Bicycle Coalition gets a new executive director and a new mission

Growing up, Chris Gale rode his bicycle to Bouws Pool with his brother, back and forth to the high school for “two-a-days” football workouts, and to fling copies of the Lakeshore Press onto porches.

A childhood spent pedaling around Holland, Mich., seems an apt origin story for the new executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

“My bicycle was my freedom,” said Gale, 41, who is Mexican American and will be the first person of color to head the coalition. “My bike was everything.”

He starts Monday, succeeding Sarah Clark Stuart, who is moving on after 15 years at the coalition — the last eight as executive director.

She has been an influential advocate for expanding bike lanes and trails and for measures to combat traffic injuries and deaths, including the successful effort to get speeding enforcement cameras on Roosevelt Boulevard.

Gale said he wants to expand the coalition’s growing emphasis on safety initiatives and increased access to cycling in underserved communities.

“I’m thinking about … how we can ensure safety is for everybody and ensure that folks in marginalized communities understand that protected bicycle lanes are just as important for them as they are in Center City,” Gale said.

“At the core we want to be really fostering a ridership that reflects the diversity of the region and also breaking down that myth or narrative that only certain people ride a bicycle,” Stuart said. “ I think we’re emphasizing that aspect of our mission more clearly.”

Stuart emphasized that she is not retiring — “I’m too young” — and is looking for a position where she can continue her work on expanding bike infrastructure, traffic safety and related causes. “I’m very thrilled and happy for Chris and happy for the staff and for the organization,” Stuart said. “I think it’s in great hands.”

The change comes as Cherelle Parker prepares to take office as the city’s 100th mayor, presenting an opportunity for the Bicycle Coalition to help shape transportation policies in a new administration.

For the last four years, Gale has been chief programs officer for North10 Philadelphia, a social services and community-building nonprofit in Hunting Park-East Tioga, where about 44% of residents live in poverty. Before that, he was deputy director of Community Schools in the Kenney administration and was the administrator of Casa del Carmen, which provides early education and social services to the Hunting Park community for Catholic Social Services.

Gale and his family moved to the Philadelphia area in 2012 so he could earn his master’s degree in public administration at Villanova University. He has three children, ages 16, 12, and 6.

Throughout his career, he has concentrated on children and family issues, with an emphasis on working with people in poverty in his career, and jokes that the Bicycle Coalition is “a little out of my wheelhouse.”

Yet he has worked closely with the coalition in Hunting Park-East Tioga, building the Lil’ Philly Safety Village in Hunting Park, a playground where young people learn how to stay safe in and around traffic. Gale also has helped the neighborhood advocate to make the Broad Street and Erie Avenue intersection safer.

“My bicycle was really key to a lot of those, you know, sepia-toned memories you have of childhood,” Gale said, adding that he wants to open that kind of experience to more people. “That continues to drive me.”