Ever not been able to lock up your bike safely to a bike rack? Imagine in our day and age a large retailer in the US that touts their progressive environmental and sustainability policies but has no bike racks for employees or customers.
I talked to the store manager after I spent a few minutes looking for a bike rack at the store. Finding nothing, I was finally forced to lock up to a pole in a snow bank. On the store manager’s advice, I wrote and sent a report to the retail chain’s corporate office explaining that the store was on a city bicycle route and that bicyclists that were also consumers used the route daily.
I also mentioned health benefits for employees and customers alike from riding as well as the fact that bicycles were a growing form of fun, clean active transportation with zero harmful emissions.
In the end I challenged them to do the right thing not only for their employees and customers but also for the environment. I learned last night that investigators forwarded my report to the store’s planning committee where it still remains after approximately three months.
This is how change happens, i.e., from the bottom up and we all have a role to play to improve riding for transportation. I like our chances of getting the bike racks although it will take some more time and of course work.
I know it’s not fair to compare the US to Holland. But it shows how little so many here value the bicycle as a form of transportation and how unenlightened some companies continue to be in our age of climate change.