taking my bike everywhere when I was a kid. It was, we weren’t, we didn’t have rides that we could bug our parents for. And so I, that was the default. I rode my little BMX GT around with flirt with going off big jumps and stuff.
[00:31:17] Ian: Have you always been in Santa Cruz?
[00:31:19] Taylor: I’ve been, I was, I grew up in Castro Valley, which is near Oakland. And it was hilly, but you know, we just made it work. It was something that we loved to do. We’d go places to just bike too. And so I was really familiar with it. Went to UC Davis. And it’s not because I love bikes that I went to UC Davis, but of course you, there’s a really strong bike culture there. A lot of people ride their bike for the first time there if they haven’t already. And it was just nice to have. I had like a push break or a coaster break on a nice single speed that I adapted. And I absolutely love that. And that really simple bike. And so that was most of college. I, I, right after college, I lived in San Francisco and I got a Vespa. So I went, I stayed on two wheels, but I got to, you know, add a motor. I’ve always been trying to live a life without a car. And unfortunately to optimize for life in Santa Cruz, you got to have a car. But since 2020, a lot of electric bikes really become popular. I’ve, I picked up one in the second market and I’ve, that’s my go-to for doing all these little errands, especially when the sun’s out. It’s really nice to, you know, get a coffee in the morning and not have to get in the car. It’s, I live in a beautiful place in the world where the weather’s pretty nice. So it’s, I think it’s, it’s a real joy. So, so yeah, but yeah, so I still have a car and I wish to live somewhere where I don’t need it.
[00:32:49] Ian: Yeah. Santa Cruz, not as big a metro area as the Twin Cities, I imagine. So if you’re going to do a bike exchange, like somewhere like the Twin Cities, yeah, would you think like, should we split into like multiple exchanges? You were talking about like probably keeping it small scale is, it might be better.
[00:33:11] Taylor: I took, I, we’re in Uptown right now and I took the Greenway up to a pass, I guess into Seward, wherever BikeMN is.
[00:33:19] Ian: Yeah, they’re over in like Longfellow.
[00:33:22] Taylor: Thank you. Yeah. And Ho-, is that, or Howe?
[00:33:25] Ian: Yeah, Howe.
[00:33:26] Taylor: Howe, thank you. And, and I, there’s Venture Bikes, right? Is that the name of the?
[00:33:30] Ian: Yep, that’s the one on the Greenway.
[00:33:32] Taylor: I think it’d be amazing to hold a, an exchange at Venture Bikes. You get people, you get exposure for the Greenway. You get, there’s a nice open space adjacent just on the other side of, of the, of Venture Bikes. And I mean, I’ve thought about actually community bike collective and I have thought about like, how do we grow, what do we want to stretch into for the next bike exchange? And we thought about like, that’s a great opportunity to get legislation signed or like, you know, like signatures for a potential legislation or bills or whatever. And, and generate interest and really support like what the vision of what more bike infrastructure could look like, because people are already going with the purpose to either get a bike, be a good community member and offer a bike. So it’s an opportunity to just, what if we grew that layer of like love and affinity to just another, to another level? What else could we accomplish? So I think it’d be really fun to showcase the, the Greenway. Can’t say if I know the city well enough to offer another place, but I think that’d be really fun.
[00:34:35] Ian: Yeah. And also that, that brings to mind like, what kinds of reward incentives you can offer to the people who are participating because in the version that you ran, the donors got a voucher for the cycle for B Cycle. Yep. The bike share system. The mechanics also got a voucher for B Cycle. And then of course, the recipients receive a bike. That’s, that’s the value that they’re getting out of the system. And like if, if a privately owned bike shop is like hosting or, you know, being involved in the process in some way, I’m trying to think about like what the incentive structure is for them. And, you know, because literally like a bike exchange does take away the need for people to go and buy a bike from the bike shop, you know, but also increases the number of people who might potentially be bringing a bike in for repair later and, you know, buying accessories and stuff. So like, yeah, I don’t know, like a small gift card might, you know, but that kind of scales like, yeah.
[00:35:43] Taylor: Right. I think if you want to just directly use the proof of concept that I built, it could be Spin credit. It could be, maybe it’s some sort of pass for a number of light rail rides or bike rides. I don’t know exactly what that is. For Venture Bikes, it would definitely be a community outreach event. I don’t think they would want to just offer free, you know, credit.
[00:36:08] IAn: They’re helping to facilitate the space and providing like staff time to help, you know, probably and receiving exposure out of the system.
[00:36:16] Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question. And I also have to say there are a number of organizations in Santa Cruz, for instance, where people want to donate bike accessories, helmets and locks. We gave away a lot of helmets at the bike exchange. It’s something that wasn’t captured in the report, but because it was just something, it was like a little add-on. So maybe there are other opportunities to bundle certain things together where you have so many helmets that are arranged in different sizes that it’s just no big deal. Yeah. If you want a small, if you have a smaller head, you can have a small helmet. The problem, what’s really important about a good incentive reward is that it needs to be valued by all different, not of course, there’s a context within biking. They have to be at some sort of certain level of able body, but it needs to be valued across the widest range. And so what was really effective about the green exchange is that everyone, everyone would love some nice organic produce that almost everyone could benefit from that. And then bike exchange that I built, just about everyone was curious about B Cycle. They didn’t need to fully commit, but yeah, I’ll take a free ride. It’s just something to do. I bike a lot anyway if I’m out. Maybe I’m just going out and enjoying a beer and I just want to, instead of taking a car home, I could take a bike. So that has a wide range of value for the community. And so I think that’s really interesting too. I could imagine a few things, but I’m not of this community and I’m curious for you or someone else that bikes a lot here, just scratching the surface, understanding needs and opportunities. What would be the highest value for the average commuter? And what was really nice about the B Cycle ride pass is if they didn’t need it, they could still give it to someone. That was really special. There’s just this ability to offer it to someone else. In fact, some people are like, I would do this for free. It’s like, that’s not the point. Thank you so much. And if you want, you could give that away. You could be extra nice to someone else. It’s mainly just acknowledging it, anchoring that as like, that’s good. We want more of that. Here’s something. And if you want to give it away, you can.
[00:38:27] Ian: Yeah. I mean, you’re right. I have far more metrotransit go-to cards now than I can use because I’ve adopted a few stops. But having them around is super useful for when people are visiting from out of town. And it’s like, hey, here’s a bus card. This will get you around for a few days.
[00:38:48] Taylor: And I mean, yeah, totally. And I also wonder, sorry, I just got a hit on an idea. Does Spin offer monthly passes, weekly passes? I have no idea.
[00:38:59] Ian: Yeah, I’m not sure. Yeah. So I mean, we’re in an awkward place right now where it’s like, we used to have like nice ride was a, not municipally owned, but, you know, was like municipally supported nonprofit organization that was exclusive to the Twin Cities. Now we’ve got, you know, that went away because their major corporate sponsor decided to stop supporting them. And so now we just have the venture capital backed like Lime Bike and Spin and whoever else decides to, you know, put a bid in for some licenses. So season to season, you know, we can have vastly different groups of private companies operating in the Twin Cities, which is a frustrating place because like it doesn’t feel like it’s from the community. It’s not consistent. It’s yeah. So, so yeah, I don’t know if I would lean on that necessarily until we can get our act together and, you know, get back to the place where we have something that’s more like municipally run or, or at least like focused on this community more than a national company can be. Yeah.
[00:40:10] Taylor: Yeah. Another, these ideas are trickling in. I can imagine, I know for the most part, the Greenway is finished. Is that correct?
[00:40:18] Ian: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:19] Taylor: So like, if it wasn’t, it’d be, or maybe there are streets that are being converted, you could activate a new street that got new bike lanes and have an exchange there. And I think that would be, again, it’s just exposure. It’s an immediate opportunity to look at this place where you could ride the bike. It could be, yeah, it could be a great venue to host one. But yeah, back to the incentive reward. That’s a tough one. I think it would, you have to just get a little more clever and I don’t know what that looks like for…
[00:40:46] Ian: Right. Well, I mean, you mentioning the example of like, if a school were to host one of these and offering kids like, oh yeah, you won’t have to like pay your dues for a field trip in the future. Like that’s, that is something that I would not have been able to think of because I’m not within that context. So like that is, that is a perfect kind of thinking outside the box, thinking within your context. Yeah, what would that, what would that look like? And since we’re not in whatever individual context, people are coming at this conversation from like, we’re not going to be able to think of those things. Yeah. So in Minnesota, we, it gets dark earlier during, you know, the fall and winter. And, you know, so adding lights or bike locks to the exchange. And that’s something that yeah, it’s so like, oftentimes when I’m encouraging somebody to get into bike commuting, it’s so important to make it clear to people that like, it’s not about just getting the, like you get the bike and that’s step one, you’re also going to need a few other things to go along with it so that you don’t find yourself like totally out of luck when you’re like, oh, the first time that I go to the grocery store and I leave my bike outside, wait a minute, how am I going to lock it? Oops, forgot about that detail, right? I’m biking at night for the first time. I didn’t, you know, I never thought about getting a light. And so I like setting people up for success, I feel like includes at least giving that information, if not also providing like, you know, some basic lights, a basic lock to go along with a bike.
[00:42:26] Taylor: Totally. Back to back to the imagined Venture Bike green, bike exchange, it would be fascinating to just allow different bike education, like nonprofits to table and offer some education, like that’s a great opportunity again to compile services, compile just opportunities, education, legislation, whatever that looks like. And I, there’s something about that contextual power of, oh, I didn’t really want to hear about this information now, but now that I have a bike, yeah, I kind of want to learn how to lock it and where’s a good place to lock it and where, how do I, you know, put this light on my bike?
[00:43:02] Ian: So how do I mount my bike on the bus when I want to, you know, combine that with a trip?
[00:43:07] Taylor: Yeah, that would be, yeah, that, that’s a great opportunity to do so. And yeah, just again, it’s the, this, what the bike exchange offers is this compilation of opportunity, compilation of community interaction and collaboration. And so, yeah, that’s, that’s a great point. Yes, there’s the actual resources of bikes, helmets, locks, but at least like there could be, that we could easily solve for the education piece if they’re held, if bike exchange are held.
[00:43:36] Ian: Yeah. So in the, in your case, in the event that you hosted, you had, you ended up with more bikes than you had recipients ready, right? What was the plan for, if the opposite happened, what if you had way more recipients signing up than you ended up having bikes or like, or I mean, bikes in particular are a thing where you, like not every bike is going to be good for every person, right? There’s a wide variety of different sizes. Right. So, you know, even if you have the same number, you can easily have a mismatch. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:09] Taylor: There’s a very human aspect of this. There needs to be some places to store stuff. I don’t know what happens when the produce doesn’t all get picked up after a day of running the green exchange, for instance, the, the community bike collective, I didn’t expect them to get, you know, 25 mechanics. That was that knocked out of the park. If we, if we only had 23 bikes from the, the Waldorf school, we would have had a lot of idle mechanics. So, that combined with what the community bike collective pulled together just to their community. I don’t think that was planned from what I remember that they would, they would get these extra maybe 20 bikes from all the thrift stores in the area. So, that was lucky. We can’t, we have to be lenient with what just happens day of, but you do your best. That’s why curating your community, your groups of participants is really important. Some guaranteed, I could already offer 10 bikes. Let’s pencil that in because that means we need at least, you know, two mechanics, three mechanics for those 10 bikes. So, yeah, it’s, it’s all this pre-work that the equivalent of a community organizer would do, whether if it’s within one of these groups or someone like me who just was a community exchange nerd, and, and, and would just coordinate like, okay, if, if we have all these mechanics come and we only have 23 bikes, we’re going to have a problem. If you, we might want to just let them know they could come hang out, but that’s just not going to be the expectation. You might have a shorter day. So there needs to be flexibility. The first day we only gave away 16 bikes to the housing authority, which is okay in the long run, but we had to get really crafty storing those bikes the night of, and then we brought them back down to community bike collective, the community headquarters and the community bike collective luckily just has done a lot of work giving out bikes. So it didn’t take long before we get, we got connected to a elementary school. We just rolled them out after school and families grabbed them. And then we found a female migrant, female farmer migrant support group in which we just rolled bikes out and grabbed whatever bikes. Again, there’s a lot of giving in the Santa Cruz community, which is fantastic. It’s, it’s really generous for those who have, and those who have not are supported as best they could. So the people are available, people are talking, could they talk better, can, can stuff will be compiled further and more opportunities like in exchange happen? I think so. And I think that’s really even true about, I would judge about Minneapolis. There’s so many people already doing good work. Who is that conductor? Who’s that like, you know, music composer that’s going to write this, this design and get us all to come, come together and just, and make sure we get a real compounding effect, a compounding outcome, a very productive outcome for whatever the community needs.
[00:46:53] Ian: Yeah. It sounds like the mechanics who were participating in the event, like they were the ones who were there the longest, they put in a lot of work. Did you get any feedback from them? You know, that is like that you’re going to keep in mind for next time?
[00:47:11] Taylor: They’re a very strong community. First off, they, they, a lot of people were voicing how wins the next one. This was so fun. I, I would, otherwise I’ve just been at home. So a lot of people brought their kids, the kids would test ride the bike, the children’s bikes. And I was just impressed. I, I just wanted to make it worth their time. Pizza was a big deal. When I brought up, like, could we feed these mechanics? The community bike collector was like, yeah, yeah, pizza that would just knock out of the park. And I was like, sure, that’s, that doesn’t seem too hard. And then the after party. So we hosted an after party at a brewery, Discretion Brewery, shout out to them. They, we got this deal where if you flashed your ride pass, they would, they draw a little star and that’d be good for a beer, which was, which delighted me as a community currency nerd of like having this pass be a free ride pass for two hours as well as a free beer for just that night. So yeah, just a little feature onto this, this thing that represents the symbol of this, you know, yeah.
[00:48:14] Ian: And so, so these mechanics are used to participating in, you know, the, the community bicycle collective that, you know, is fixing up bikes and then giving them away eventually, but like, what is the process from their perspective usually like, are they all in one place at the same time helping to fix up bikes, or do they come in individually?
[00:48:36] Taylor: Yeah. So what we literally did was the community bike collective president, he is really well connected and he would recruit at different bike stores. He recruit at just like, we have another nonprofit called the Bike Church, amongst others for sure, but he recruited some of the Bike Church and, and he would just put it out on different Facebook groups and it, the turnout was great. I-
[00:49:01] Ian: But like, I’m asking like, during their ordinary operations, like, like, how do they get their bikes fixed up and everything, you know, do the, do the mechanics get to all hang out together while they’re like, fixing stuff up.
[00:49:16] Taylor: Thank you. Thank you. So in the housing authority, authority parking lot, it’s, it was the reason why I picked it because it was big. We had an area that was really comfortable for donations and areas really comfortable for refurbishing. In fact, we had this nice little flow of cars coming in, dropping off bikes and then heading out without getting in the way of the mechanics. So there was a huge work party. You could imagine like, eight stations, maybe nine stations, depending on some mechanics worked on bikes together, and they bring the, the, the instructions for to bring their own, I don’t know what to call it, stand to work on the bike. And there’s a pool of different parts and tools right in the middle. So people could come and like grab stuff that they need. And that was, that was pretty much it. They all worked at the same time. Some, you know, came a little bit later. They’re volunteering, but they, they most of the time got there. Some of these bikes that we got only needed to, we asked them, we asked donate donors to clean bikes, but you know, sometimes you clean it up and just write it and it might be done. So bikes, I mean, mechanics were put to work, but sometimes they just let their kid ride it and like, sweet, let’s put that in the pile. Let’s get it out.
[00:50:24] Ian: I think that was the detail that I loved the most was like the mechanics who brought their kid to the event. And then the kid was helping to test ride the bikes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s beautiful.
[00:50:35] Taylor: Yeah. And like, I mean, in a future bike exchange, that could just be, they get to keep the bike. I mean, I assume a mechanic might have multiple bikes with their kids already, but you know, you never know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:50:45] Ian: Yeah. Anything else that you wanted to make sure that we talk about before, before we wrap this one up?
[00:50:53] Taylor: Let me think about that. I, I would just say if anyone that’s listening to this podcast is interested in building one of these, I would love to connect with you. I’d love to, I could help out any way I can. I’d love to see another one of these and I’d love to see your flavor too. I have my own way of doing things, but for this to really catch on and become a thing, community exchanges, bike exchanges at large, whatever, I would, I would just love to support and see what that would look like. Yeah. I would love for these to pop up anywhere in the world. That’s why I wrote the report and wrote a bunch of nice tips for people that want to organize their own.
[00:51:29] Ian: And while you’re legitimately doing like a whirlwind tour right now, you are wasting no time while you’re here in the Twin Cities.
[00:51:36] Taylor: Yeah. I learned a lot when I self-published my book in 2023 and just kind of gathered a bunch of ideas of what I would do if I did this again. And sure enough, I republished my book in hardcover with a publisher and I started applying all of that. And I have been coming here every three to four years, the last three to four years to visit my good friend. And I’ve gotten to know a lot of people, get my, learn my way around here. I’m really grateful they lives in Uptown, so many walkable like attractions and places to eat and get coffee. And so I’ve created my own relationship with this place. So when it came time to like, all right, I’m going to activate my greater region Monterey, but let’s do a stop somewhere. And sure enough, this was an easy dart to throw into the dartboard.
[00:52:21] Ian: Yeah. Because you’re doing a book event at Bone Shaker Books. Of course, this is all in the past for you listeners because that’s how time works. You’re also just yesterday you gave a talk hosted by the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota, right? That’s right. And that was about this process, the Bicycle Exchange. Was that, so that was a live event in person?
[00:52:47] Taylor: It was a live event, yeah, at their headquarters.
[00:52:49] Ian: Nice. With like, who attended it? Like what was the audience like?
[00:52:54] Taylor: Someone that’s part of the Greenway Coalition and everyone else, it was only, it was a small group and everyone else was where employees. What was really important to me, one is practice, just practice public speaking, but two is no matter the size, as long as it’s not depressingly small, that everyone’s interested in what I’m talking about. And sure enough, angela olson, who I was communicating with, is out to her, she delivered on just that. There’s a lot of great people that came and of course the people that work at BikeMN.
[00:53:24] Ian: Yeah. And I mean, if you want to get the attention of the people who are going to be able to facilitate something like this, like the Bicycle Alliance in Minnesota are of great, great people to talk to.
[00:53:36] Taylor: That’s right. That’s right. I mean, there are people that I, when I think of like designing and thinking about organizing events, there’s participants and there’s partners and I definitely would see BikeMN as like a partner. There would be someone to get in the sandbox with and figure stuff out with.
[00:53:54] Ian: And then you’re stopping here by my studio and chatting here. Anything else significant that you’re doing in town while you’re here?
[00:54:01] Taylor: No, this is, it’s a whirlwind. I take off Monday morning or Monday afternoon, but yeah, that’s pretty much it. I’ll be back in the winter. I’ll probably have some more book events. Yeah, this is, I’m gonna say it’s a second home, but when your best friend lives here, you come and see him.
[00:54:19] Ian: Nice. Yeah. Well, I hope you get to relax a little on Sunday.
[00:54:23] Taylor: That’s the plan. I look forward to it. It’s going to be fun to have such a fulfilling time here.
[00:54:30] Ian: Yeah. Well, Taylor, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:54:32] Taylor: Thank you so much.
[00:54:34] Ian: And thank you for listening to this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast. The show is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, non-derivative license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it. The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was edited by Stina Neel and was hosted and transcribed by me, Ian R. Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast. So if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [[email protected]]. Streets.mn is a community blog and podcast and relies on contributions from audience members like you. If you can make a one-time or recurring donation, you can find more information about doing so at [https://streets.mn/donate]. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNPodcast. Until next time, take care.