Alison Higgins, Key West Sustainability Coordinator, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the green commute challenge.
This is technically the ninth annual green commute challenge from March 24 through 30.
Higgins explained, “We put the annual in quotes because we took about three years off with COVID, but we’re finally up and moving. So we’ve done this for nine years, not in a row, but it is a friendly competition amongst our largest employers, because if I can get an email to their HR and they can send it out to everybody, it can have the biggest bang for the buck in greenhouse gasses, active people and all those things.”
March is transportation month.
Higgins said, “I am a very competitive person, and so things like this will get me motivated more than I know it’s good for me and all those other things, but it’s the competition that actually gets me moving. One lady started biking to work and she wasn’t close. She was like, five, six, seven-ish miles, or something like that. Not only she did she do it for that whole week, she kept doing it. Within the year, she biked the entire length of the Keys. She went from her house and came down and crashed on our pull out bed. So it’s kind of cool the things that this can do once you once you try something.”
The competition begins March 24 and ends on March 30.
Higgins said, “People can log their trips up to one day later. So we’re letting people be able to log them on the following Monday, which is April Fool’s Day. But that’s not an April Fool’s joke. So you log on, there’s a platform provided by South Florida Commuter Services. It’s a node that’s funded by the Florida Department of Transportation to help with commuter things and this platform not only gives you a way to report for challenges, but if you’re actually traveling greenly, and a car pool counts, everything but traveling just by yourself in a car counts, more than three days a week, you are qualified for a free ride home three times a year. So it’s fantastic because a lot of people are like I don’t want to bicycle, because what if my kid gets sick and then I don’t have my car, or I need to do some emergency. You can call them, and they basically pay for an Uber, so you can get back, get your car and do whatever you need to do, which is fantastic. For this week, if you like, bike back home for lunch and back, that doesn’t count, but it’s two trips a day, and you pick which mode, and each mode gets you different points. Carpooling with like one other person isn’t as good as carpooling with three other people. A bike is better than an E bike is better than a scooter, so that sort of thing. So when you log in which way you traveled, or choose which way you want to travel, the human powered option is always the greenest. So it gets you the most points. So that could be walking. It could be putting on your roller skates as well.”
The employers are still getting lined up.
Higgins said, “Thus far, we have the Department of Health, we have the Coast Guard, we have the Village of Islamorada, we have the Pat Croce restaurants. We’ve got the school district, and we’re still working on First State Bank has been part of it, the College of the Florida Keys, Mosquito Control, Keys Energy, the giant hotels group, Home Depot, so we are still kind of working on them, to get them signed up. The competition, there will be a leader board so as people log in their points, different groups will surge higher and lower than others. But we’ll also have ultimate number of points per person. So they’ll also be a little leader board for people.”
For the team that wins, there’s a plaque that’s been going around for nine years.
Higgins said, “There will also be prizes for the top point getter, or the person that biked every single day or the person that walked every single day. So we’re going to be tracking that as well. But you don’t have to just work for those major employers, you can also just be on the board on your own. So to sign up, the easiest way, I can tell you right now, we will have stuff on our Facebook and stuff on the city’s website, but it’s not ready yet, but we made a short link. It’s bit.ly/keyschallenge. That’ll take you right to our challenge page. You can register yourself. You can start to figure out how the thing works. The challenge isn’t live yet, because it starts in 10 days still, but you can see where it is, figure out how to do it and you can start just practicing, logging in daily trips outside of the challenge.”
It’s a great way to encourage green travel.
Higgins said, “One of, one of my favorites is a couple years back there was a great picture of a handful of folks for the city of Key West who live up the Keys, and so they took a picture of there was like four or five of them all on the same Lower Keys shuttle bus. So they took a group picture, and there’s like three directors there. They were all going, going for it. Back in the day, when Jim Scholl was our city manager, he biked in from Cudjoe. He had to start early, especially, and it was especially dark this time of the year, but he was on it. So we got a good picture of him on his bicycle with his helmet on, you got to be safe. It is pretty cool. We had one guy who rode a skateboard back and forth. We did have somebody who did roller skates. One of the cool things, the aqueduct authority had their own internal prize, and whoever got the most points got a free day off. So that really upped the participation, which was great.”
For more information, click here: bit.ly/keyschallenge