Smart Commute Week, held June 7-11, 2010, was a blast!  The final Commuter Cup results are here. Also, feel free to peruse our Smart Commute Week pictures here. For those of you who didn’t make it to the awards ceremony on Friday, the bike from City Bike Shop was awarded to Michigan Land Use Institute (photo on the right). MLUI plans to use the bike as a ‘company bike’ and hopefully we’ll see it around town! Also, all 52 teams in the Commuter Cup Challenge collectively averaged 35% for the 4-day challenge. We estimate that over 60,000 miles were commuted ‘smartly’ during the week and prevented over 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, BATA saw a 12% increase in ridership on fixed route buses compared to the same week a year ago. NMRide.net, a local rideshare database, noticed double the visits to the site in May and June.

We are working on extending Smart Commute. We are teaming with the Film Festival to work on encouraging movie-goers to smart commute to the movie venues. The Film Festival has a goal to be the greenest film festival in the U.S. and we are excited to partner with them. We also received a grant through McLain Cycle and Specialized to purchase a semi-permanent bike rack that we’ll place in a parallel parking space on Front Street for three months a year. TART will promote biking downtown and enjoying the “rock star” bike parking on Front Street. We are working to install the new bike parking before 4th of July weekend.

Of course, none of this would be possible without a wonderful planning committee and great sponsors! Thank you so much!