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The League of American Bicyclists announced 45 new Bicycle Friendly Business award winners last Thursday, September 24, including two platinum winners Bicycle Sport Shop of Austin, Texas and Quality Bicycle Products of Bloomington, Minn., at the Industry Leadership Breakfast during Interbike in Las Vegas, Nev. This was the third time BFB winners have been announced since the program’s inception in 2008 when the League announced the first 13 designees. “We are delighted so many businesses are using the BFB road map to encourage and enable their employees to ride – everyone from two-person neighborhood businesses to major corporations are getting on board,” stated League President Andy Clarke.

BFB businesses make bicycle friendliness a core element in the workplace and use innovative tools to promote bicycling as an easy and fun option for transportation and recreation. “There are a lot of very simple, effective and creative ways that companies are finding to get people back on their bikes, and we recognize those efforts with our BFB awards,” said Clarke. The League encourages businesses to inspire their employees to bike to work by incorporating the fundamentals of the BFB program. “Companies across the country are recognizing that getting their employees moving – either to or from work, in course of work, or even in their own time – is good for business.”

The BFB program recognizes socially responsible businesses that promote healthy, happy, and green workplaces and provides a road map to become even more bicycle-friendly in the years to come. Platinum-level Bicycle Sport Shop has noticed several benefits from supporting a bicycle friendly workplace, including improved employee health and fewer hours missed due to illness; reduced parking costs; improved lifestyle for employees; and improved morale for all staff. “We are providing life lessons for our employees, which help them improve their health and teach them how important it is to stay healthy,” said Leslie Luciano, Bicycle Sports Shop Advocacy Coordinator. Platinum-level Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) has also noticed several benefits of joining the BFB program – including increased bike commuting. QBP counts bicycle commuting towards the exercise criteria of the company’s health care plan, and in 2008, 346 different employees combined to register 27,906 one-way trips for more than 327,000 total miles.

BFB winners provide amenities such as secure bike parking and shower facilities and motivations such as incentives to commute by bike, company bike rides and clubs, and bike to Work Week promotions. When bicycling is infused in a company’s culture, great things happen: reduced health care costs; more productive employees; improved worker and customer satisfaction; smaller carbon footprint; and increased corporate social responsibility. “Bicycling is a readily accessible and practical form of physical activity that has the added benefits of reducing congestion and the need for parking, reducing the carbon footprint of a business, increasing productivity, and raising morale,” said Clarke. “It’s also great fun.”

Applying as a BFB is easy and free. Applicants receive technical assistance from the League staff as well as tools to evaluate and assess their bicycle friendliness through the application process. The BFB application is available online at www.bicyclefriendlybusiness.org. Click here to see our fall 2009 winners. Click here to see a complete list of 2008 and 2009 winners.

The Bicycle Friendly Community and Bicycle Friendly Business programs are generously supported by program partners Bikes Belong and Trek Bicycle’s One World, Two Wheels Campaign.

~Meghan Cahill, Director of Communications

“On your right!” This is what popped into my head this morning as I glided past the rows of morning car commuters crawling along the George Washington Parkway heading into DC. The Mount Vernon Trail comes just close enough to the parkway in a few spots to allow eye contact between bicyclists and drivers, and for every endorphin-fueled smile I spot on the trail, there’s a gas-fueled grimace behind the wheel to remind me why I ride. That said, my observations here should not be taken as basking in self-righteous bliss. Of course, it does feel good to blow by the lineup of cars with my 1987 Schwinn Voyageur powered by a few cups of coffee (and a few extra pounds of stored energy, to be honest), but that isn’t my point. I enjoy seeing people’s faces–whether grinning or not–instead of tons of steel streaking by. I like to think that these interactions and glimpses of the transportation choices we make are good for all of us to see–especially as the weight of these choices becomes more apparent from the air we breathe to the sting of rising gas prices.

As I continued my commute, I thought about that phrase again, “On your right.” In many ways, my transportation choice could be seen as a conservative one. I chose to conserve fossil fuels to be a good steward of our shared natural resources, and my fellow bike commuters and I were making a patriotic decision not to drive. But our concern for the environment is not owned by those of either side of the political spectrum. Bicycling is bigger than that; a real solution to a number of challenges we face as a nation. We should be shifting trips to the bike as much as possible, especially with the knowledge that 40% of trips are two miles or less. Advocating for bicycling, is fiscally conservative, pro-business, pro-family, and embraces personal responsibility for both personal and environmental health. So, take this as a call to take a friend, colleague, or elected official for a bike ride. Help someone find a good route to work and share the good feeling of true energy independence.