Mardi Gras By Bike
As a mechanic at a local bike shop, and someone constantly discussing biking with anyone and everyone, it’s amazing to see how crucial a bike becomes to people during the season. For some working or living inside the box, it’s a necessity to be able to commute across parades. Others dust off their bikes to be able to avoid traffic and finding a parking spot for their car. And likely, since I have your email, you’re always biking but get to enjoy side streets that suddenly turn much more pedestrian and bike friendly along the parade routes. (Or take out your bikes with sturdy tires and enjoy a crunchy ride along the route following a parade)
Whatever your reason for riding, we see a surge in ridership around Mardi Gras. I started this survey years ago to try to quantify some of the change in riding around the season and get some feedback so we can see how we might be able to best improve the experience of celebrating Mardi Gras on your bicycle. I hope you’ll take a minute out of your day to fill out this form and help us collect some more data – and please share with any of your friends/family that you know rode their bikes to or around parades.
Bike Streets
Hopefully you saw the week before Fat Tuesday, we officially launched Bike Streets – New Orleans. This is an effort that several volunteers have been working on locally since 2025 to start implementing an app from developers out of Denver with a few key opportunities:
- Providing turn-by-turn direction to people on bikes using low-stress streets
- Crowdsourcing a map where locals can suggest and vote on routes to develop a low-stress bike network
- Collecting quantifiable data to support our advocacy efforts
- Identifying missing connectors to the developing bike network to help us focus our advocacy efforts
Right now, we’re primarily looking to build the ridership on the app, so if you haven’t signed up yet please do! All you need to do is download the app and sign up then start logging rides by selecting “Ride” and then clicking on the “Ride” button on the map when you start to ride.
If you’d like to get more involved in the app and start suggesting or voting on routes, we’re going to host an info session that will do a deeper dive into the features of the app and how we can best use this opportunity to support biking in Greater New Orleans.
I’ll be hosting a Zoom meeting on Tuesday March 10th from 5:30-6:30 to dive into the following topics and answer any questions you may have about this effort
- What are we considering low-stress?
- How to add suggestions
- How to navigate the App
- How to upvote/downvote
- Other features of the app
- A quick intro to Open Streets Map
If you’d like to join please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/il5oEYBBS9avw91t24nuYQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.