In 2024, Bike The Woodlands was busy! We worked with community members, local leaders, and our local government to help make The Woodlands a safer, more joyful place to ride bikes for transportation, fitness, and recreation. 

 We collaborated with The Woodlands Township on several initiatives, including our bike recycling program, which now happens every quarter in collaboration with the Environmental Services department. In 2024, we collected more than 400 bikes. Many went to our friends at Court Appointed Special Advocates of Montgomery County and went directly into the hands of foster youth in need. The rest went with our friends at Recycled Cycles of Texas where bikes in bad shape were recycled for scrap and those that could be repaired were fixed up and given to people in need. In 2025, we're working to connect with more people in need as we continue our quarterly bike recycling drives. We're excited to be developing a program that diverts waste from landfills and helps people get back in the saddle. 

We also saw the completion of some major projects we advocated for. In November 2024, The Woodlands Township completed construction on the pathway along Kuykendahl Road between Lake Woodlands Drive and Research Forest Drive and between Timarron and Creekside Forest Drive. These gaps in the pathway were identified in the 2016 Bike-Pedestrian Master Plan as major needs, and we were delighted to see the Township prioritize these projects and complete them. We continue to work with the Township to advocate for pathway system improvements, and we look forward to developing relationships with our local government officials to advocate for roadway improvements that prioritize safety, connectivity, and sustainability.

As the new year begins, we’re excited to build relationships with our elected officials and to strengthen our connections with local and regional organizations. We’re excited to see our latest report card from the League of American Bicyclists about our community’s bike-friendly status (due out in January 2025), and we’re excited to launch some new initiatives to better serve The Woodlands and our surrounding area. We added two board members whose expertise in urban planning and bike outreach have made our team stronger, smarter, and more deeply connected to the important issues we hope to address as our community’s bike and pedestrian advocacy organization. 

We convened a group of local bike super-friends including bike shop owners, coaches, park rangers, and former board members, and we discussed how we might make Bike Month 2024 better than ever. We surveyed candidates for local office about their perspectives on bike and pedestrian issues, and we published the survey results in advance of the November election. We also continued developing our membership program with discounts at local bike shops and activewear stores. 

Our board members posted rides on local ride website Chasing Watts and maintained an up-to-date list of rides on our website. We shared information on Facebook and in our newsletter to help the local rider community better understand trail conditions. We also purchased a GoPro camera that can mount on top of a bike helmet so we could ride around town and capture 360-degree images of the pathway system that we submitted to Google Maps. Today, if you explore Google Street View in Grogan's Mill and in other parts of The Woodlands, you may find images of the view from the pathways. We hope this will help people exploring The Woodlands get a sense of what it's like to navigate this treasured community amenity. 

We worked with the Special Events team at The Woodlands Township to develop Bike Month activities, which included rides, workshops, and the township-wide celebration at Northshore Park in May. We worked to develop the Township’s renewal application for Bike-Friendly status through the League of American Bicyclists. 

We also made major progress on our wayfinding project. Our board members and volunteers identified 395 points on The Woodlands Township’s pathway system where more signage was needed to help pathway users better navigate our 200+ miles of paved pathways. We GPS tagged these sites and soon QR codes will be installed at these points. If you see a QR code on a brown or blue sign somewhere on the pathway system, scan it and take a look!

While there’s a lot to celebrate, we’re also mindful of the serious challenges ahead. Frankly, it can be risky to ride bikes in our community. In May 2021, a young woman in Creekside Park was killed while riding her bike home from work at one of our community pools. An avid cyclist was killed in November 2024 when he was out for a group ride in the same village. Aging infrastructure, increased traffic volume, and inattentive and inexperienced drivers all contribute to imperfect riding conditions when cyclists share the road with motorists. In our state’s latest report card from the League of American Bicyclists, Texas ranked 30th nationally among US states, in part because of our state’s lack of safe passing laws for bicyclists and other laws to keep cyclists safe on the roads. While our local bike advocates have limited influence over statewide policy, we hope we can work to build relationships locally and regionally so we can advocate for the safety of the roads in the 48 square miles we call home. Traffic-calming measures, education campaigns, and infrastructure improvements could all help make our hometown a safer place to walk a dog, run, ride a bike, ride a scooter, push a stroller, drive a car, and more.

We were heartened to be named the top place to ride a bike in Texas in 2024 by People for Bikes. We hope you’ll join us in our effort to live up to that title and build a better community through bicycling. Come help us make biking in our community safer and more joyful in the year ahead.

Sending warm wishes for a happy new year from all of us,

Tricia, CT, Yan, Richard, John M, Mariana, Cynthia, John Z

Bike The Woodlands Coalition Board of Directors