(Photos © J. Maus)
Today is the last day of the BTA’s 13th annual Bike Commute Challenge.
The event, which is a friendly competition between businesses to see whose employees can complete the most bike trips in the month of September, broke records across the board this year. In fact, the popularity of the event caught the BTA a bit off-guard, causing their server to crash throughout the month as participants logged in to tally up their miles.
Speaking of miles, event organizer Stephanie Noll reports that so far over 1,156,408 miles have been logged. Over 1,000 teams and 12,000 individuals participated this year. That’s a solid increase from 2007 and an almost 100% increase over 2006 when 550 workplaces and 6,186 participants tallied 627,938 miles.
Everyone that competed in the event is invited to the Bike Commute Challenge after party and awards ceremony next week. There will be free pizza, beer, a prize drawing, and winners from each of the categories will be announced.
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Bike Commute Challenge Party
Weds. October 8th from 6-7:30
Organics to You warehouse (606 SE Madison)
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It was a fun 524.9 miles, this September, but there’s at least 8 more to go tonight…
Regrettably, almost every time I tried to log my miles, their site was down… I eventually gave up, and I suspect many others did, too.
Too bad for the BTA; I suspect the BCC is meant to cull potential BTA supporters.
I suspect you’re right Ryder. My company had more bikes, but lower participation in BCC this year. I regret that I didn’t provide more promotion and assistance for our group. Anyway, that makes it especially awesome that BCC shows such growth. I think biking is up even more than stats indicate. I’m really interested to see the PDOT bike count results.