Bicycle and Related Organizations

Last update: January 1, 2026

Bike-Specific

Austin Bicycle Meals. Delivers food by bicycle to the hungry.

Austin Ghost Bike Project.  Installs painted-white “ghost bikes” at locations where cyclists have been killed by cars.

Bike Texas.  A statewide group which promotes cycling through advocacy, education, and lobbying for new laws (like the 3-foot passing rule).

Bikes Across Borders.  Fixes up old bikes and sends them to Mexico for use by the needy.

Capital City AMBUCS.  Helps those with disabilities (especially children) ride bikes and trikes.

Critical Mass.  Really a ride and not an event, but since it was ground zero for launching bicycle advocacy in Austin, it deserves a mention here.

Ghisallo Cycling Initiative.  Provides education / safety training, with Cycle Academies for both kids and adults, plus bike maintenance clinics.  Also provides fleets of trikes for older riders to use.  (Also, as a sometimes-philanthropist, and as a journalist who’s visited hundreds of non-profit websites, kudas to Ghisallo for making their annual historical IRS 990 reports easy to find.)

Viva Bikes Austin.  Donates bikes to needy kids.

Yellow Bike Project.  Runs a free community bike shop, where people can learn bike repair skills, use the shop and its tools, and for kids, earn a free bike by going through the repair program.  YBP also provides free bikes to the needy, trauma survivors, immigrants, and those in or just out of rehab.  They’re funded mostly from selling parts and donated bikes that they fix up.  See YBP history and details.

Transportation in general (not bicycle-specific)

AURA.  They say they advocate for more bike lanes, sidewalks, and transit.  Local transportation pundit Mike Dahmus, who was a member of the Urban Transportation Commission and our email list and whose knowledge and experience I trust, says that AURA has “pivoted towards credulous support of Capital Metro initiatives that cut local bus service on our most productive transit corridors and support future plans that eliminate the rest (supporting suburbanism over urbanism; not coincidentally due to the fact that the AURA president lives at the end of one of these ‘rapid’ bus lines).” (source)

Movability.  Works with employers to offer sustainable commuting alternatives to employees.

Neighborhood Associations.  NAs have a surprising amount of political power.  If you want speed bumps, bicycle boulevards, or just about anything else, getting the buy-in of the affected NA first is crucial.  See more on our page about How to Promote Bicycling. 

Safe Streets.  In 2022, Bike Austin, Walk Austin, and Vision Zero ATX combined to form Safe Streets.  Vision Zero ATX’s website is still up as of 2025, though.

The Trail Conservancy.  Guardians of the Ann & Roy Butler Trail around Lady Bird Lake.

Clubs (Sports/Racing/Rec)

We don't cover this.  We're a transportation website.

Yellow Bike history and details

     Founding members were Dave Baker, John Thoms, Alisha Cloud, and Pete Wall. (relayed to me by Baker 12/30/25)  Other early members include Eric Anderson, Lee Gresham, Alfredo Reza, and Adam parks.  In 1996 Baker was the manager of Bikes Not Bombs and Thoms a mechanic with the group, and the two groups originally shared the same back yard space.

     Independent from Bikes Not Bombs.  Early newspaper reports say that YBP was an arm of Bikes Not Bombs, but Dave Baker tells me in 12/25 that YBP was independent of BNB from the beginning.  I made their first website in 1999 and described the first release of Yellow Bikes as being “with the aid of the Bikes Not Bombs shop"; I would have confirmed that with Dave at the time.  When YBP started publishing their own website, they continued using that wording

     Original plan: Free Yellow Bikes.  The original idea was to fix up old bikes, paint them yellow, and leave them around town for people to use for free (but not to keep).  But the bikes quickly disappeared, and after a few years YBP shifted its focus to being a community bike shop.  Their 2/7/02 website said they’d released 207 yellow bikes, their 12/25/03 site said 600 yellow bikes,

     Volunteer-only ⮕ Paid Staff.  The group was fiercely all-volunteer until 2014, but now with paid staff they’ve been able to greatly expand their programs.  Their 2024 revenues were an impressive $623k. (Form 990s) 

Historical Locations

• 1996-97:  4701 Avenue H, shared with Bikes Not Bombs
• 1997:  419 W. Johanna St. (Lee Gresham’s house)
• 1998:  Opened a second shop at the city-owned 1182 Hargrave (Statesman 11/15/98) 
• 1999:  Moved the whole operation to Hargrave.  Made a deal with the city to offset rent by providing bikes for City employees to use. (Statesman, 1/22/99) 
• 2003:  2013 E. 51st St.  (2003 website; the 1/13/07 Statesman article that says they’d been on 51st for eight years—which would be since 1999—is wrong, typical for the Statesman.)  Also operated a satellite shop behind Wheatsville (3101 Guadalupe) in 2003.
  
• 2008:  Loses the Mueller space. (Statesman 5/17/10) 
• 2010:  Opens its new building at its new location, 1216 Webberville Road.  The land is owned by the City, which gives YBP a 100-year lease.  YBP raises $300k for the construction costs, including $100k from microloans.  (I was one of the larger investors.)

     Two yellow bikers were killed by cars while biking:  Ben Clough (1998) and Paul Wuersig (2025).

     Website history: I made and hosted YBP’s very first website, in 1999.  They got their own domain name in 2001 but just redirected it to a member’s website (who had initially just copied the site I made).  In 2004 they moved the site to their own domain.
     Third-oldest institution.  As I write this in Dec. 2025, the decades-old YBP is the third-oldest continuous bike advocacy institution in Austin (the first being Critical Mass, and the second being the website you’re reading now).

     Original logo.  Local artist John Dolley made the design for the original t-shirt and subsequent winged logo.

     Statesman articles of interest (all paywalled):

• 1/25/97.  The first release of Yellow Bikes
  
• 5/17/10.  The new shop opening on Webberville.
• 5/19/12.  Fifteen-year anniversary
  

Defunct (no longer exist)

(Please) Be Kind to Cyclists.  They published the ubiquitous “Please Be Kind to Bicyclsts” bumper stickers, put up white ghost bikes where cyclists have been killed, and helped pay medical bills for injured cyclists who didn’t have insurance.  It was founded by Al Bastidas after an at-fault driver severely injured him and nearly killed him, and his family had to hound the police to issue the driver a ticket—a sadly typical experience.  Local coverage:

• A Dude Abikes blog
• Loving the Bike blog

Their website is down and the last archive capture was Sept. 2024.  This is an opportunity for other activists to step in and continue the work.

Bike Austin

• Started in the 1990s as the League of Bicycling Voters.
• In 2012, they changed their name to Bike Austin (super-similar to this website’s name, Bicycle Austin, but no relation).
• In 2015, merged with the Austin Cycling Association, keeping the name Bike Austin.
• In 2022, merged with Walk Austin and Vision Zero ATX to form Safe Streets.
   
  In 2021, a board member noted that for the last couple years their only staffer worked just a few hours a week.

Texas Association for Public Transportation.  Founded by the late Dave Dobbs.  For decades they pushed for Austin to adopt a train system, publishing research articles for lawmakers.  I think the organization expired when Dobbs did in 2021, if not earlier.

Austin Cycling Association.  Primarily a sports/rec group for decades, and published a newspaper (then magazine) that went by different names (Southwest Cycling News, Cycling News, Austin Cycling), always edited by Fred Meredith.  They merged with Bike Austin circa 2015.

Austin Choices for Transportation (ACT).  Formed in 2000 by former City Councilmembers Brigid Shea and Bill Spelman to encourage voters to approve Light Rail. Several prominent cyclists were part of this group, including Eric Anderson, David Foster, and Kathryn Otto.  Other notable members included Dick Kallerman of the Sierra Club, Dave Dobbs of Texas Association for Public Transportation, Fred Richardson formerly of Texans for Public Justice, and Robin Schneider of Texas Campaign for the Environment. [In 02/01 I noticed that their website, ACTaustin.org, was no longer up.]

Bike Action Austin was a "a bike racing team with a mission to promote more cycling and do bike advocacy." Never had a website, probably didn't last even a year, died circa 2001.

Bikes Not Bombs started in Austin circa 1985 and sent refurbished bicycles to Nicaragua for use by teachers and low-income individuals.  Mechanics with Bike Not Bombs went on to found the Yellow Bike Project in 1996, and BNB seems to have folded a few years later.  A new group, Bikes Across Borders, does similar work to BNB now.  Paywalled articles and source notes:

• Earliest media mention is 10/18/85 though the group could have started before then.
• YBP website (accessed 12/31/25) says Austin BNB started in 1996, which is wrong; newspaper article above shows BNB was operating in Austin no later than 1985.
• Detailed article on BNB: 7/23/92.
  

Trans Texas Alliance. Created in 1992 to educate metropolitan, suburban, and rural communities in Texas about transportation issues.  They also conducted pedestrian safety audits for TxDoT.  They seem to have closed shop in the early 2000s.