2023 was a successful year for StreetWise Cycling Education

As the days get colder and the year starts to come to a close, HUB Cycling can’t help but reflect on all the folks who joined us over 2023 to increase their cycling knowledge through a StreetWise Program. Ever growing stronger, our StreetWise Education department brings cycling programs and education to folks across BC, and even across the country. This year was a pivotal year for StreetWise, one particularly focused on expanding our programs, as well as adding more content on e-bike education.

When most people think of StreetWise, they probably think of our very popular StreetWise Cycling Education Centres. For the first time, we ran two of these centers this year, one in Vancouver at Trout Lake Community Centre, and the other in Richmond at the Steveston Community Centre. 

At each center, we offered three courses: 

• Beginner Bike Skills, 
• Intermediate Bike Skills, and 
• Basic Bike Maintenance. 

All courses were very popular at both locations, selling out in many cases, but Beginner Bike Skills remains the most popular of our courses, with 24 out of 25 courses being completely sold out! In total, 191 participants were able to ride a bike for the first time; congratulations to you all for starting your cycling journey! 

For those still looking to learn, we will be offering our Education Centres in 2024 as well, so stay tuned for more information! Sign up for our ‘Cycling Education’ newsletter to receive updates.

But StreetWise isn’t just about our public courses! We also offered two multi-day programs this year, our popular urban youth program Ride Your Path, and a new program called the Women’s Summer Cycling Program. Both programs were designed for specific audiences to address their particular cycling needs. Our Ride Your Path program ran out of the Musqueam First Nations reservation and provided safe cycling education for 15 Musqueam youth (and each participant got their own bike at the end of the program!) Our Women’s Summer Cycling Program ran out of the Trout Lake Community Centre and offered a safe space for 15 women to learn and grow their cycling skills. We hope to offer both of these programs again in 2024!

A unique highlight for 2023 was our expansion into more accessible e-bike education. In tandem with the BC Government's E-Bike Rebate, HUB Cycling launched several new e-bike education initiatives and programs, including a new e-bike education resource page. We also added a new section to our popular (and free!) StreetWise Cycling Online course devoted to e-bike education. We also trialed some new Intermediate e-bike skills courses at our Trout Lake StreetWise Cycling Education Centre, and hope to bring these back in 2024. Finally, we piloted a new E-Bike “Try it” Drop-In course at all three Car Free Day Festivals in Vancouver. These drop-in events saw enormous success, with over 100 folks trying an e-bike for the first time, and over 700 people stopping by to discuss e-bike education!

HUB Cycling’s StreetWise department also ran many smaller courses as well, including: 

• 12 Webinars, 
• 11 Workplace Cycling Workshops, and 
• 15 custom courses. 

In total, over 1,100 people participated in a StreetWise Course this year. Thank you so much to all those who participated and learned something in our courses, and we can’t wait to bring you more public cycling education in 2024!