Fun and safety in numbers: Bikepool San Jose

[facebook][retweet]You’ve heard of car pools and van pools. Maybe the parents reading this have even heard of walking school buses. But what about bikepool?With the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s support, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition is establishing a program we’re excited about: Bikepool SJ. Bikepool SJ targets what we fondly refer to as the 60 percent—those among us who have not yet realized how wonderful biking is but are open to it, with reservations.Those reservations often hinge on safety concerns as well as a lack of knowledge of good routes. Bikepool is a way of surmounting those barriers by organizing pools of riders to a common location.Building on experiences with bikepool (such as the current San Jose Biketrain and Bikepool SCT) we will select San Jose employers with whom to pilot the project and we need your help to find good partners. The types of companies we’re looking for are those that have staff capacity to champion the program internally to potential riders, the 60 percent. This could be the human resources department where there is strong support for health and wellness programs or the transportation and facilities staff. We also prefer companies where there is an existing nucleus of bicycle riders to build off of. We will establish origination points and routes based on employee surveys and we’ll work with trained ride leaders who can fix a flat on the road, teach how to fix a flat on the road and make sure riders have fun in the process.We’re looking for San Jose companies that would be eager to participate in this pilot. We’re also looking for people who would make good ride leaders. If you think your company would be a good fit or if you or someone you know would like to become a bike pool ride leader, contact Ernesto Lizaola at Ernesto@bikesiliconvalley.orgWe’ll keep you posted on the progress of bike pool and we hope you’ll come ride Bikepool SJ.Follow Shiloh Ballard on Twitter @shilohballard.