BTA's 2009 Bike Commute Challenge: The Results Are In
Posted by: StephanieOct 09 2009, 11:31 am
Participating workplaces: 1240
Participating riders: 11,118
Miles biked: 1,244,718
Scott Bricker of the BTA presents the Brian Reynolds Distance Award to Chris Bell of ODOT
Last night at an awards party at Portland City Hall, hundreds of Bike Commute Challenge participants celebrated their collective accomplishments for the month of September. The 2009 Challenge broke all previous records for number of participating workplaces, number of participating individuals, and number of miles biked. Also, an impressive 2,639 individuals logging bike trips this September identified themselves as new bike commuters.
Team Glad Rags accepts their award
At an awards ceremony opened by Portland Mayor Sam Adams, winning workplaces in all the Challenge's size and type categories were recognized. All winners and the full team rankings can be viewed on the 2009 Results page of the Bike Commute Challenge website.
The awards were followed with a final prize drawing for great prizes from City Bikes, Madison's Bar and Grill, REI, and Nossa Familia. The winner of the anxiously anticipated Team Captain drawing for a pair of Novarra Commuter Panniers was Matt Kelley of Reed College.
Thanks to our awards party sponsors, City of Portland, Hot Lips Pizza, Widmer Brothers, and Bike Racker.
Congratulations All!
Winning Team sticky celebrates their 100% commute rate.
The "awards" categories are not exactly reported fairly. Statistics are easily distorted based on how they are presented.
Most of the government/public entries that had high results were merely divisions or small pieces of the agencies. While at the same time most of the private companies are rated as a whole.
My employer has ~ 4000 employees in Oregon. If we divided up by division we would have had some divisions have over 90% bicycle rates as well! Our company has ~ 6000 employees in 4 states and our "rates" are computed against that total.
How would have many of the public agencies rated if they were not broken down by such small divisions? For example, OHSU employs over 10,000 people yet the "OHSU Pediatric Pulmonary Division" won the "Public agencies with less than 25 employees" category.
Way to go, Chris! (How many freaking calories is that?!
My public agency team competes in the challenge as one entity, not broken down into divisons or departments. I did notice that a lot of public agency teams were from departments and divisions within their entity. Oh well, we came in fourth in our division when only considering agencies from our city. Thanks for a great challenge! I had fun finally taking the plunge and participating this year!
The PDF file for Business and Non-Profit 25-99 employees appears to be corrupt, and won't open.
Several links are broken on the results page.
For example: Business and Non-Profit, 500+ employees
Error 404 page not found.
From bikeportland.org:
"He’s thankful that his employer, ODOT, has showers and lockers (he sweats a lot) and his co-workers think he’s a bit crazy."
Okay, the crazy part I know very well (get used to it, Chris), but heavens to mergatroid! Work?… Sweat?… OMG, NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Gee, that's kind of a dinky trophy for 1st place out of like 11,000 (I hope it's at least real marble
.TONIGHT…PARTLY CLOUDY. LOWS IN THE MID 20S TO AROUND 30.
NORTHEAST WIND 5 TO 10 MPH.
The Business and Non-Profit category links have now been fixed. Sorry for the delay!
Chris is an amazing cyclist. My math tells me that he must live 40+ miles from work. My short commute keeps me on my bike for a couple of hours a day. I am thinking that Chris has a more comfortable bike seat than I do.
Wow! What a commuter Chris is! That is dedication.
Okay, once again I (obviously) got too focused on the boots, and all my fame, and my stretchy pants, but doggone it – this September I nearly wore out both pairs of my very best stretchy pants (wore a hole clear through one of them).
Ah well, I moved up a couple spots in the top ten, and it was a beautiful month for riding – couldn't reasonably hope for better. No crashes. And – could it be – I don't remember getting any flats in September. What a great month of riding!
On the very last day, September 30th, I was riding in in the morning, had already gotten into some climbing, when I came to another hill that gets progressively steeper all the way. I had had some trouble on this hill before (a less familiar route variation), so dropped to what should be a plenty low gear and started grinding up out of the saddle. Then, with lots of the steepest part left to go, both of my legs and both of my *arms* (and the rest of my body, too, I guess) started *screaming*, "I QUIT!"
I quickly adjusted all my effort to just what was needed to keep going without breaking down, and made it up, but it was scary – not so much because of the immediate difficulty (or that I momentarily forgot to unclip at the top and nearly fell over right there), but because I wasn't sure what was happening to me physically. Nothing quite like that had ever happened to me. It didn't feel like the sort of thing that nutrition (or maybe even rest) could fix the same day, and I still had to get all the way home later on.
As it turned out I gingerly made it the rest of the way in, and then made it home just fine – if pretty wiped out from the month. (I took the next two days off the bike.)
It's started to get decidedly less comfortable almost immediately in October, and now the wind and rain has been coming, and now it's getting darker, and the *really* cold is yet to come. But discomfort is essential to worthwhile character, and I do have some better gloves this year… and this wild idea about mounting a set of spare wheels w/ studded tires to my front track – hmmm…
100.0,21,21,1266,