2010 Commute Challenge Results!

We are awarding shirts to the team in each category (by size/type of organization) that had the highest percentage of new bike commuters on the team, and to the teams that had the highest overall/all categories uses.

Here's the short list (detail below). If you are the captain of one of these teams, send an email to info@biketoworkspokane.org with shirt sizes for all team members!

2010 Commute Challenge!

The 2010 Commute Challenge is a month-long competition. This allows more people to participate and allows everyone to rack up more miles to and from work than the one-week challenge in 2009.

The Commute Challenge will run Sunday May 16 through Saturday June 12. We'll be recognizing teams at a picnic to be held Friday June 18 (details still being finalized).

We'll recognize teams that sign up the highest percentages of new commuters, and those who make the most trips using their bikes over the course of the four weeks.

If bicycle commuting is new to you, this is a great program to get you started. For seasoned commuters, this is your chance to rally your co-workers to join you. Challenge yourself, challenge your workmates, and challenge other local businesses and organizations to be a part of the solution.

First, appoint a Commute Challenge Team Captain to enter basic team member info on the website. When you've joined a team, be sure to fill in your mileage info for all 4 weeks!

Who Can Form a Team?

You can! We welcome teams affiliated based on workplace, school (K-12 or college/university), organizational membership, neighborhood, faith community, or any other basis for a grouping. You can form "Cycling Friends of Susie" as a team if you like.

Team Sign-up: It's fast and it's free!
2010 Registration Now Open

• Form your team: Team Captain forms a team of 4 - 10 riders, decides on team name and registers the team online. You may register a team at any time between mid-April and May 16, 2010, for this year’s Commute Challenge. If you have more than ten people then start a second team so everyone can play!

• So you've already registered and now you want to be a Team Captain: Log in with your username/password from the home page. On the screen with your registration information, check the box labeled "I want to be a team captain." At the lefthand side of the page, you will have access to the Team Captain navigation option, which will take you to the page where you fill in data about your team and organization.

• Information you’ll need to know: Total number of employees at your worksite for a workplace team, number of members for an organizational team; type of business or organization.
  • Some types of affiliation will not have a fixed organizational size, such as a neighborhood. Just skip that on the registration form.
  • Why do we ask the organization size? That will enable us to make comparisons between teams at organizations of similar size.
  • NO, we don't mean the number of people on your team--we mean the total # of employees. We are comparing teams from organizations of similar size.
• Rally the troops: After registering, Team Captain rallies troops, challenges other departments or offices, and motivates and inspires the team!
• Get your team members to register: Each team member will register individually and affiliate with your team. People who have already registered can log on and update their registration to join your team. Be sure they're completing their mileage information for all 4 weeks!
  
• Remind them to enter miles that count: Team members bike to work and for other transportation purposes as often as possible during our participation month, Sunday May 16-Saturday June 12. Of course, the more you ride, the higher you rank! Team members may enter a mileage estimate at registration, then refine it to capture actual miles ridden during the month. Be sure to include all 4 weeks!
  
• Which miles count? Your bike route to and from work, and any biking for transportation purposes where you otherwise would have used a vehicle. Examples: shopping, errands, attending school, going to a place of worship.
• Do not enter extra recreational or fitness mileage that you do in addition to your regular commute trip or other transportation uses. Examples: Your route to work is 3 miles each way. You add an extra 10 on the way home for fitness. Enter 6 miles, not 16, for that day. Or you go for a recreational ride of 20 miles on the weekend. Do not enter those miles. While commendable, they don’t replace vehicle miles.
• Making changes: If you want to change the team name, reassign the Team Captain role to someone else, or delete the team, send an email to register@biketoworkspokane.org and we will make the change.

FAQs

• I can't see the team I want to join and I know it exists. Once a team has 10 members it no longer appears in the dropdown list of teams because team size is capped at 10. Time to start up a new team!
• I changed my team name and now it doesn't show up on the list. The 2009 data is still in the system to make it easy for teams that have the same members year to year. If your team filled up in 2009 it can't take any new members. If you want to recruit new members to a new team name, please contact last year's team members and ask that someone else step up as captain. Their names/email addresses are available to you as Team Captain. If you already changed the name and no one wants to be Team Captain, we will need to update their records to remove them from your new team name so you can recruit new members.
• How do I see who's on my team? This information is available to Team Captains. When you click the box that says you want to be a Team Captain, you will have a lefthand navigation option labeled Team Captain. This is where you create the team. As people affiliate with your team, their names and email addresses will appear on this page.
• I don't want to be Team Captain any more. Contact your team members and see if someone else will take that role. Notify us and we will change the registration record for the old and new Team Captains.

What If It's All About Me?

You don't have to join a team to join the fun. You can enter as a solo participant in the Challenge; just visit the website and register as an individual. You will follow the same instructions as above.

Should you decide to join a team later, it’s easy to update your registration information.

How Will We Calculate the Winners?

The point of the Commute Challenge is to encourage fun, healthy competition and inspire new commuters. You can win all the fame and glory we can muster, and a place on the Commute Challenge Honor Roll on our web site.

We will calculate and report the statistics listed below for each size and type of workplace/organization.

• % of people in the workplace/group participating
• # and % of new bike commuters on the team
• Total miles for the team
•  Average mileage per team member
• Total bike-to-work miles
• Average bike-to-work miles per team member
• Total bike-for-other-transportation miles
• Average bike-for-other-transportation miles per team member
• Number of days biked during the four-week challenge

We will also look at the data and come up with whatever categories and rankings make sense or provide entertainment once we know who is participating. It could be anything from "Best Use of Alliteration in a Team Name" to "Most Interesting Basis for Affiliation" to "Widest Radius of Participants" to "Most Idahoans Commuting to Work in Spokane County." We won’t know until you sign up!

2009

During Bike to Work Week, May 10-16, 2009, we held the first-ever Spokane Commute Challenge presented by Group Health.

A total of 62 teams participated--everything from family teams to nonprofits, corporate teams, a lot of college/university teams, and some fun head-to-head competition by multiple teams within organizations.

2009 Commute Challenge results page