A personal story about how biking is "survival" for low-income families

The Philadelphia Inquirer has published a story about the importance of bicycling for low-income people. Sarahi Franco-Morales, the author, describes how her whole family depends on bicycles to go about their daily lives.

You can read the story here: “For my low-income family, biking is not recreation. ‘It’s survival.’” (Archived link without a paywall.)

After all, if it were not for my bike, I would have no way of delivering on the big promises I made to my community, and I would have never been admitted last month to the University of Pennsylvania. […] But even though all three of us are bike enthusiasts, biking is not recreation for us. It’s survival.

I have written before about how low-income bicycle riders are usually “invisible” to the rest of the world, which you can read here. Very little of our transportation infrastructure caters to riders like them (even our bike infrastructure), but once you spend time in public, either on a bicycle or on foot, you start noticing these once-invisible riders everywhere.

Stories like Franco-Morales’ are a great way to bring visibility to this often-ignored segment of our population, and to call attention to the importance of safe biking and walking infrastructure for everyone.