Commute Challenge riders log over 1 million miles in September

Bike Commute Challenge Party-6.jpg

To the victor, go the spoils.
(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.

New 10-foot bike lane on SE Madison-7

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.

    Bike Commute Challenge Party
    Weds. October 8th from 6-7:30
    Organics to You warehouse (606 SE Madison)
Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car owner and driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, feel free to contact me at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.

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K'Tesh
K'Tesh
15 years ago

It was a fun 524.9 miles, this September, but there’s at least 8 more to go tonight…

Ryder
Ryder
15 years ago

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.

joeb
joeb
15 years ago

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.