Share the Road Challenge Kicks Off Bike to Work Week

Bikes versus machines.  A friendly competition, ‘Share the Road Challenge‘ kicked off this year’s annual Bike to Work Week (May 11th through 15th), hosted by the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition (VACC).

Nine groups of competitors, each consisting of one commuter by bike and one by car, raced from different parts of the city of Vancouver to see who could get downtown faster during morning rush hour.  The finish line was the downtown Vancouver Public Library.

According to VACC, “the final times were all close, within 10 minutes of each other, but the costs associated with their commutes were not”:  The drivers, on average, spent $4.94 (parking, gas, and other costs) and emitted 1.9 Kg of GHG while the cyclists spent $0 with zero emissions and burned 205 calories.

So, which mode of transportation was faster?  The Share the Road Challenge found cyclists faster than drivers in 7 out 9 races.

Check out a podcast for preliminary coverage of the event by Vancouver 24 Hours:

Watch VACC’s full video (courtesy of Diana Wilson), featuring one race starting from North Vancouver:

Share the Road Challenge from Diana Wilson on Vimeo.

Related articles

• Vancouver plans for even more bike lanes (globaltvbc.com)
• Calgary, Edmonton to get Google bike routes (cbc.ca)
• Kelowna faces hard choices on bike paths (theglobeandmail.com)
• Resistance mounts over Vancouver bike lanes (thestar.com)
• Vancouver to host 2012 Velo-City cycling conference (globaltvbc.com)