Sarthak Prasad presented the findings from Bike Day 2021 event to the National Bike Summit on March 29, 2022! Bike Day 2021 was organized on September 14, 2021, with the Bike to Work Day event in the morning from 7-10 am and Light the Night event in the late afternoon/evening from 4-7 pm. Please see attached the presentation.

All, Heck of a week we just had. Tuesday was Bike To Work Day and Light The Night; both events went well. CBC as a LTN location was not as popular as the other two spots but we are still only in our second year of offering this location; the other two spots have been there for over 10 years and have a lot more passers-by. I do appreciate the convenience of not having to go anywhere for the event, though!

BTWD was a decent turn out. We had around 30 people stop by to pick up their shirts. iSEE shot some footage for a promo video. I also talked with a few profs/pro staff folks who said this was their first bike commute, which was great. Hopefully they’ll stick with it! It also reminded me I need to brush up on my beginning commuter tips…

Our Grand Opening event was a success. We got to show off our space to quite a few people who’d never been by before and a handful of regulars that were duly impressed with the upgrade from our old space.

This week I’ve got a new student worker starting, so that will be a welcomed addition to the team. I’ll also pick up some bikes from TBP for rebuild as we’re flush out of decent Shop Builds. Demand has waned a bit or word is spreading that we’re out of bikes so fewer folks are coming by—either way, we’ll get a few more fixed up this week.

The numbers:

Visitors: TBD
Sales: $513.50
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $180
Memberships: 5 for $150
Tire/tubes: 6 for $19.50

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

iSEE produced a video to promote Bike to Work Day and Light the Night 2021 on Tuesday, September 14, 2021.

See the video here Bike Day 2021 on September 14 - Bike to Work Day and Light the Night!

Light the Night - free bike light giveaway event, is scheduled for September 14, 2021 from 4-7 pm

All, Steadily picking up around here. Had to pull out the folding stands on a couple occasions. Got a new hire in the works. Dates are set for Light The Night and Bike To Work Day for the fall. On Friday we had a volunteer working towards a membership, which was a welcome occurrence.

This week is business as usual.

The numbers:

Visitors: 20
Sales: $1022.10
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $500
Memberships: 5 for $150
Misc: $58.50

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Manager, Campus Bike Center

The Bike Month planning team met today, with representatives from several areas across Champaign County.

1) CU Safe Routes to School - planned for May 5 - Urban Planning student is an intern for CU-SRTS. They are also working on a safe routes to parks program.

2) Champaign County Bikes - Charlie Smyth is the chair of CCB this year.  They will have a new website in a few days.  They still need one more board member for this year.  They talked with Amelia Neptune at the League of American Bicyclists (LAB), and Charlie shared several points about the national outlook.

3) This group will plan virtual events for the spring, and meet again in February.

This year, Light the Night event was hosted at three locations: Alma Mater Plaza, Hallene Gateway, and Campus Bike Center (new location). Overall, the volunteers installed bicycle lights to nearly 450 bikes at these locations.

Leftover lights:

Red lights: 806

White lights: 779

The remaining lights are stored in Room 143 at F&S. They will be distributed among the four funding agencies.

On September 18th, the organizing team met to finalize the tasks before the event. We discussed the bike rack on bus demonstration, volunteer update, and some remaining tasks in the to-do list in the LTN google drive. We decided to meet once more before the meeting on Wednesday.

Confirmed 37 Volunteer  submissions, 6 police officers will be present for the duration of the event (2 at each location), and 2 Wellness Ambassadors at each locations to talk about the current situation and the need for precaution (they will also handout safety information packets including masks). Gabe confirmed that 2 representatives from Census 2020 could join each location as well.

Campus Rec and iSEE will provide some water bottles to be handed out to the volunteers who dont have one. DIA will provide 6 Gatorade containers for water refills for volunteers only. Stacey and Sarthak will fill them up with ice and water and deliver them to the three locations.

We discussed the table setup, how to organize the lines, and the assignments for the volunteers. All volunteers were sent the Safety Plan and Warning and Waiver Form on Wednesday, September 23, 2020. Sarthak and Stacey will drop off the lights and merchandize at each location by 3 pm.

All tables and chairs will be delivered by 3 pm. Sarthak and Stacey will arrange the tables at 3 pm at Hallene Gateway and Alma Mater location. Sarthak will print out numbers for each table/volunteer station, list of volunteers for each location, etc.

Information on Light the Night 2020 and Light the Night - Volunteer Opportunity were approved to be posted in e-Update, eWeek (for faculty and staff), GradLinks (for Graduate students), iNews (for Undergraduates), iSEE, ISSS Newsletters, and other newsletters.