UGive.org, a great new website for high schoolers seeking volunteer opportunities, offers a chance for you to earn hours by volunteering with Pedal Instead. Check out our profile to find out where we’ll be and come out for a day of bike parking to get school credit.
Pedal Instead is pleased to announce a $9,000 grant from our new partner, The Columbus Foundation’s Green Fund! This essential support will allow us to replace some of our decrepit equipment and better brand our service. We profusely thank the foundation for this generous support.
The Green Fund especially committed to bicycling safety, so check this site for plenty of reasons to always protect your noggin with a bike helmet!
ComFest Foundation again graced Pedal Instead with their generosity, granting us $2,000 to put towards an Energy Bike from the Ohio Energy Project. Pedalling these bicycles generates energy that can power light bulbs and other small appliances. Pedal Instead will use the bicycles to generate light for nighttime events — people will be able to take turns riding the bicycles all throughout the day so that when it’s dark our volunteers can see to return bikes to people more efficiently. Thanks much to ComFest for the opportunity, and to our friend Kurt Lehmkuhl for engineering our energy bike!
The number of bikes we parked in 2009 was up 29% over the number in 2008! We keep on growing!
"Bike Parking" sign made from recycled bicycle parts
In the spirit of ComFest, Justin Morse & Nathen Biroschak showed up to Pedal Instead with a sign they’d made of recycled bikes parts, and we couldn’t be more excited about it! Nathen & Justin have been affiliated for many years with the Third-Hand Bicycle Co-op, but they’ve recently launched a new venture they call The Home for Wayward Adults. HWA is also responsible for the beautiful new bike racks at Pattycake Bakery. You guys ROCK, big time…
This year for Buckeye Football we’ll be parking bikes at TWO corrals, just steps from the stadium at Woody Hayes and the bike path. Thousands of people will ‘pedal instead’ of driving to avoid game-day traffic this season! And we’re offering exclusive early-bird ad rates on fence banners, while space permits, to help your org reach thousands of tailgaters. Contact Catherine Girves at cgirves@gmail.com to purchase space for one game or the entire season.
Walker Evans spoke to UAEA Director Catherine Girves about Pedal Instead, Bike to Work Week, and cycling in general. Check out the podcast on his site!
Pedal Instead and our director Catherine Girves were nominated for the WTS Columbus chapter’s annual award and won. We then were entered into the running for the international Innovative Transportation Solutions Award, and WON THAT AS WELL! Read our press release about the award and check out Catherine accepting it at the WTS Conference in Seattle in May.
We are pleased to announce that The Community Festival has awarded Pedal Instead a generous grant of $1000 for the purchase of equipment. We are extremely grateful for this support and thank the committee for their decision.
UAEA declined two-thirds of our requests for Pedal Instead in 2008, even turning cyclists away from several events (including ComFest) because we couldn’t accommodate demand with the amount of equipment available to us. This grant will help us meet current demand and set us up to expand our programming throughout 2009 and beyond.
Look for Pedal Instead this year at ComFest on the corner of Dennison & Buttles.
Catherine discusses Pedal Instead at the COSI Innovation Showcase. Photo courtesy cosiscience @ Flickr.
The Enrichment Association was honored to showcase Pedal Instead at COSI’s reception to launch Innovation Showcase, their new series of permanent art and technology installations by local innovators. The event attracted several hundred people interested in the newest and best ideas Central Ohio has to offer. Low-tech bike parking turned out to be a big hit!