NewVA Moves

Clean Commute Day: The Competition is On!

As I mentioned in my last post, we've more than doubled the Clean Commute Day pledges year-over-year.  What's more exciting, though, is the diversity of participants.  Last year, Roanoke County employees and Blue Ridge Bicycle Club members made up the bulk of pledges; this year, Roanoke County continues to be a heavy hitter and stands as the employer with the highest pledges, but the team formed by the Virginia DEQ is actually outperforming the county in terms of percentage of employees participating.

Roanoke County can't rest on its laurels, however; VDOT is quickly closing in.  Yes, VDOT has quite a few bike and walk pledges under their belts.  Good for them!

We've had teams formed by the DEQ, the Roanoke Chapter of BikeWalk Virginia, Mattern & Craig, the Roanoke Outdoors and Social Club, and the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club.  Employer participants are all over the board - a number of Virginia Tech Corporate Reaserch Center employers (most notably VTLS), Virginia Tech, WSLS Channel 10, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Norfolk Southern, The Roanoke Times, and more.

Biking is clearly the preferred option this year, with bike pledges coming it at 43% of the total - and with gas prices being where they are, I'm not surprised that commuters would be using Clean Commute Day as an opportunity to make some room in their budgets.

As of this morning, we're at 79 pledges.  Let's see if we can't make it 100 by the end of the week!