Maria Contreras Tebbutt realized she needed to do something to address Woodland’s dependence on cars while standing in front of Douglas Middle School during a “traffic nightmare” created by parents frantically dropping off students.
“I’m standing there watching this horrific traffic, so then I thought I’m going to go look at the bike rack,” she recalled.
Tebbutt found only eight bikes in a space she said “was not deserving to even be considered bike parking.”
“It was shameful,” she said. “There wasn’t even a way to get to the parking spaces in this strangely kind of chainlink fenced-off area.”
That led her to start her nonprofit organization, The Bike Campaign. Through her nonprofit, Tebbutt applied for grants from the Yolo Solano Air Quality Management District that eventually provided the school and Pioneer High School with over $30,000 worth of bike racks to encourage students to ride their bikes to school.
Tebbutt’s continued commitment and dedication to creating a safer environment for bike riders to reduce the county’s reliance on vehicles led to her being recognized as Yolo County’s 2024 Climate Crisis Champion by Congressman Mike Thompson Monday.
Thompson said he selected Tebutt because of her work “promoting cycling as an alternative form of transportation to curb the effects of climate change on our district.”
“Ms. Contreras Tebbutt has successfully brought together city governments, schools, community groups and neighborhoods to educate them on the benefits of cycling through her role as outreach director of the Bike Campaign and her dedication to bringing everyone into the cycling community, especially those with disabilities and mobility limitations, is laudable,” Thompson emphasized.
He argued that her life-long advocacy for cycling and its environmental benefits make her an important community leader in combatting the climate crisis.
Tebbutt said she is happy to be one of five winners selected from California’s Fourth Congressional District, which includes herself, Clay Shannon, Ian Anderson, Dr. Lisa Micheli and Napa Schools for Climate Action.
“One of the winners was a group of high school students, which was just amazing because it’s exciting to see that people at the high school level care about and are putting energy into climate,” she remarked referring to Napa Schools for Climate Action. “We call it a crisis, but I don’t want to be a champion of a crisis. I want to be a champion of a success story of stirring the pot so that people become enthused and are pulled together to take action.”
“I’m not waiting for governments… to make proclamations or bills to change things,” she continued. “We change things and that to me is what this particular recognition is about.”
The Bike Campaign has two “Bike Garages” in Yolo County at Douglass Middle School in Woodland and The Cannery in Davis where people can get their bikes repaired or purchase used bikes.
Tebbutt said the organization started in Woodland in 2011 and is glad the city’s leadership has shown a commitment to making the city safer for bikers through projects like the Spring Lake Bike and Pedestrian Overcrossing that recently opened to the public.
“That’s an amazing thing because that artery connects at least seven schools,” she emphasized. “Schools stimulate an obscene amount of car traffic and that is not healthy for our children. We feel that we’re part of the solution of trying to reduce that kind of traffic frenzy.”
Furthermore, The Bike Campaign provides several services including free bike repairs, bike recycling, skills training at elementary school, Davis and Woodland bike maps, bike registration and theft prevention and more.
“Last week, we met with over 100 second graders at Tofoya Elementary and we asked them, ‘How many of you have bicycles at home?’ And I’d say less than half,” she recounted.
Of those who did have a bicycle at home, she noted that many of them reported having broken bikes or other issues that didn’t allow them to ride them anymore.
“Only a small percentage of kids even own a bike that is operable,” she stressed.
That’s why Tebbutt believes having a space for people, particularly kids, to get their bikes fixed is critical for the community. Additionally, the nonprofit sells used bikes to support its free bike skills training program for Woodland and Davis schools.
“The kids, the teachers and the principals are loving this,” she remarked. “We teach kids how to ride and we teach them all kinds of cool skills. They say things like, ‘This is the best day in school I’ve ever had.’”
To learn more about The Bike Campaign, visit thebikecampaign.org.
