While many of us are sheltering safely in our homes, there are millions of Americans for whom the shrinking of America’s public transportation systems has made it harder, if not impossible to get to essential jobs, run needed errands, or care for loved ones. A project of two safe streets advocates in San Francisco, The Bike Match Network (https://bikematch.safelanes.org/) is a free platform that connects people with an extra bike sitting in their garage with an essential worker who really needs it right now.

In just the first five weeks since launching The Bike Match Network we’ve received over 450 applications and have successfully matched 58 essential workers with free bikes (https://bikematch.safelanes.org/stories). The Bike Match Network was inspired by Transportation Alternative’s Bike Match program in New York City (https://transalt.org/bikematch) which uses a Google form and spreadsheet to manually match people. We’ve developed a set of tools that simplifies the matching process making it fast and easy for anyone to setup a bike match program in their city.

If you need a bike, have a bike to donate or want to help us connect people please let us know!