Conventions Bike-Sharing Effort Exceeds Expectations

When Bikes Belong teamed with Humana to bring 1,000 bikes to the Democratic and Republican national conventions, we had two goals:

1. To show convention delegates, media, volunteers, and residents the convenience of bicycling for short trips.
2. To highlight bicycling on a national stage and generate positive media coverage to inspire more people to ride.

On both fronts, the Freewheelin bike sharing effort was tremendously successful. During eight days of Freewheelin at the two conventions, people from all 50 states and 37 countries:

* Took 7,523 rides
* Pedaled 41,724 miles
* Burned 1,293,429 calories
* Reduced their carbon footprint by 14.6 metric tons
* Reported no accidents or injuries

Freewheelin was a mainstream media event, with stories appearing on CNN, ABC World News Tonight, and the CBS Evening News, in major newspapers such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Daily News, as well as in Time and Newsweek. So far we've tallied:

* 2,304 clips in print, on television and radio, and online
* Nearly 180 million media impressions
* An equivalent of $10 million in advertising

These widespread and positive stories helped promote bicycling as easy, convenient, healthy, safe, and fun to a larger and wider audience than we've reached before.

To see some of the coverage, visit our website.

We thank Humana and all of the Bikes Belong member companies who generously supported this unprecedented project.

<a href="http://www.bikesbelong.org/node/1235673">http://www.bikesbelong.org/node/1235673</a>;