The Joy Ride Project, conceived and led by Jay Pitter Placemaking in collaboration with leading cycling organizations such as Cycle Toronto, Winnipeg Trails, 880 Cities, The Centre for Active Transportation, and others across Canada, was a precedent-setting initiative designed to transform how cycling advocacy and planning respond to justice, belonging, and lived experience. The project emerged following Jay Pitter’s keynote address at the 2019 Ontario Bike Summit, where she challenged cycling advocates, planners, and policymakers to confront how conventional approaches to cycling have failed to meet the needs of many communities. Responding to overwhelming interest from participants, the Joy Ride Project launched in 2020 with the goal of building capacity, shifting culture, and embedding public joy as a structural principle in cycling work.

At the heart of the Joy Ride Project was an immersive professional development process for a cohort of cycling organizations—ranging from established non-profits to volunteer-run grassroots groups—focused on four critical areas: community engagement, communications and advocacy, organizational policy, and team culture. The cohort model intentionally removed financial and structural barriers, enabling even the smallest organizations to participate in this capacity-building process.

The program included pre-session assessments of each organization’s challenges and goals, followed by a series of deeply collaborative training sessions. These sessions explored the often-unacknowledged histories, laws, and systemic forces that have limited the ability of racialized people, disabled people, women, unhoused people, and those living on low incomes to move through public space safely and joyfully. Participants examined the key principles of cycling justice, intersectionality as it relates to mobility, and practical strategies to embed these principles into organizational practice.

A central part of the initiative involved a comprehensive review of participating organizations’ existing policies to assess how effectively they created cycling opportunities and fostered public joy for all demographic groups in their communities. This review generated tailored recommendations for strengthening those policies and aligning them with broader mobility justice goals.

Another key dimension of the project involved convening leading cycling justice advocates and thought leaders from Canada and the United States to co-lead sessions. This collaborative approach honoured both community-rooted expertise and sector-based knowledge, creating opportunities for participants to learn from those advancing mobility justice on the ground.

The initiative culminated in the publication of the Cycling Equity Co-Learning and Action Toolkit, a comprehensive resource that brought together theoretical frameworks, policy guidance, case studies, checklists, and practical tools to support cycling organizations and advocates in transforming their work. By framing cycling through the lens of public joy—emphasizing dignity, belonging, and collective possibility—the toolkit offered a structural approach that extended beyond physical infrastructure to include social, cultural, and organizational dimensions of mobility.

The Joy Ride Project demonstrated how public joy can serve as a catalyst for mobility justice, cultural transformation, and thriving communities, reframing cycling not simply as a mode of transportation but as a pathway to connection, safety, and shared urban futures.