Listen to this article here. Audio Provided by Radio Talking Book Service.
Like the bicycle itself, that pedal-powered motion machine that provides exploration and transportation to so many, there are two key components to what Bike Walk Nebraska does in the city of Omaha and the state of Nebraska: safety for those who need it most, be they pedestrians, bikers, or other vulnerable road users, and a team of fierce defenders who are willing to work in a variety of ways to maintain that safety.
But, as with the whirring gears and metal spokes and chains, there are many more moving pieces to what Bike Walk Nebraska provides its people—some clearly visible and tangible, others as imperceptible as a smooth gear shift when pedaling downhill.
“A lot of our work is focused on cycling and pedestrians, but we also look at safe streets and safe transportation systems as a whole for other vulnerable road users,” said Cait Dumas-Hein, associate director of Bike Walk Nebraska. “So, those would be postal service workers, construction workers, utility workers, motorcyclists, folks who utilize a mobility device. So really, we work to advocate for the safe and accessible transportation options of anything that’s not a car.”
There is a freedom to biking, a kind of blank page—a travel diary entry being written in real time with two legs and fresh Nebraska air. But there can also be dangers and red tape and all the potholes—literal and metaphorical—that come with this kind of human-made speed.
Bike Walk Nebraska makes sure that they are there for the fun, joyous, rocket-propelled rides of young children on rural paths as well as the scheduled, methodical, pedaling of people on their way to the office with a different kind of metro commute.
They do this by focusing on getting the legislation to match the demand, the infrastructure to support the people who rely on it for safe thoroughfares and throughways and proving that a more bike-friendly Omaha is a more connected Omaha.
In doing this difficult work, there has certainly been progress and wins for the biking community.
“There’s a multitude of plans and proposals that have existed within our city,” Dumas-Hein said, lauding the steps taken by the city over the past 10 years. “Over the last decade, there’ve been really great investments into our bike share system. (There's) Heartland Bike Share System, which is phenomenal, and we have some really great work happening with trails in Omaha—like the North Omaha trail is phenomenal, the Beltline trail in Omaha, the South Omaha trail. Those have all been really necessary connected pathways.”
But, at times, the team at Bike Walk Nebraska has found themselves pedaling uphill, digging into the steep incline of lack of funding and some recent statistical analysis that doesn’t exactly pop off the page in a positive manner.
“Where Omaha is lacking, or where there needs to be more accelerated investment, is on street protected infrastructure from River Metro Area. And we used to have a singular protected bikeway, the one that was the Market to Midtown bikeway the last few years,” Dumas-Hein said. “That was just a pilot project that was recently taken out because they’re doing construction on that road for the (upcoming) street car. So it’ll be out for the foreseeable future, three or four years now, but for that to be our only protected bikeway inside the city of Omaha, it’s just not meeting the needs. It’s not providing a safe, accessible, connected transportation system for Omaha citizens.”
The team at Bike Walk Nebraska is looking to gather more information in an effort to show empirical evidence to go with the anecdotal stories of the passionate local biking community. They know that to continue to work directly with and impact local legislators, they need more information.
“We will be having a report of the entire state published here shortly,” Dumas-Hein revealed. “Beyond what we will have with an Omaha-specific analysis, and we’ve seen nearly a 183% increase in vulnerable road user fatalities in 2024 in comparison to 2023, so Omaha streets are not a safe space for people who are not in cars.”
The team at Bike Walk Nebraska wants to ensure that all bike riders in the state of Nebraska, be they riding down the 187-miles of crushed limestone surfaces of the Cowboy Trail that connect the western parts of the state, or the vibrant 8 miles of the tree-encircled North Omaha Trail, are safe, healthy, and happy.
Working with other bike-centric organizations throughout the state has enabled Bike Walk Nebraska to expand their impact. They realize that where there are bikes, there are people, and where there are people, there are economic opportunities.
“We do a lot of collaborative projects with fellow organizations across the state. So, we are pretty hand in hand with say, Nebraska Trails Foundation,” Dumas-Hein explained. “We are able to help with trail development and the economic development that comes with other tourism, but then also able to say, ‘OK, now you have a trail in your town. How can we be supportive? To be safer, to be more used, to be part of your transportation system.’”
One of those organizations that has worked closely with Dumas-Hein and her team is the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency (MAPA). The organization has an agreement with six counties in Nebraska to help plan, fund, and execute transportation improvement plans, and has teamed with Bike Walk Nebraska on a variety of projects.
“I think a lot of where Bike Walk Nebraska has been particularly effective is within the policy environment and advocating at the state level and the local level for changes in policy,” said MAPA Executive Director Mike Helgerson. “And a couple examples of that was when, early on in Bike Walk Nebraska, soon after their formation, they were a really key stakeholder in the development of Omaha’s Complete Streets Policy.”
The Complete Streets Policy, completed in 2015 and still in effect today, has had a lasting legacy on the local biking community, with bike share programs, new signage, and various studies that have been implemented since then to help better understand the numbers of bikers and the number of pedestrians at key flow-points throughout the city. It included a commitment to be a “Bicycle Friendly Community,” a designation that it re-upped in 2019 for another 5 years.
Bike Walk Nebraska is also determined to aid those with little to no biking experience in discovering the freedom of human-powered transportation. No car, no problem.
“One thing we do is we offer free learn-to-ride classes to adults and older teens,” said Dumas-Hein. “It’s a two-hour class for people who want to come to either learn or relearn how to ride a bike. We do that in conjunction with a handful of partners in Omaha and Lincoln.”
The organization provides helmets, and bike lights, and allows people a judgment-free zone to learn how to ride a bike. They are currently looking to expand this project to different areas of the city, one pedal at a time.
In 2025 and beyond, Bike Walk Nebraska and MAPA are both looking to continue making Omaha a more bike-accessible home to the residents of the city. According to Helgerson, Bike Walk Nebraska has already been on the cutting edge of providing new and innovative methods to keep bikers safe in the heart of the city.
“Through the Metro Smart Cities Collaborative, Bike Walk Nebraska facilitated the temporary bikeway on Harney Street, and that project was the first of its kind within Omaha,” he said. “And so that project, I think, is pretty innovative in many ways, one just from the facilitation of doing that kind of a project and Bike Walk was really kind of put in the driver's seat to deliver that.”
Bike Walk Nebraska and MAPA’s work together doesn’t stop at the implementation level—they are continually looking to study the impact of their work to improve biking in the state.
“They really focused a lot on evaluation,” Helgerson said. “And ‘how do we know that this is successful? How do we communicate that? How do we make sure that what we learned through this process is replicable and the benefits can be shared and actually put into future projects?’ And I think those are kind of two different realms where I’ve seen them be really effective.”
Bike Walk Nebraska, much like its namesake, has that same ethos at the core of their organization: forward motion is the answer. As such, they are constantly moving forward, keeping their eyes on the horizon and their wheels spinning.
They do this by embracing new technology, with their work on e-bikes leading the way in local legislative sessions and their new website featuring an encyclopedic database of ways in which bicycling enthusiasts can find the resources they need to reach out to local officials or get in touch with biking organizations.
“60% of adults would choose to ride if they had a safe space to do so,” Dumas-Hein said, “if they were removed from traffic or had a buffer from drivers. Yes, people want to ride.”
Visit bikewalknebraska.org for more information.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
