Jenn Dice is the CEO of PeopleForBikes, a national nonprofit dedicated to making biking safer, easier, and more accessible across the United States. As a lifelong cyclist, she has spent decades exploring the outdoors on two wheels and advocating for better places to ride. Her work is driven by the belief that bicycles can improve health, strengthen communities, and create more connected places to live.
Jenn Dice is the CEO of PeopleForBikes, a national nonprofit dedicated to making biking safer, easier, and more accessible across the United States. As a lifelong cyclist, she has spent decades exploring the outdoors on two wheels and advocating for better places to ride. Her work is driven by the belief that bicycles can improve health, strengthen communities, and create more connected places to live.
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Jenn Dice:
When you ride a bike, you arrive happy. You connect with your neighbors. You see your friends. You feel the wind in your hair. You smell the coffee at the local coffee shop. You really experience every season. You smell spring. You feel summer. You get excited for fall. You have better gear in the winter. But you really feel connected to your community and nature through the simple bicycle.
Shelby Stanger:
A lot of us do our adventuring in our free time, going on a hike over the weekend or taking a week off of work to go camping. But getting outside and moving your body doesn't always have to be something you carve out time for. It can happen on the way to work, running errands, or meeting up with friends. For Jenn Dice, one of the simplest ways to make that happen is by bike. Jenn is the CEO of PeopleForBikes, an organization that aims to improve safety and accessibility for bikes in the US. In this episode, we're talking with Jenn all about the benefits of cycling, both for commuting and for recreation. She also shares which cities are best for biking. Spoiler alert, my city, San Diego is not one of them. I'm also speaking with my longtime producer, Annie Fassler, who lives in Portland, Oregon, a city that according to PeopleForBikes is great for cycling.
Hi, Annie.
Annie Fassler:
Hi, Shelby.
Shelby Stanger:
The type of biking that Annie does is exactly what Jenn is working to make more accessible. Short daily trips that most people currently take in their car, but they're just more fun on two wheels. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
It's no surprise that Jenn Dice has made bike advocacy the focus of her career. When she's not working on transportation policy, Jenn is an endurance cyclist. She actually met her husband at one of the biggest bike races in the country.
Jenn Dice, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I know you've had a lot of wild ideas. I think we should just start with one. How many times have you raced the Leadville 100?
Jenn Dice:
14, Shelby. I'm thrilled to be here, and I did Leadville a bunch of times, for sure.
Shelby Stanger:
On a mountain bike?
Jenn Dice:
On a mountain bike. Met some of my best friends through the Leadville 100. Met my husband through the Leadville 100. Had so many great epic adventures.
Shelby Stanger:
Wait, I really love a good adventure love story. How did you meet your husband on the Leadville 100?
Jenn Dice:
In the registration line.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, that's hot. What year was that?
Jenn Dice:
2008. And the registration line took forever, thank god, because I chatted with him the whole way to the front and I saw him throughout the whole weekend. And by the end of the weekend, more or less, I asked him out to go on a mountain bike date. And sure enough, a couple of weeks later, we went on a mountain bike ride, and the rest is history.
Shelby Stanger:
Around the same time that Jenn started racing at Leadville, she also began leaning into advocacy. For a few years, she worked as a transportation lobbyist at the Colorado State Capitol before narrowing her focus to bike policy. Today, Jenn leads PeopleForBikes, which advocates to make the US the best place in the world for cycling.
Why do bikes matter so much right now, especially in the US?
Jenn Dice:
They connect communities. They connect people. We're certainly not anti-car. We're just saying try a bike for some trips. When you're in a car, you're hermetically sealed, you're in your own little world. And we have this nation that is... We have a loneliness epidemic. We have an anxious generation. We have sedentary lifestyles. And to us, the bicycle is a simple solution to a lot of our world's problems.
Shelby Stanger:
What communities are doing really well when it comes to cycling?
Jenn Dice:
Every year, we release our City Ratings program, and some of the best cities in the United States for bicycling are Minneapolis, Portland, Austin, Texas, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Brooklyn, Ames, Iowa, Bentonville, Arkansas, Fort Collins, Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. There's so many cities doing great things for bikes. Each year, PeopleForBikes rates the best places across the country for bicycling.
Shelby Stanger:
So what makes a city good for biking? What does that even mean?
Jenn Dice:
What makes a city good for bicycling is connected bike paths, lower speed limits. Basically, imagine from where you live to where you want to go. When you get in a car, you never worry that you can't get to the grocery store or you can't get to work. You have a seamless connected road network. We want the same thing for bikes. So the idea is you can get on a bike and bike anywhere you need to go for your life. So the best-in-class is you separate bikes from cars or we do what's called neighborhood greenways, where in neighborhoods, you have maybe a little slower speed limits. You have side paths. You don't have to separate bikes from cars because you're in a low-stress zone, where you just feel your shoulders go down and you take a breath of air and you're enjoying the scenery a little bit more when you turn into these neighborhood greenways. And it's just kind of the communities we all want to live in, where the streets are safe and it's easy to bike around.
Shelby Stanger:
This year, PeopleForBikes assessed over 2,000 cities across the United States and rated how accessible they are for biking. I think these ratings are really interesting. And I was surprised by how low San Diego scored, just 28 out of 100. But other parts of the country are much more bike-friendly. My producer, Annie, lives in Portland, which scored 55. It may not sound that high, but it's in the top 10 cities with populations over 300,000. Annie has been commuting by bike for almost 10 years. Nearly six years ago, she got an e-bike, which has given her some fun stats about her riding history.
Annie Fassler:
So my e-bike has an odometer, and I'm about to hit 5,000 miles, which feels pretty momentous. My husband also has... I mean, both of our bikes have odometers, and he's nearing 6,000 miles on his bike. And a friend was just here visiting and he was riding my bike, I was riding my husband's bike, and he was like, "Wow, you guys have ridden a lot of miles." And he was like, "That's 10,000 miles you didn't ride in a car." And I'd never really thought about it that way. I was like, it's probably closer to 7,000 miles I haven't ridden in a car, because I'm with... We're biking side by side so much of the time. But when he put it like that, I was like, that's kind of incredible. That's a lot of miles to not put on a car.
Shelby Stanger:
You ride your bike everywhere with your husband and kid.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. We ride pretty much every day. We ride to work and we ride to the farmer's market. And when my son was younger, we were putting him on the back of our bike to go to school. He now is riding his own bike to school. He'll be going into first grade. It's one of the highlights of my day, absolutely.
Shelby Stanger:
And you do it rain or shine?
Annie Fassler:
We try to do rain or shine, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
How many miles do you think you bike a day?
Annie Fassler:
If I am biking from... Let's see. Let me think about this. I'm probably biking between six and 10 miles a day on my e-bike.
Shelby Stanger:
But this is all of your commuting, so all of your commuting is by bike?
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. So we'll go to the grocery store on bike. We'll go to school on bike. We go to work on bike. We go to play dates on bike.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you take your groceries home? I always have a watermelon this time of year. What do you do?
Annie Fassler:
Well, a watermelon would be hard. That would be a two-person trip to the grocery store, for sure. My husband and I both have bike baskets. So if it's a normal week of groceries, I can usually get it all in my bike basket. Or I also always carry bungee cords in my bike basket as well, so if I need to and I don't have my kid on the back, I can bungee something into his seat where he usually goes.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing. How often are you actually driving a car then?
Annie Fassler:
In the summer, we drive a car maybe once a week. And in the winter months, it's probably closer to three to four times a week.
Shelby Stanger:
That's incredible. I drive a car multiple times a day.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. We really try to... It's for Costco runs or swim lessons or things that are far away.
Shelby Stanger:
I love the idea of only getting in my car once a week. That's so much less gas, which means less impact on your wallet and the planet. The average American spends at least 45 minutes a day driving. When you spend that time on your bike instead of sitting in a car, you're getting much more time outside, more exercise, and for most people, more fun. But it's easier said than done. Personally, I don't feel that safe biking across San Diego.
What are the biggest barriers preventing more people from riding bikes today?
Jenn Dice:
The number one barrier is, of course, cars. Personal safety and the perception of safety as well too. So we have to win hearts and minds, and you have to make it the easiest mobility choice. Like I said, I spend a lot of time in Boulder. I happen to be in Bentonville, Arkansas today. The easiest way for me to get home to run errands is definitely by bike, I get cranky here when I have to get in a car, because it's just so easy to operate. Same thing in Boulder.
Shelby Stanger:
Annie, what have you done that just makes riding your bike an easier choice?
Annie Fassler:
For me personally, getting an e-bike really changed the game as far as how comfortable I was riding in the city.
Shelby Stanger:
It also just looks so fun. Every time I'm on an e-bike, I just feel like a little kid.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. Well, it's fun, yes. But it's also nice to... I get to the office and I'm not sweaty, which is great.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh yeah.
Annie Fassler:
I can put my son on the bike. He's not light anymore. I've also carried a 20-pound box of tomatoes home from the farmer's market on my bike with no problem, and there's some big hills on the way. So it makes it so I don't have to think about whether or not I want to bike, because biking is pretty much always the easier option.
Shelby Stanger:
And you can just wear your regular clothes to bike, so you don't have to wear bike clothes.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. I just wear regular clothes. The only thing about riding an e-bike is that you're not working that hard, and so I still have to layer up, especially for riding in the winter. This past season, I really dialed in my rainproof gear, so riding in the rain wasn't a big deal at all either.
Shelby Stanger:
So you ride in the rain, no problem. That is not something I do.
Annie Fassler:
I mean, I don't know about no problem, but yeah, I just don't mind it so much because I'm warm and dry underneath.
Shelby Stanger:
What do you wear to stay visible to cars?
Annie Fassler:
That's very important to me as well, especially now that my son is riding his own bike. My husband and I both wear hi-vis stuff, which is the neon yellow reflective gear. And especially when it's dark or rainy, it's a non-negotiable for us. And also, making sure you have really good lights on your bike that you're visible. That hi-vis stuff, you don't feel cool necessarily, but it's safe. And luckily, I also like to wear a lot of bright colors, so if it's summer and I'm not in my hi-vis stuff, I'm usually still wearing some pretty bright clothes.
Shelby Stanger:
Safety is a big concern for a lot of people who might otherwise consider commuting by bike. If you've ever ridden on a busy road with a small shoulder and no bike lane, you know what I mean. That's where PeopleForBikes comes in. Along with advocating for safer places to ride, the organization also leads international study tours for local policymakers. On these trips, elected officials can get a firsthand look at some of the most bike-friendly cities in the world.
Jenn Dice:
One of my favorite things about our international study tours is school drop-off and pickup. And we usually take our study tours to watch school drop-off and pickup because it's just magic, it's so beautiful. Children play, parents are chatting, and all separated bikeways as you go into school, and the schoolyard just turns into this vibrant sense of community when people arrive by bike. And so it's one of those things that when we take elected officials or key stakeholders from the United States, we want them to see these communities that have embraced the bike as the easiest mode of transportation.
If you walked around with a microphone on those school yards and asked moms and dads, "Do you consider yourself a cyclist?" They'd actually say no. They'd say, "This is the easiest way for me to get to school is by bike." And one of my favorite things is Sam Balto's bike buses, and they started in Portland. And there's a NBC clip that everybody should Google and look up, and it's Sam Balto on whatever their morning show is. And I challenge you not to cry, because you see these kids bike commuting with their parents and teachers.
Sam Balto:
Good morning bike bus. Let's go to school. Woo. All right. Wait for the teacher.
Child:
Hi, Caroline. Hi [inaudible 00:13:43].
Jenn Dice:
And it was so wildly popular that it kept going and kept going, and now there's bike buses all across the country.
Shelby Stanger:
I also saw this thing on the news about these Portland moms who ride with their kids, or moms and dads who ride with kids certain days of the week, and it's like this big bike gang, or I don't know what you call it, the bike bus.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah, The Alameda bike bus. Yeah. So there's actually the guy who started it, Sam Balto, Coach Balto, he started this movement at one of the elementary schools, I believe, where he just started a bike bus and got some adults to ride at the beginning, in the middle, at the end, and they pick up kids along their route. So people will bike to the route and join them along the way. And he plays music. I mean, the videos of it online are kind of incredible. And he's gotten a number of celebrities to join the bike bus when they're in town for a concert. So Justin Timberlake rode with them, Benson Boone rode with them. He's gotten all these people to come bike with them, which is really... The kids are stoked.
Shelby Stanger:
The idea is instead of riding with your mom in the car to school-
Annie Fassler:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
... you ride the bike bus.
Annie Fassler:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
And you bike with all your buddies.
Annie Fassler:
Bike with all your buddies. I mean, you can see the kids are just very joyful. And it's probably also nice for the parents, because they just bike their kid to the bike bus and then the bus takes them to school. We actually, my husband signed up with our school to start a bike bus in the fall.
Shelby Stanger:
And what does Simon, your six-year-old think about riding on the back of the bike or riding his own bike now?
Annie Fassler:
He loves riding on the back of the bike. I mean, if you ask him if he wants to bike or drive somewhere, he will usually choose bike, which is pretty great. And now, he's very proud of himself for riding his own bike to school, and he's started a little bit of a trend among his class. He was one of the first kids in his kindergarten class that started riding to school, and he started riding, and then his friend, Emma, started riding, and then his friend, Jeremiah, started riding to school. And so I can tell he's proud and he's proud to show off his bike, which is parked by the playground at school. Yeah, he's pretty stoked about it.
Shelby Stanger:
Today, we're talking all about bike commuting, and how to make biking easier and more accessible. Jenn Dice, president and CEO of PeopleForBikes, is out here working to make the US a safer and more fun place to ride. Last year, Jenn actually did a TEDx talk all about the link between happiness and biking.
Tell me more about happiness and bikes. Tell me more what you've learned.
Jenn Dice:
Some of the happiest countries in the world are also the countries with the highest rates of bicycling in the world, so Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, the Netherlands. The simple pleasures of riding a bike add up into a happier, healthier society. So you connect with your neighbors, you see your friends, feel the wind in your hair, you smell the coffee at the local coffee shop, or you really experience every season by bicycle. So living in Colorado, you smell spring, you feel summer, you get excited for fall, you have better gear in the winter. But you really feel connected to your community and nature through the simple bicycle. I've never gone on a bike ride, even the rides that I get caught in snow or rain or whatever, I've never gone on a bike ride and regretted it. And from so many years of bike advocacy work, I've gotten to travel to all these happy countries and gotten to experience it firsthand, what communities, what neighborhoods, what life looks like by bicycle, and it's a beautiful thing.
Shelby Stanger:
You don't have to live in one of these international bike-friendly cities to ride on a daily basis. Annie's husband grew up in Chicago, and his family has never owned a car.
I think I remember you telling me that your husband's family doesn't even use a car. They only get places by bike or public transport.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. So he grew up on the north side of Chicago, and his family does not own a car, so they just bike and use public. And that's kind of why I started biking, is I kind of had to because that was the expectation.
Shelby Stanger:
That's incredible. In a major city.
Annie Fassler:
Yeah. One time, they moved a piano by bike, which is a pretty amazing thing. Jonah's dad built a trailer to put the piano on, and then they biked with a bunch of friends around him biking. They basically just tried not to stop. So anytime they got to a stoplight, even if it was red, they would go into the intersection and stop traffic, the other riders would, so that he could just keep moving and not stop.
Shelby Stanger:
I don't know about stopping traffic. Bikes get a lot of crap out here, cyclists, and drivers are kind of mean to them out here. Yeah. I think we all could use to think about could we bike instead of drive? I went to the pool this morning at 5:00 AM and then I went to check the surf, and I saw the girl that was in the lane next to me also checking the surf. And I was like, "You just got here faster than me." She was like, "Yeah, it's faster on a bike."
Annie Fassler:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
And I was like, "Ugh, you're right. I should get a bike."
Annie Fassler:
The other thing, honestly, that I really, really like about it is in my day-to-day life, I'm not spending a ton of time outside, and just that, it's about a 15-minute commute to me for work, and just that much time outside, fresh air, and watching the seasons change throughout the year, watching the leaves change, and then watching them fall, and then, oh, when the trees start budding, it's just really refreshing. I have really felt an impact on my mindset, having that nature time built in. Yeah, I'm still in the city, but I'm enjoying being outside.
Shelby Stanger:
And you don't have traffic.
Annie Fassler:
No. Our ride to work would be 13 minutes by car, and it's about 15 minutes by bike. It's lovely.
Shelby Stanger:
The way Annie talks about bike commuting sounds idyllic. I'm envious of how bikeable Portland is, but I also know there's some pretty great places to ride popping up all over the United States, and even in San Diego.
You have this bold goal, Jenn, of making the US the best place in the world to ride bikes. What does that actually look like in practice?
Jenn Dice:
It's communities that you can get to where you want to go. So in practice, it's people who walk, it's people who bike, drive, take transit, bus. It's all modes of travel, but it's giving people a choice of how they move around their community. So access to safe bike networks, place-making through the outdoors and parks and open space. It's bike parks in town so that kids can ride, and it's single-track trails. We do a lot of work on public lands protection and funding for bike parks, trailheads, open space, you name it. And so our vision is bringing in all these bike-friendly public policies, better bike infrastructure, lower speed limits in a fair amount of cases, and separating bikes from cars.
Shelby Stanger:
Can you break down one of the initiatives or two of the initiatives that are really making a big impact right now?
Jenn Dice:
Our biggest program trying to change bicycling in America is our City Ratings program. Every year, we rate thousands of US cities and how they can improve for bicycling. So on a scale of zero to a hundred, how does a city score? Those ratings came out in June of 2026. And just a few years ago, we only had 33 US cities that were good for bikes. This year, we had 539 cities that crossed that tipping point on their way to being a great city for bikes. And what that means is that bike culture is taking hold, that people turn to the bike for recreation, for commuting from where they live to where they want to go.
Shelby Stanger:
What's your biggest challenge?
Jenn Dice:
Winning the hearts and minds of everyday people. Because we've got bike advocates, we've got the bike industry, we have hardcore enthusiasts, but we really need to be persuasive to people who will never ride a bike, people who realize that by allowing bike infrastructure in a community or expanding access to single-track trails is good for the community. It's good for jobs, economic development, access to opportunity, public health, and so much more. So I think our biggest challenge is persuading non-endemic or non-bike people that bikes are a solution.
Another big challenge is certainly cars. We have to separate bikes from cars to be able to win hearts and minds and to help people safely get to where they want to go. And we know from looking at the happiest countries and the most bike-friendly countries, they're also countries with very little traffic violence, because they've created a built environment that makes it safer for drivers and safer for people who go by walking and biking.
Shelby Stanger:
How can people start bike commuting more?
Jenn Dice:
Just start small. Don't make it a big thing. You don't have to have any special equipment or any special gear. You have to have a bicycle and ideally you have a helmet. Think about one trip a week that you might be able to go by bike. 50% of all trips in the United States are three miles or less. That's about a 15-minute bike ride just at a casual pace. And we know that when you spend 15 minutes on a bike, it lowers your cortisol levels. It improves your brain chemistry. It decreases stress. You simply arrive happy. Get a bike, pump up the tires, put on a helmet, and look at what car trip or transit trip you might be able to convert to bike. We're not asking anybody to give up their car. We're just saying think about a bicycle.
Shelby Stanger:
During the course of this interview, I became fascinated by the PeopleForBikes City Ratings. I highly recommend you look up the bikeability of your hometown at cityratings.peopleforbikes.org. If you want to learn more about Jenn Dice and PeopleForBikes, be sure to follow them on social media @PeopleForBikes. We'll also link Jenn's TEDx Talk in our show notes. To learn more about Sam Balto's bike bus in Portland and starting a bike bus in your own city, head to bikebusworld.org. I also recommend watching his bike bus videos on Instagram or TikTok @coachbalto. That's C-O-A-C-H-B-A-L-T-O. If you need a new bike, REI has a great range of options, e-bikes, mountain bikes, commuter bikes, you name it. Head to your local REI or REI.com to check out their selection.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. Thank you again to our partner, Capital One, and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.