The Bike Month Planning team organized Bike to Work Day on September 14, 2022 from 7 - 10 am at 16 Champaign County locations, including eight on-campus. There were 893 registered to attend before the event this year and nearly 150 people registered on-site during the event! Champaign County Bikes were also present at Alma Mater and Hallene Gateway during Light the Night event as well as Bike to Market Day on September 17, 2022, to meet attendees who could not attend the Bike to Work Day event. The final number of pre-registered attendees (prior to Bike to Market) was 921, which is a new record for this event!

Light the Night was organized on September 15, 2022, from 4 - 7 pm at three campus locations - Alma Mater, Hallene Gateway, and Campus Bike Center. This year, we used Planet Bike blinky lights with silicone straps. We distributed and installed nearly 800 bike light sets during this event! Alma Mater was, by far, the most popular location, where nearly 575 lights were distributed.

Following the event, the Bike Month Plannign team discussed options for next year.

All, Real busy times last week. Shop was manageably busy, but we had BTWD and LTN on consecutive days. Both events went well. I spent more time at the DRES stop than the Bike Center station, which was a new experience. Lots of folks on that route, and I was able to talk route-planning and commuting strategy with some people new to commuting. Weather cooperated swimmingly.

We had a deluge of completed B-a-Bs last week. Always good to see the smiling faces of rewarded effort. Marketing folks came by and updated some of our filing cabinets and bins with printed (legible) labels and photos of contents to better help people find and identify parts. We’re still slower on Tue/Thurs as we work to get the word out that we’re now open those days as well.

We’ll work this week on a couple shop builds we’ve been too busy to finish, prep for the abandoned bike giveaway, and clean shop as we’ve been too busy to do much of any of that in the last two weeks.

The numbers:

Visitors: 86
Sales: $1,084.30
Bikes (B-a-B): 3 for $150

Memberships: 17 for $510
Tires/tubes: 10 for $59

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

Following email was sent to all BTWD station managers the day after the event on September 15, 2022.

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Hi Bike to Work Day station managers,

I hope you had a good BTWD yesterday!  Here are the last 3 reminders/requests for you:

1. Return your leftover materials to Charlie’s house (805 S. Coler Ave., Urbana) by Friday, if you haven’t already done so.
   1. This includes your box with the registration list, registration forms, the donation can, t-shirts, handouts, and the yard sign.
2. Complete this short survey by Friday (if you can) to tell us how BTWD 2022 went for you:  https://forms.gle/yJ6LSevkt8zoSDSr8
3. Send me photos from your station if you haven’t already done so, or label & drop them in this Google Drive folder.

No Pictures Yet from these Stations:

1. Campus Alma Mater
2. Campus Bike Center
3. Campus National Soybean Research Center
4. CRCE
5. Campus Uni High
6. Rantoul
7. Savoy

Video Received & Posted from this Station:

1. Campus Alma Mater

Pictures Received & Posted from these Stations:

1. Campus DRES
2. Campus Orchard Downs
3. Campus Research Park
4. Champaign Downtown Plaza
5. Champaign Wolfram
6. Mahomet
7. St. Joe KRT
8. Urbana Brookens
9. Urbana Downtown

Thanks,

Gabe

All, The visitor numbers seem low for how busy it felt this past week. Had a few students step up, volunteer, and enjoy it enough to come back in the last few weeks. That’s always a good sign we’re doing something right.

I was out Thursday/Friday and my staff handled the Bike Center in my absence. No major issues, so I call that a success.

We’ve got BTWD and LTN this week, back-to-back days, on Wed then Thursday. Weather looks good (at this point).

This Friday is the last day for students to claim their abandoned bikes so my staff and I will count the remaining ones that we’ll be able to use. From there, I’ll coordinate with Working Bikes to pick up the rest—potentially as soon as next week. The influx of bikes will be a boon to for our programs as we look to build back stock.

The numbers:

Visitors: 49
Sales: $895
Memberships: 15 for $450
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Tires/tubes: 15 for $70

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

Folks, First, my apologies if this is a duplicate...we're just excited about our newest T Shirt and we want to exceed last year's record participation in Bike to Work Day!

The 2022 Champaign County Bike to Work Day is Wednesday September 14 (rain date of Friday, Sept. 16). Registration is now open at cuBikeMonth.org if you haven't already signed up. T Shirts and breakfast snacks while they last.

There are 16 Welcome Stations for Wednesday, 7:00-10:00am (in CU as well as Savoy, St. Joe, Mahomet, and Rantoul), as well as a "Bike to Market" option for next Saturday at the Urbana Farmers Market 8am-noon.

There are additional events planned for September as "Bike Month" including Light the Night, Thursday Sept 15, several local family rides Saturday Sept 17 and Sept 24, Walk and Roll to School Day (October 12) and the Illinois Bike Summit at the I Hotel October 12 (with NACTO training Oct 13). A full list of events is here or by checking the calendar at cuBikeMonth.org

We hope you'll join us this Wednesday for our 2022 event!
--
-Charlie Smyth
csmyth@sbcglobal.net
Chair, ChampaignCountyBikes.org