Old Spokes Home is proud to be a partner in the Vermont Bicycle Access Network (VBAN), a coalition of organizations in and around the Green Mountain State that are dedicated to creating greater access to bicycles. Our shared goal is to ensure that no useful bicycle goes to the landfill and that no Vermonter who needs or wants a bike goes without one because of financial constraints. All of the organizations in VBAN take bikes as donations and refurbish, repurpose, reuse and redistribute them to community members who need them at low or no cost.
Why promote bike access?
• Transportation Equity: A bicycle can be a key mode of travel for folks for whom a car is not an option. Transportation limitations can impose barriers in access to work, healthcare and food, making upward mobility even more illusive for those lacking crucial means. Bikes are an alternative to cars that are much more affordable to access and maintain, do not require licensing, and
• Diversion of useful bikes, parts, and accessories from the waste stream: Too many usable bikes get thrown away. VBAN partners provide an alternative to disposing unwanted bikes that is as easy as or easier than a trip to the dump. We accept bikes as donations that can be refurbished or have useful parts, turn them back into functional machines, and save them from the landfill.
• Carbon emissions reduction: Bikes are efficient and fast vehicles that require no fossil fuels and emit no greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Opting to ride a bike rather than drive, even only for trips less than three miles, can significantly reduce one's household GHG emissions.
• Health benefits: Bicycles are the only vehicle whose motors (their riders) get stronger the more they work. Riding a bike is healthful activity that benefits one's heart, lungs, and muscles, and has been connected to longer life expectancy
• Wellness: Riding a bicycle is known to improve one's mental health thanks to exposure to Vitamin-D producing sunshine, the dopamine and serotonin produced by the body during exercise, and the sheer fun of rolling on two wheels. These health and wellness benefits should be available to all.
Who does the Vermont Bike Access Network include?
Please click around the map below to see and learn about our Vermont Bicycle Access Network members and partners, as well as sympathetic for-profit commercial bike shops.
