Worksite Challenge
- How it works
- Changes in the Challenge this year
- Worksite Coordinator’s role
- Past winners
- Information Packet DOWNLOADS
The Challenge Begins…
We want to get more people on their bikes and out of their cars, so FBO has been challenging worksites to motivate their employees to do just that since 2002. The most rewarding part about the event is showing new people how easy and fun riding to work or school can be. This is why we do the challenge. This year’s challenge will run for 4 days! from Sunday midnight to Thursday at noon.
Each office or sub-office is lead by a heroic and motivated volunteer worksite coordinator. Their job is to distribute information we will provide to the workers at their site, helping them get started if they are new to bike commuting with bike, routing, and safety tips. Each participant logs on to our website from May 12th to 16th, reporting their name, worksite and miles pedaled. Logging-in qualifies participants for daily raffle prizes and increases their worksite’s participation rate. The top worksites in the large and small catagories win a Breezer Freedom commuter bicycle for everyone to use for errands at the worksite. AND they are telling Flagstaff (and it’s city planners) how we value bicycles
e commuting.
We break it down into 2 categories: Small worksites of 9-34 employees and Large worksites of 35 or more employees to see who can get the highest participation rates for the BTWW and award a new commuter bike to each worksite! In the case of a tie we look at the highest average per-person roundtrip distance. Each winning business in the two catagories will recieve a Breezer Freedom Bike!
SOME CHANGES IN THE CHALLENGE THIS YEAR:
More pedalers… More Success!
To encourage greater participation, we are counting 3½ days toward the commuter bike winners, not just one. This means the coordinator needs to provide FBO with worksite total numbers everyday, as well as the number of pedestrians or bus-riders.
Huge worksites are a huge challenge for the worksite coordinator. FBO strongly encourages worksites of more than 100 people to subdivide into smaller (legitimate–no cherry-picking the cyclists!) location-based groupings; such as different floors, buildings or departments. These are easier to manage and motivate! It’s best to coordinate people your work around and see everyday, even if that includes cutting across departmental divisions in favor of building or wing clusters.
FBO is also challenging each worksite to enhance the BTWW challenge with intra- and inter-worksite challenges. Put up your own prizes or wagers and we will referee the results. City vs County? UPS vs Post Office? Accounting vs. Shipping? Contact Susan if you need help. And be sure to let us know the results and we will announce who wins!
We are adjusting worksite size classifications as well to encourage more participation. The “Large Worksite” will be 35 or more people, and the “Small Worksite” will be 9 to 34 people. We will try having a “Micro-Worksite” category of 3-8 people, if we can secure an adequate prize (please stand-by). Rotating worksizes should give more Flagstaff employees the opportunity to compete for the Breezer Freedom bikes.
Can your worksite ante up some raffle prizes? Your worksite can demonstrate its commitment to bicycle commuting by donating to our raffle. Consider gift certificates, merchandise, services, etc. They’re tax deductible! Your worksite will get advertisement on this website when the prize is announced and a warm fuzzy.
Everyone wins in this challenge. Worksites that register will get a package of incentives including event info, bike stickers, an event poster, the latest BiOpic newsletter, and bike suitability maps with loads of commuting and riding info. All registrants will be placed in a raffle for great giveaways courtesy of our sponsors.
In addition, by showing your support you will be providing us and the city with valuable knowledge about the value of our bike system and proof of the importance of developing facilities wisely. Most importantly you realize the many pleasures of a little fresh air before and after work.
Each Worksite has a Coordinator whose role is to:
Register your worksite. Worksite coordinators can register their organization, as well as provide anticipated numbers of employees and cyclists. If you are having trouble signing up as worksite coordinator, contact Susan and she will help you. If your place of work is already registered, please contact the point person to express your support and see how you can help with efforts to encourage and register co-workers during B2WW.
For everyone who rides: The login registration will start Monday the 12th at 12:01 am and run daily through Friday midnight. Every day we will have drawings for terrific prizes donated by local businesses who support this event.- free meals, bike accessories, outdoor gear, etc. We admit part of it is an incentive, part a little lure for you to register and help us come up with good numbers about how many people are participating.
- Start encouraging coworkers to ride and get them excited about the challenge for the coming week.
- Hand out the list of events, instructions and a map for each person. (See below, *maps won’t be available until later in May)
- Make sure everyone understands how the challenge works.
- Starting Monday, May 12th, everyone who rides each day should visit the site and follow the Log In link to the participation form. This allows us to keep track of bike rates, giving us clout to advocate for better bike path and routes. It also qualifies each participant for the daily prize drawings. Logging in is super quick and easy.
- If you don’t think a participant will sign-in or does not have access to the web, please arrange to do it for them.
- The worksite coordinator needs to log in each day to enter the total number of employees that worked at the site that day– as well as how many people walked or road the bus.
Past Winners:
Small Worksite
2007: NAU Honors Program
2006: Biff’s Bagels
2005: PRO River Outfitters
Large Worksite
2007 and 2006: Flagstaff Medical Center Emergency Department
2005: Lowel Observatory
Stats from 2007:
- 1874 people logged in all week
- 763 Individual Participants
- 123 Worksites Registered
- 14,388 Miles were Logged
- Average Commute: 7.7 miles
- Longest Commute: 35 miles, Kerri Love, Novakinetics
How much energy did we save? The average car on the road might get 17 mpg in the city…That’s…
- 846 gallons of gasoline, OR…
- 4,516 pounds of carbon we spared the atmosphere
Way to GO!
How much did we burn? 14,400 miles for the average pedaler* might require…
- 890 Big Macs
- 2,030 Slices of Pepperoni Pizza
- 3,700 Veggie Burgers.
- 3,140 Krispie Kreme donuts
- 4,060 Pounds of Broccoli
- 1,380 Pounds of Tofu
–Hope you’re hungry
*Assuming our average rider is 155 lbs and cycles at a moderate effort of 563 kcal/hr.
Questions? Contact Susan
Information Packet DOWNLOADS: Here’s pdf’s of the information in your worksite package. To conserve paper resources and prevent waste, we will include 20 sets in the “Large” worksite, 10 in the “Small”, and 5 in the “Micro”. You can print out more for you worksite here. Check back later if you are interested in pdf’s of the commuter maps of Flagstaff.
If you are unable to download and print more yourself, contact us.
- Worksite Challenge Coordinator information, tips and rules (1.5 Mb PDF)
- Schedule of 2008 Events (1.9 Mb PDF)
- Participant instructions and other bike events (1.3 Mb PDF)
- BTWW Poster (0.7 Mb PDF)
- Biopic breakfast map (0.9 Mb PDF)
Or view a jpg version of the FREE breakfast stops map:
Other great resources and information:
- Safety Tips (0.9 Mb PDF)
- How to ride your bike to work in ten easy steps (short document)
- The League of American Bicycles has some great brochures with commuting tips, bike selection, safety and maintenance tips. Link to their terrific PDF.