on wednesday, i got to do a little bit of outreach with bruce from fairfax advocates for better bicycling.  we headed out to george mason university and talked with students, faculty and staff about commuting on bikes.

the most common questions we got concerned safe routes for riding.  we gave away a lot of maps and highlighted preferred routes.  most people had bikes and wanted to ride, they just were not sure what the safest way to go was.  we plotted routes from as far away as reston, alexandria, seven corners, and fair oaks with a lot of people also coming from the burke/wakefield area.  while these distances aren't notable, we're not talking about hard core cyclists here, we're talking about recreational riders on hybrids who want to give it a shot.  and it looks promising.

people had a variety of other concerns as well.  are there enough bike racks?  where can i shower once i get to campus?  are the bike racks safe and will my bike get stolen?  I'm now more convinced that ever that what is needed is an ambassador program: volunteers who will go to people's houses in the morning, meet up with them and accompany them to where they need to go.  either that or a bike to work day type approach where you designate a few satellites away from campus and then gather a few people and ride in together as a group.  people have bikes and they have a desire to ride them.  what they seem to lack is a knowledge of safe routes and the confidence to just try it out.

another benefit of this event was that we got a chance to talk to some of the facility gurus from gmu.  they are currently planning on putting in more bike racks.  we also discussed with them the idea of adding bike routes to the current cue bus map for the city of fairfax and putting out a guide to commuting by bike or just simply a GMU bike route map for people who were interested.  they were more receptive than I thought they would be which is a positive sign as well.

- - - posted by scott