lasauge 

I recently learned that "bicycle ambassador" programs are a thing, also, my city is contemplating starting such a program to compliment the under-appreciated network of bike paths and lanes (growing every day!) that we already have. The idea elsewhere is that ambassadors serve as a human face for bike commuting, are a ready pool of volunteers for event staffing, and in some places they teach skills classes or provide basic mechanical/flat-tire support - see two examples following my question.

Does anyone here live in a place where these kinds of programs exist, and does your program produce any meaningful results?

Two good examples of programs already in place:

1. FC Bikes Bicycle Ambassador Program

2.

berner

Our bike club donates money to several cycling organizations in out area. In addition to having rides on Sundays and other events, sponsoring advocacy organizations should be an important activity for bike clubs.

Chris516

Interesting

jdswitters

Live from Fort Collins. FC bikes is a great organization and do a lot to raise bike safety awareness. The ambassador program is really just a pool of volunteers to staff booths at various functions like Sustainable living fair, (they also do valet parking at that), and other public festivals, bike to work day, bike counts and open streets. I have never seen any ambassadors out in the wild and I do about 40 miles a week commuting through town. Great program but it is hard to say if they are doing a good job of spreading the word because we already have a bike culture here or if the bike culture spawned the bike ambassadors. I imagine the model would need to be tweaked for different locations.

FC bikes has also had some outstanding leadership with Dave Kemp who went on to Bike traffic coordinator in Davis CA. Interim Bike coordinator Molly North and now we now have Teesa Gregor who is keeping the vision going. We have been pretty lucky to attract such talent, and that has a lot to do with the program success also.