With Bike to Work week and day rescheduled to September, it’s been a different kind of National Bike Month during COVID-19. This allowed our team to get out in the field and create bike safety training resources with our drivers and partners (safely distanced, of course).

Bicycling is one of the positives emerging from lockdown, with The New York Times and others reporting a surge in sales. Increased awareness around health and sustainability benefits has inspired all kinds of creative bike event ideas, like “Bike Everywhere Day” in Washington State, and “Bike Anywhere Week” in DC.

Reduced road traffic has also meant better, safer, cleaner and more accessible biking, a trend that excites our biggest cycling enthusiast, Eleni Jacobson (pictured above). As WeDriveU’s Customer Success Outreach Coordinator, Eleni spearheads TDM initiatives and commuter engagement events for our clients, including bike fairs.

“Working from home has gifted us more flexible time to spend riding,” says Eleni, adding, “Articles on increasing bike demand has lifted cyclists’ spirits, as well as Open Streets movements that are making healthier walking, biking, and socializing spaces for people across California, the U.S., and the world.”

WeDriveU promotes all commute modes that reduce single occupancy vehicles (SOVs) on roadways. You’ll see bike racks and storage across WeDriveU’s fleet, for shuttle passengers ranging from long-distance road warriors to casual riders who hop on shared bikes between buildings on their campuses.

Amy Paolercio, WeDriveU’s Director of Safety, added: “With the new (and welcomed) enthusiasm for cycling, we are excited to share tools to ensure safety. Whether or not you ride our shuttles, we hope that the tips for trip planning, visibility, predictability and communication will inspire cyclists of all experience levels to cycle safely. We are looking forward to sharing the road and commute with you again soon.”

Thank You Bicycle Partners

Special thanks to friends at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition for teaming-up earlier this year to on local training for our drivers on safely sharing the road with people on bikes and bike infrastructure. Their organization does great work making SF streets as safe as possible.

Also a huge shout-out to David Allen and the team from Bike All Over, LLC in Seattle for partnering on training curriculum for our drivers and team.

We’re excited about the interest and new resources to tap between now and September.

“The cycling community welcomes new enthusiasts with open arms,” Eleni added. “There is always room for more bike users. It’s a big community with a lot of camaraderie with the shuttle riders.”

Resources:

League of American Bicyclists
San Francisco Bike Coalition
Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition
San Mateo and Santa Clara County’s Commute.org Bicycling Resources
Bike Back to Work from Bikes Make Life Better