Active Commute to Work
Kingston recently took part in Active Commute to Work Week from June 3-8 during which Kingstonians were encouraged by both The City of Kingston and The Kingston Coalition for Active Transportation to walk, cycle, carpool or ride the bus to work. The City made a proclamation outlining the criteria for the active commute and participants were encouraged to use Commuter Challenge, to track their progress. Free breakfast was provided by Cycle Kingston for those who passed by on their way to work.
The challenge was a great success with over 400 people registered to participate. These 400 people traveled a total of 28,000 km using only human power, transit or carpool, saved over 1700 litres of fuel and avoided 4400 kg of CO2, ranking Kingston as the top overall in Canadian cities between 10,000 and 250,000 people. And this was our first year participating. Now just imagine if we all took part…
Here’s a video highlighting the week created by kcat onthego.
Thanks to carfreedays for today’s pic.
Kingston is ideal for bike commuting in many ways, at least for three seasons of the year. It's a pretty small town without heavy powered traffic, and there is no significant minority of drivers who seem actively hostile to cyclists as there was back in the UK where I came from. The only real problem I've experienced is the condition of the roads. However, there just doesn't seem to be a culture of cycling here at all and that is hard to change. Some otherwise quite rational and intelligent people I've spoekn to seem to think commuting by bike is hard and dangerous, when it is neither. Initiatives like this should help to change it, but I worry that they are really just preaching to the already coverted.