Expanding our work bike locker, pool bikes

So they plan to expand our caged shared bike locker which has permanently installed bike racks.. to accommodate more than 85 bikes for employees. To me, on some days this season the cage is starting to feel like a European crowded bike locker.

Apparently over 5 years ago it was a tiny bunch of cycling commuting employees.

This year they've added 4 corporate, "pool" bikes for employees to use. At least they have bought 3 different sizes.

We have another work site (which I cycled to last week for a meeting on my own bike from home) with 4 pool bikes but totally too big for people under 5'4".

So they did an informal poll among employees this wk. 700 employees responded (out of 13,000, not all have jobs which require a computer).

What mode of transportation people use to get to work in the summer.

Only 7% employees cycled to work. (Other cooler times of year it's 3% or less.)

But 43% employees drove in car --as single car occupant.

Jeepers...

What if the focus was to get a certain percentage of the work force to commit to commuting by bike 1 day a week for starters. Are you considering incentives to slowly alter peoples mind sets? I have been encouraging people in Boise to take that approach and it was really awesome to hear a woman I know (who always states biking isn't her thing) say that she nows makes a conscious decision to take the bike for her short errand trips. Sometimes taking baby steps leads us to our end goal.

Well, it's commuter challenge week which includes prizes.

It's actually an online tracking program where any employee can note type of transportation mode and mileage. Kind of clunky. Whatever. They won't replace it...I work in the public sector.

No, discounted transit passes are not offered to employees. City would lose money.

Though right now it's light rail transit system is being expanded now.

Over 30% respondents indicated use of transit to get to work....which is a viable, greener option too to a single occupant car drivers.

Our city is over 1 million people with ever-growing urban sprawl. It's probably one of the fastest metropolitan cities in Canada in terms of expanding geographic spread of land development. It is 7 times the geographic spread for city of Vancouver.

Remember city of Vancouver and City of Toronto are geographically bound by water (and for Vancovuer it's mountains also) and legal boundaries. Both cities can't really expand with huge swaths of single family dwelling neighbourhoods anymore except for the odd infill new residential buildings.

I don't know else to say..because if I start preaching at work, it's too much to hear for some folks. So I just bike, walk myself....people can see I walk my talk.