The Smart Commute Week Challenge
Andy Olds is Oneupweb’s PPC Project Manager and walks, bikes or skis to work regularly. He was Oneupweb’s captain for Smart Commute Week. Tessa Lighty is Oneupweb’s Social Media Coordinator and helped Andy rally the team for the week.
As part of an annual celebration of cycling, walking, skateboarding, swimming, paddling, skipping, taking the bus, carpooling – anything other than getting to work in a single occupancy vehicle – Oneupweb employees recently participated in the Smart Commute Week Challenge. It’s an event organized by TART Trails as part of Smart Commute Week. Incentives included free daily breakfasts, evening gatherings, and discounts at participating businesses. To cap it all on Friday morning, Oryana hosted a street party and TART Trails handed out prizes and recognition to the top performing teams.
A Multi-Modal Oneupweb
For the Smart Commute Week Challenge, 19 Oneupwebbers replaced their usual mode of transportation for the rich experience of carpooling or commuting in the fresh air for the week – let’s see if they noticed a difference:
“Since Smart Commute Week, I’ve made it my mission to walk to work as much as humanly possible. It’s almost 4 miles and takes me an hour but it’s worth it.” – Nicole Emenhiser
“This was the first year I didn’t need my car for work and could participate in Smart Commute Week. It gave me a huge boost of confidence (yes, I can ride my bike to work!) and it’s my goal moving forward to bike once per week.” – Tessa Lighty
“It inspired me to buy better shoes. (I got blisters [walking around] Seattle.) But otherwise, I think it was pretty inspiring to see how far people commuted, and it encouraged me to bike on trails more.” – Stephanie Miller
Show Me the Money!
Oneupweb had 19 people commit to smart commute with an average commute distance of 10 miles a day. That is 190 miles per day that Oneupweb employees committed to commuting via alternative travel methods. For a work week, that equals 950 miles. With a vehicle fleet average of 20 miles per gallon, that is 47 gallons of fuel saved per week (just over a barrel of oil). How much money was saved? We estimate that our team saved about $133 dollars at $2.80 per gallon. That is more than $300 per person, per year if you smart commute all year round!
Your Mileage May Vary
We were not in the top three teams this year in the Smart Commute Week Challenge. Yet we truly appreciate the leadership of TART Trails in organizing Smart Commute Week and we are thankful to live in an area where multimodal transportation options are available. In addition, we admire the workplaces that had a 100% smart commute rate.
Want to work at a place that offers employees opportunities to participate in awesome community events? Check out our current job listings.
