Originally Posted by
banerjek
In all fairness, I've always been disappointed in the results of bike to work weeks held at places I've worked. Response is nothing short of pathetic.
I think they key is to make things seem normal and easy. The problem is that hard core bike commuters are often regarded by their coworkers as nut job iron men/women or hippies who live in an alternate world.
I do think that employers could make things much less inconvenient for bike commuters. However, even the workplaces that provide showers and secure bike storage often find these facilities severely underutilized.
The main problem with incentives like bike to work week or bike to work day or whatever it is, is that they assume that everyone who rides a bike will both a) instinctively know how to do it (including how to deal with traffic) and b) have the time of their lives in doing so. The fact is that without some kind of prior education, part a) will not happen in most cases, and therefore the prospect of part b) happening at all declines dramatically. Most people who do ride to work in these events end up having several "close calls" or other bad experiences, and end up telling everyone how terrible it all was.
Personally I think you're far better off getting together with a local cycling group and offering training/advice for people throughout your community who are thinking of riding to work, and perhaps even running a "bike buddy" system where people might be able to hook up with other people from their area to ride to work. This is likely to be far more successful because you're actually targetting people who might realistically be interested, and you can do it over a longer period of time than one week. You might just have some success that way.
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