Alliance > Media center > People Powered Blog

Entries tagged: Bicycle Commuting

Last month, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) held a Bike Commute Challenge that attracted 12,000 individuals from 1,450 workplaces in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Collectively, that pool of participants commuted more than 1.3 million miles by bicycle and potentially saved taxpayers nearly $75,000 in road maintenance costs alone.

So how did they do it? I got in touch with BTA’s Programs Director, Stephanie Noll, to get some insight on that strategies and actions that made the event such a phenomenal success.

• First, the organization has a presence in area workplaces throughout the year. To draw in new participants less familiar with bike commuting, BTA regularly holds Bike Commuting 101 workshops at local businesses and companies. They also rely on current commuters to act as ambassadors for the Challenge and spread the word to co-workers. This year, a month before the Commute Challenge, BTA sent out posters to be displayed in workplaces, contacted former team captains and put out a press release for partners to include in their newsletters.

• To rev up the excitement once the Challenge started, BTA sent out weekly emails to all participants with tips, encouragement, and the announcement of weekly prize drawing winners. They also partnered with 50 bike shops that offered 10 percent discounts to participants, as well as an ad agency that ran 15-second TV ads about the Challenge.

• And they gave participants a way to engage and provide feedback — in a fun, simple way. “When you’re running a web-based Challenge,” Stephanie said, “it’s great to have some mechanisms in which people can reflect back to you the unique, fun, or impressive strategies they’re employing at their workplaces. So we ask riders to submit photos for our ‘Inspiration of the Day’ feature and to send us nominations for our ‘Team Captain of the Year’ award. Without those mechanisms for receiving feedback, we would have far less of an idea of how our program was actual playing out in individual workplaces.”

All of those efforts paid off. The Challenge attracted more than 2,000 first-time bike commuters and featured some workplaces with 100 percent participation rates. An awards ceremony on October 6th celebrated the winners of the competition with beer, tunes, pizza and prizes. And the festivities included a unique opportunity for member engagement with the organization’s executive director: Rob Sadowsky pledged to shave his beard if 50 new members signed up that night. By the end of the evening, Sadowsky’s chin was bare.

In addition to effective outreach and participant engagement, one of most important aspects of BTA’s success is the group’s development of an effective online platform for the Challenge website. Alliance member organizations interested in hosting their own Commuter Challenge are invited to create a login at www.bikecommutechallenge.com and try out the platform to see if it’s a good fit for their programming goals. Questions? Get in touch with Stephanie at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

A new report published by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia proves the City of Brotherly Love has fallen head over heels for bicycling in recent years. Mode Shift: Philadelphia’s Two-Wheeled Revolution in Progress reveals Philly has, per capita, twice as many bike commuters as any other large U.S. city.

The growth in bicycle commuting has been phenomenal, rising 151 percent between 2000 and 2009 and rivaling nation-leading Portland in certain sections of the city. According to the report: “Philadelphia’s city-wide bicycle mode share for 2009 was 2.16 percent. Philadelphia’s share of female cyclists is also very high, an indicator often used to test how bicycle-friendly a city is. In Center City and South Philly, bike commuting rates are among the highest anywhere in the country, and rank among the Top 25 of 2,100 census neighborhoods. Only Portland, Minneapolis and San Francisco have two or more neighborhoods in the Top 25.”

The comprehensive report, which draws on BCGP’s own bicycle count data, also highlights the impact of bicycle facilities on rider behavior and gender mode share. For instance, almost twice as many bicyclists ride on streets with a bike lane and the percentage of women cycling jumps from 22 percent on streets with no bike lane to 37 percent on streets with a bike lane. The report found that dedicated infrastructure also improved rider behavior: “Sidewalk riding drops from 19.8 percent on streets with no bike lane to 8.6 percent on streets with a bike lane to 2.4 percent on streets with a buffered bike lane.”

Clearly Philly is on the right track, but, as the BCGP points out, the pace and prevalence of bicycle facilities pales in comparison to other big cities, like New York City and Minneapolis. “The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia recommends that Philadelphia pick up the pace to improve its bicycle infrastructure, launch a high profile public education and encouragement campaign, and make enforcement a higher priority,” the report concludes.

Click here to download and read Mode Shift.

What else is new in the Alliance Resource Library? Here are a few highlights:

• State-Based Costs of Deaths from Crashes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Complete Streets Policy Analysis 2010: A story of growing strength (Natl Complete Streets Coalition)
• Metropolitan Transportation Infrastructure Survey (US Conference of Mayors)
• Grow Your Organization’s Capacity with Interns Mutual Aid Call (Alliance)
• 2011 City Council Candidate Questionnaire (League of Bicycling Voters)
• State Legislation Policy Positions (PA Walks and Bikes)
• Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 (United Nations)

On the first day of Bike to Work Week, Consider Biking launched a commuter initiative backed by Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman and more than 70 business leaders across central Ohio. To get things rolling, “Bikin’ Mike” Coleman and dozens of CEOs demonstrated their dedication with a 2.5-mile bike commute to celebrate the start of “2 BY 2012.”

The “2 BY 2012” campaign aims to nearly triple bicycle commuting in the Columbus area and it’s already garnered some big-name partners, including JPMorgan Chase and Nationwide Insurance. Working with the central Ohio corporations, Consider Biking will provide consultation to engage employees and encourage bike commuting. In addition to a $295,000 grant from The Columbus Foundation, the “2 BY 2012” initiative has received support from the Alliance for Biking & Walking through its Advocacy Advance Grant program.

“This is definitely the largest show of CEO support for bicycle commuting ever held in the United States,” said Jeff Miller, President and CEO of the Alliance for Biking & Walking.

“The ‘2 BY 2012’ initiative is our goal to get as many central Ohio citizens as possible to bicycle to work two days per month by 2012, which is the Columbus bicentennial,” said Jeff Stephens, executive director of Consider Biking. “Bicycle commuting two days per month would make Columbus the greenest city in the country. And two days per month is a reasonable goal that many can aspire to.”

Check out Consider Biking to read more about today’s launch event and the “2 BY 2012” initiative.