FAQ

For Bike to Work:

A Team Leader is someone in the workplace that motivates co-workers to participate in Bike to Work Week. As the Team Leader, you can add people to your team in the registration system, or people can register and join your team. Click here: for more information about what a Team Leader does.

For Bike to School:

A school can have multiple teams with multiple Team Leaders. We encourage schools to create classroom teams to make it easier to track participation, and assign 1 Team Leader to register that team and report the total trips biked at the end of Bike to School Week. You can put up this participation tracker in your classroom for students to track the days that they bike: https://www.biketowork.ca/bike-to-school/poster.

There are many ways in which you can motivate teammates to participate. Below is a list of suggestions:

• Login to your BTWW Dashboard
• Click "Communication" and email possible teammates to see if they want to join your team
• Contact the Coordinator in your community and get posters to hang in your workplace
• Download Posters and Participation Trackers to put in your lunch rooms and common staff areas:
  • Download Bike to Work resources here: https://www.biketowork.ca/bike-work-resources
  • Download Bike to School resources here: https://www.biketowork.ca/bike-to-school/poster
• Talk to your employer about organizing prizes for workplace competitions
• Hold an information session at lunch to RALLY your team (or try to sign people up to join your team)
• Hold a route planning session to teach first time commuter cyclists how to safely plan their routes
• Encourage teammates to familiarize themselves with safe cycling skills
• Encourage teammates to log their kilometres cycled in their BTWW Dashboard to see how many calories they burned and how many kilograms of greenhouse gases they have saved
• Celebrate your team's successes with a party or special breakfast or lunch
• More ideas can be found here:
  • How to get your school involved: https://www.biketowork.ca/get-your-school-involved
  • How to get your workplace involved: https://www.biketowork.ca/get-your-workplace-involved

ABSOLUTELY!

We encourage people to participate if they choose to use their bicycle for everyday transportation instead of a motor vehicle. Please log all trips that you use your bicycle for instead of a motor vehicle.

GoByBike BC Society is funded from the Province of BC to collect trips that participants use a bicycle for only.

We encourage all forms of active transportation; however, we ask that you only log bicycle commutes in our registration system.

• If you have logged kilometers during the Bike to Work & School Week event dates, the trips will show in the Trip Log
• Note: if you log trips outside of Bike to Work & Week dates, click "All Time" to see all trips logged outside of event dates

For Bike to Work:

• Login to your Dashboard
• Click “Log a Trip”
• Select to log a trip for one person at a time, or select to log for the entire team, or partially entire team
• Input total kilometers
  • For entire team or partial team, select to log a total number of kilometers for everyone altogether, or on a per rider basis
• If you have logged kilometers during the Bike to Work Week event dates, the trips will show in the Trip Log below
• Note: if you log trips outside of Bike to Work Week dates, click "All Time" to see all trips logged outside of event dates

For Bike to School:

• Simply keep track of your team's trips biked, download this participation tracker to help keep track of trips biked per day: www.biketowork.ca/bike-to-school/poster
• Login to your Dashboard
• Click “Log a Trip”
• Enter the total trips biked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
• Enter the total number of students on your team
• The system will auto-calculate total kilometers based on a provincial average that students live ~2.1 kilometers from their schools. The auto-calculation will be (Trips per Day) x (2.1km) x (2 for both ways)
  • NOTE: if you kept track of kilometers biked, you have the option to override this auto-calculation
• Contact your local Bike to School Coordinator to find out if there are local prizes available for your school

• Login to your Dashboard
• Click “Team Profile”
• Click the text that says “Change Team Name”
• Change your team name

Encouraging physical activity as a lifestyle

The average cycle commuter travels 20-30 minutes one-way on their commute, easily meeting Health Canada’s recommendation of one hour of physical activity each day. The most important influencing factors for people to Bike to Work are:

• fun; and
• health & wellness

Surprisingly, people are less convinced by these benefits:

• saving money,
• using time efficiently; and
• helping to protect the environment.

For this reason, Bike to Work Week focuses on and accentuates the fun and health benefits of cycling.

Greater sense of community connectedness

People get excited about Bike to Work & School Week. In the workplace it is a great opportunity for colleagues to develop camaraderie in encouraging one another to fit activity into their day. The celebration stations provide a festive atmosphere that visibly demonstrate the fun of cycling to both cyclists and motorists.

"Calories Burned" is calculated based on a very generic formula. Since you do not have to enter your weight when you register, and your cycling speed when you log a trip, GoByBike BC took an average weight of males and females in the BC Population and calculated calories burned based on an average speed. The formula used is 30 calories burned per kilometre cycled.

Communities are provided with the essential materials required to organize a successful Bike to Work & School Week event in their community, most efficiently.  These include:

• camera-ready, customizable templates for posters, t-shirts, forms and background materials for team leaders
• use of a licensed, established set of logos
• potential for seed funding
• expertise, training, and support from GoByBike BC
• Web pages specific to your community
• real time registration and results for the community and in comparison with other areas

Click here to see some Bike to School resources: https://www.biketowork.ca/bike-to-school/poster

Click here to see some Bike to Work resources: https://www.biketowork.ca/bike-work-resources

These resources can be customized for your community.

If you have additional questions or would like additional information, contact the Provincial Program Manager, Terri-Lynn Gifford, at terri-lynn@biketowork.ca.