Getting the Faculty to Start Cycling

The hardest thing about cycling is the first step—beginning to ride for the first time since childhood. At Bike-Temple we’re all about getting people who live in the city to start riding their bikes, at least as a solution to the work/school commute.

It isn’t the hardest thing to convince students to start biking in the city; it’s fun, it gets you in shape, and it’s quicker than most forms of public transportation.

The faculty of Temple is the hardest group to convince to start biking. I spent a lunch hour afternoon giving info on urban cycling and planting the seed to what would hopefully make some faculty start riding bikes, if not for the commute then maybe just to pedal around for fun.

Overall I can say that the faculty presentation was a success. There were some intriguing questions about safe riding in the city Although the burning question still remains—how do we get faculty, or the 30-40+ crowd, to start riding bikes again rather than driving everywhere? We know your bones are starting to get old, but is it really so hard to start a little cycling for any reason?

Do we have to give incentives of some kind for the older crowd to start riding? One glass-half-full way of thinking about this is that more and more our generation (current undergraduates) is biking as a part of their lifestyle, and the number is only predicted to rise. Just think—in thirty years we could see the cities flooded with gray-haired middle-aged cyclists—now that’s one positive side of the future of urban cycling.

Max Wojcik - April 22, 2011