Transform Brings Its Community Engagement Expertise to Hayward Rides

This spring, Transform, along with several community partners, launched a program to increase biking in Hayward. The program, called Hayward Rides, targets several different demographics and age groups with different types of support and bikes.

At this point, we’re in the thick of the community engagement process, which is always step one for Transform. We’re conducting surveys and talking with members of different communities to determine how we can provide active transportation that will fill a need. Here are some of the ways we’re getting started.

Getting more people on bikes

Transform staffers are leveraging their extensive experience working with students, including many in Hayward schools, through our Safe Routes to Schools programming, to reach elementary, middle, and high school students.   

We surveyed over 300 students to understand their biking needs, and we found out a few things! We discovered what types of bikes they prefer, what their barriers are to getting around by bike, and where students would travel if they had access to bikes and biking infrastructure. We offered the survey in English, Spanish, and Farsi and found that there is a mixed need for mountain bikes and BMX bikes. The Spanish-speaking students were more likely to be frequent bike riders. One of the biggest obstacles to biking among all the students we surveyed was finding a place to store their bikes at home. 

We’ll take this information into consideration, along with planned infrastructure improvements around schools, as we prepare for the next phase of the program, which includes piloting a bike distribution program. We aim to get thousands of Hayward residents (in particular students at Tennyson High School) access to bikes.

Building safe routes to schools

Most of Transform’s Safe Routes to Schools work is in the educational space, but with the Hayward project, we’ll be helping gather community input on infrastructure changes as well. We’ve been conducting site surveys at 12 Hayward schools to determine how students travel to school now and identify opportunities to encourage active transportation. We’ll conduct surveys again after the street improvements to determine the effect of safer infrastructure on travel mode.

Our work also includes educational components like Rail Training at Tennyson and Transportation Story Time at Burbank and Schafer Park Elementary. We are working with a number of schools in Hayward to bring Safe Routes events that encourage walking, rolling, and shared transportation. Our efforts included hosting a spring Walk to School Day event called “March into Spring,” where several Hayward schools participated in promoting walking and rolling in a fun and engaging way. Events like this strengthen our community engagement efforts by creating opportunities to connect directly with students, families, and school staff.

We expect to roll out this program over the next several months, and it will continue through 2027. We’re looking forward to collaborating with our partners to help Hayward residents discover the joy and ease of getting around by bike.

Hayward Rides partner organizations