Interview: Bike Movement Veteran and SVBC Co-founder Tim Oey Looks at 30 Years

Tim Oey doing one of the things he does best — hauling cargo, here a couch, by bicycle.

For more than three decades, Tim Oey has been an energizer and advocate for the bike movement and environment in the Bay Area and beyond. Tim retires from a formal role with Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition on Dec. 15. To honor his lifetime impact, SVBC has announced a Tim Oey-L (pronounced “wheel”) Award, to a stellar volunteer each year for outstanding dedication and support for biking, with Tim as the first recipient. We visited Tim at his Sunnyvale home to discuss the bike movement and his plans.

Tim was a founding board member as SVBC became a registered, formal non-profit in 1993, and he then saw it grow to one of the nation’s largest bicycle coalitions. He’s biked the U.S. coast-to-coast twice, with hundreds of speaking engagements in communities large and small. He’s juggled a career in tech while raising two sons with his wife, Patty, and pursuing a mission of community-building around biking and environment with local commissions, boards, riding groups, and as a volunteer for many other nonprofits. Through a personal campaign he’s also teaching people about zero-waste living to reduce one’s impact on the planet.

Q: Tell us about your early years and how you came to love the bicycle.

A: I learned the hard way, in first or second grade – I kept falling and trying, falling and trying. And my dad pushed me off, and I fell in some rose bushes. Once I got over the hurdle of learning to ride I rode everywhere. It started off simple, practical, to get me places, and it was fun.

Later I realized it was so much more efficient and cheaper than a car — you get exercise, you get endorphins and feel great. You could go serious distances. And meet people — when you are on a bike you and bicyclists and pedestrians are all on the same level, right there and present in the moment. And you don’t create pollution on a bike. I really hated all the exhaust coming from all the cars, I was coughing and I thought, why do they drive these things?

Q: Why do you say the bike is the answer for people and communities?

A: During college I did a cross-country bike ride, which was my first. Dan Pallotta, one of my friends, came up with the idea of bicycling across the country to raise money to end world hunger. And that was a great experience, we did a really good job, raised a lot of money. We gave talks in every town we encountered about world hunger and what we’re doing to solve it.

Many of the riders went on to do interesting things. Dan wrote a book called “Uncharitable” and became famous (or infamous) in the nonprofit world for calling out people, saying these nonprofits are doing wonderful things, why don’t we give them more money? We are willing to give billions and trillions of dollars to people who are greedy and they have tons of money already yet we give them more just to make them wealthier. Nonprofits are really trying to do something fundamentally good to improve our world. We should give more to those making our world a better place as it helps all of us. He influenced my thoughts a lot.

The Tim Oey-L (wheel) Award

To honor Tim Oey’s impact, SVBC has announced an annual award for a stellar volunteer each year, for outstanding dedication and support for bicycling.

Biking is not only very efficient but it accomplishes so much all at the same time. It gets you where you need to go. It’s fun. You reduce climate change which has become hugely important. It gives you physical health, reducing obesity and diabetes. Mental health. You don’t kill other people when you ride; motor vehicles kill lots of people including bicyclists and pedestrians — an armored vehicle running people over. And we pour so many resources into vehicles, the massive roads, the massive parking lots. People not meeting each other in a level playing field face to face is a big issue; when you’re on a bike you're not shielded by metal and glass and plastic, you’re directly engaged with the world.

“Nonprofits are really trying to do something fundamentally good to improve our world. We should give more to those making our world a better place as it helps all of us.”

I’m really surprised that we don’t have more people donating more money and time to bicycling non-profits. Bicycling solves so many issues all at the same time. It’s a super efficient use of your money. (Note: you can donate to support SVBC here.)

Q: Describe the early days of what is now SVBC.

A: We had no professional staff. It was all volunteers, no paid staff, the board members went out and did the work. The mission was the same as it is now — helping the community, getting everybody to bike. The whole thrust was, it's so dangerous out there for cyclists, we’ve got to make it better for cyclists.

Bill Michel, then president of the Santa Clara Valley Bicycle Association, decided the organization needed a catchier name. So we formed a new board and registered Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition as a new 501(c)3 non-profit. I helped Bill with the paperwork and administration to create the new organization. Ellen Fletcher continued to publish our newsletter, then and now called the Spinning Crank. Don Burnett, former mayor of Cupertino who has a bike-pedestrian bridge named after him, was also on the board. Board member John Ciccarrelli went on to found Bicycle Solutions. Board member Jim Stallman continues to serve on local boards and commissions.

Q: How have SVBC and the bike movement evolved since?

A: It's gotten more professional, which is really good. SVBC went from being totally volunteer to having Corrinne Winter, our first executive director, a paid position, and now we’ve got 15 people on staff with a reasonably stable funding stream. Still not enough money but we’ve made huge progress; our world is desperate for a solution to climate change and resource overuse and a lot of other challenges and bicycling solves all of these.

Yet we need more money and more people. You need organization to get things to change. Influencing government takes a lot of work. It’s really important to be well-funded, well organized and well managed, and have a large base of people power because votes matter. Our world is finite, we only have so many resources and we’re burning through our world’s bank account, our savings far too quickly. Check out Earth Overshoot Day. Bicycling is a way better way to get people around and not use so many resources and save resources for our kids.

Q: What are the big opportunities and challenges ahead?

A: Bicycling is really efficient and is a great way to save our world from resource overuse and pollution and extra death and isolation. Compared to car facilities, bicycle facilities are super inexpensive! The big challenge is inertia. People are used to the way things are and getting change to happen is really hard. Even in the biking community many are wedded to their cars. Bike parking is a big challenge. Where do you park your bike? What do you do when it is cold and wet and dark? Leaving a bike sitting outside exposed to rain and thieves is really bad.

When I go places I generally just roll my bike in and not ask for permission up front. When I shop, my bike is my shopping cart. So when I’ve got a few complaints I say, you’ve got a shopping cart, you allow that inside, that’s pretty big and my bike is my shopping cart, and I want to be a customer of yours, how do you keep my bike safe while I am shopping here? I keep my bike with me and buy what it can carry and keep my bike safe and save the world from climate change. I convince people on the fly that this is in their best interest to allow me to shop in their store using my bike. But changing perceptions is hard.

Tim Oey on a community ride in Sunnyvale, Hans Bernhardt in his chicken suit just behind.

Q: What would you advise a young person, just starting out, on how to have an impact?

A: Look at yourself and what you can do personally. Make informed choices about what you do and how you get around and how you spend your money. Find the thing that you believe in and can make a difference in.

Information literacy is really important. What sources are reliable? Know how science works and how our legal system works and how our government works. You need to make decisions based on real science, not just how you feel.

“Ride your bike and insist this is how I want to live my life.”

Don’t ever buy a car — ride your bike and insist this is how I want to live my life. Rather than wasting all that time sitting in traffic jams, I’m actually turning that time into productive exercise time, productive listening time, productive meeting-other-people time and reducing my impact on our world all at the same time. Turn it around, think of what you are doing and what the consequences are.

It’s really important to be sure we continue to have a government for and by the people. Get involved in your local government, it's the one where you can make the biggest difference and the one that directly affects you the most. Meet and get to know your city council members as well as your county supervisors. Young people have a voice that the elected officials really listen keenly to because those are their current and future voters.

Q: Community boards and involvement, zero waste, climate change, and a family and job. And three dogs. Sounds hectic. How do you get it all to work?

A: I go in with a plan but it is not a perfectly organized plan. You just deal with things as they come. Life is like an ocean that you're surfing in, unexpected things pop up and sneaker waves and you just have to roll with it and keep swimming/surfing/sailing and keep moving forward. You have a general plan and keep plugging away and amazingly eventually you end up getting someplace and accomplishing things.

Q: What do you suggest for people who want to get started riding? Or for people who already ride but want to make it a bigger part of life?

A: That is an easy question, take one of the classes that Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition offers. There’s a wide variety of classes that will help expand your riding in any direction, including if you don’t ride at all. And there are a lot of other educational providers in our area and our country and world online and elsewhere, there are a lot of ways to learn. Getting to be a part of a club or a group definitely helps. Just get out there and ride and have a great time with people and then it self-perpetuates. Our holiday lights bike rides right now are a great way to get into biking. And if you don’t know how to ride, unlike when I learned to bike, our new modern ways to teach people to bike rarely results in falls.

Q: You’ve got a lot of life ahead — what does retirement look like?

A: This is a time of shifting gears. I’m leaving full-time work where I worked 150 percent of the time on one full-time job and three part time jobs and going down to just four part-time jobs. I want to spend time biking for fun instead of just utilitarian biking. More fun riding, more time with my wife and family, meeting up with more friends, some traveling, riding with my wife. Trying to slow down and smell the roses and enjoy life rather than working quite so hard.

“Teaching people how to ride bikes and how to ride better is the most joyful job I’ve had.”

I’ll continue working as a bicycling instructor. Teaching people how to ride bikes and how to ride better is the most joyful job I’ve had in my entire career. They’re just so happy. Getting people to ride bikes will help save the world and will provide me with a smaller income but it's worthwhile and very rewarding. I am terming out from the Sunnyvale Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Commission after eight years and joining the Santa Clara County Roads Commission. It’s all about keeping the wheels turning, and I’ll be healthier and happier in my retirement.

Q: Any last comment?

A: I hope everyone reading this will make a donation to SVBC because that is the most efficient donation you can make to improve our world. It really makes the world a better place in so many ways. Get rolling and help the bicycling world go forward. I would like everyone to ride their bike and use it for transportation — not just for fun, but using it for practical everyday purposes too.

With friends.