Bike Pooling
This past Wednesday at the office, I was clearing my desk when I considered whether or not to toss a flyer I had for Atlanta's Bike to Work Day back in May. I had kept the flyer around thinking how nice it was to see so many people on bikes. I was able to let go of the flyer with the consoling thought that I could probably startup a monthly bike to work ride.
The next day, I find a post on Commute by Bike -- published the same day -- about commuting with other cyclists.
It must be a sign.
Today I set about recruiting other riders. Already it's going pretty well.
I talked with a rider who hasn't started commuting. He lives a few miles from me in the opposite direction of the office, but is still within cycling distance. I offered to ride in with him. This led to a discussion of routes and I think we'll have a new commuter before long.
On the ride home I struck up a conversation with a fellow commuter I had not met before. I asked if he would join in a bike-to-work day. He's interested, so it looks like there might be something to this.
I'm still sorting out the approach, but here's some of my ideas:
- Treat it as an outreach to recruit new riders and get them comfortable with a bike commute.
- Let others know about my route on a particular day of the week (Wednesday's say) and invite others to join along.
- Find a route more likely to pick up a good number of riders, meet those riders and invite them to ride together.
- Find and recruit existing bike commuters to help build up a social network along a specific route.
- Work out different planned routes for the various Friday's of each month. For example, first Friday is Emory through Piedmont Park to Georgia Tech, second Friday is from Grant Park to Midtown.
- Publish our trials and tribulations so others can learn from what we've accomplished.
It's all about getting cyclists on the road.
Commute Summary
Round Trip Distance: 17.9
Number of Cyclists seen: 19
In-bound Route: Lullwater/PATH
Out-bound Route: Emory via Clifton
Weather: Warm but still had plenty of water left in my bottle
Labels: bike-commuting, bike-pool, bike-train, recreational-commuting
posted by Jett @ 7:52 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I'll be keeping an eye on this to see which routes I could join in. I'm a Lake Claire to Piedmont Hosp. area commuter. It reminds me of when I would walk to school as a kid and we would plan our route to pick up our friends along the way.
One of the embryonic thoughts started as a post I read about Safe Routes to School and what it is doing to get kids back outdoors walking and biking to school.
My younger daughter started walking to school this year and it's interesting how the momentum is hard to get going, but takes on a life of it's own once the pattern settles in.
Lorna, Would you be following something close to this route (in bikely.com)? It climbs Mt. McLendon, skirts the North end of Candler Park along the PATH trail, crosses Ponce at Oakdale, comes through VaHi along Los Angeles, heads into Piedmont Park to get to Ansley Park, and then crosses I-85 on Peachtree. It would be nice to cross I-85 at 17th, but this takes you quite a bit west and crossing I-75 is still not the most pleasant from there.
Do you have a flexible schedule or do you ride at a set time each day?
Hi Jett,
That's very close to how I go. In fact I usually change my route regularly so I'm going to try that one out. That bikely tool is cool. I created this route that I took yesterday morning.
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Home-to-Work-172960
I try to leave my home area by 8:15am and am leaving the work end around 6:00. I guess that it's all going to have to shift earlier to try and not be riding the dark.
Variety does make it fun. You've got a few good choices of roads to take and especially if you don't mind taking in a few more miles.
I took a look at your route. It appears the numeric portion of the route "Home-to-Work-172960" fell off because without the "-172960", it shows a route near Boston. The downhill on E Rock Springs just west of Briarcliff would be fun going down, but not back up.
I avoid riding in the dark because I don't have a front light. I'll turn on a red blinker for dusk and dawn.
I could probably share the route into Ansley Park on Fridays coming in. At Peachtree Circle I would turn south toward my office. We could meet up where North Avenue crosses the PATH trail by Candler Park around 8:20 or so, if you're interested.
I think once some of the logistics of organizing these routes falls into place, we can begin picking up numbers. I'm looking for other days of the week to do other routes.
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