Congratulations to members of the BiblioRiders and Center for Public Health Systems Science (CPHSS) teams on winning first and second place in October’s Active Transportation Challenge! The teams logged a collective 4332.31 car-free miles and saved 4,245.66 pounds of CO2 emissions from the air.
Jason Roche served as CPHSS’s team captain and is third from the left in the team photo above. Roche shared a powerful testimonial on his commitment to active transportation:
“Whether you’re walking to the MetroLink or biking to work, it hits home on everything I believe in – reducing car pollution, supporting pedestrian and transit-oriented urban design, connecting with and being in the presence of people from all walks of life, and building physical activity into your day so it’s no longer a choice or a chore, but just what you do.
I got hooked into the Shift Your Commute challenges while at my previous employer, where I saw how the team element and support helped me start biking to work and kept me accountable…
I started the team at CPHSS soon after I began 2.5 years ago to recreate the experience that helped get me started. Over the years, staff and students have come and gone, but the team has always maintained at least three members. Over the summer we moved from North Campus to Danforth. With the new location and more challenging parking, we saw the numbers swell. It was great to see one woman who lived nearby but did not bike in because she had to take her children to daycare figure out a way to make it work. She now bikes in part of the week. Everyone has a different story, but what’s great about the Active Transportation Challenge is that it recognizes all forms of transit beyond just biking… Lastly, having a center-wide team makes a large University-wide initiative relevant by bringing it closer to home…”
Thank you to Jason and all of the other active transportation champions across campus. The next Active Transportation Month will take place in April 2016.