The fifth annual Bike to PSU Challenge rounds out the final day today. With more than 1,000 riders actively logging commutes, the challenge has expanded nearly 20 percent in ridership from last year. The program is thanks in part to the Portland State Bike Hub and the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. PSU students and employees racked up more than 90,000 miles, logging their trips online as they made the choice to commute by bicycle to and from PSU.
Transportation Options Manager Ian Stude said that bicycle commuting has three main benefits: the health aspect, the environmental aspect of not leaving a carbon footprint and the cost effectiveness. He was excited to see so many people in the PSU community come out for the challenge.
The challenge is broken into teams and solo riders without teams, and within that riders can also identify as new commuters. After all the official numbers have successfully been registered, prizes will be distributed to the various winners in each group.
With an improved website where riders are able to log their distance and hours, Stude said that the program has greatly expanded in recent years.
“It’s grown quite a bit: for the first few years we hovered around maybe 200–300 participants. Then last year we made a really strong attempt to boost the overall image of the challenge,” Stude said.
He also said that a new rule within the Bike Hub community has enabled employees to become more engaged and enroll more people.
“One little thing we did was tell all the Bike Hub staff that none of them can be on a team together, so that kind of sets the stage for the staff to expand it,” Stude said. “Often when members come in to work on their bikes, employees will say, ‘I need more people on my team, do you want to join my team?’ This is great because it builds a type of solidarity, and people get excited about it that way.”
This strategy worked well for the Bike Hub’s lead mechanic, Dan Penner, who said he created a team with five other members who all took their first rides as bicycle commuters in this year’s challenge.
“It’s a lot of fun, and you get to be out in the open air and enjoy the city,” Penner said. “It’s healthy and it feels good.”
Penner’s teammates were able to get involved thanks to the VikeBikes program, a long-term bike rental program through the Bike Hub. Students can register for a rental bike at a cost of $45 per term, which Penner said is a great low-cost way to give people a chance to start bicycling.
“We got a lot of people excited about it this year,” Penner said. “We had 200 more people than we had the previous year actively logging. It is definitely spreading to a larger percentage of the PSU population.”
At the time of publication, riders from teams the Deep Fried Burritos, Look Good: Feel Good, Camp Broken Spoke, Team WLL and the Sharrows rounded up the top five riders with the top mileage and 100 percent rate of commuting by bicycle.
Stude explained that the rate describes the percentage people commute by bike out of all their commutes, which means teams are not penalized by not bicycle commuting on days they do not come to campus.
Although the challenge is meant to be competitive and fun, Stude said that overall the goal is simply to increase bike commuting and get more PSU students excited about the idea.
“We’re really proud of our students and staff, and I’m really excited that people have taken the challenge to heart and made it what it is,” Stude said. “It’s all those teams coming together and people having fun with it that make it come alive.”
And while Bike to PSU might be over for 2012, it is not too late to get involved in bicycle commuting. Stude advises new bicycle commuters to talk with friends and classmates who have already begun bicycle commuting to get tips on routes and also to take it slow the first time. New commuters should give themselves plenty of extra time for a first-time commute.
New and experienced riders can get assistance at the Bike Hub, which is open Monday through Friday to students and staff for rentals and repairs or simply to get advice for a successful commute.