BFB 4 E’s: Engineering

Our Bicycle Friendly Business, Community and University programs are all guided by what we call the 4 E’s.

• Education
• Encouragement
• Engineering
• Evaluation and Planning

These principles guide how each entity is evaluated and eventually awarded an honor. The latest 161 Bicycle Friendly Businesses, which we announced just last week, excelled in many of these areas. Because there were so many great examples and innovative ideas in each application, we decided to share! Today’s post includes some of the best Engineering initiatives we learned about in this latest round of applications. Stay tuned this week for posts on the rest of the E’s!

Emma, Inc.

Nashville, TN

Our most significant investment for biking has been selecting our physical location to better meet the needs of cyclist commuters across the entire city of Nashville. The location of your business has perhaps the largest single impact on whether your employees can ride their bikes to work or not, and we’ve made a conscious decision to have accessible space for our bike commuters.

Watershed Management Group

Tucson, AZ

We have worked with the City to create implement our Green Street program, which requires that all new streets and major street repairs utilize Green Infrastructure in street side basins. One of the many benefits of these street side basins is that the trees in the basins provide shade for cyclists; a much sought after commodity in the desert summer. Biking in the direct sun for an extended period of time can be dangerous here in the Desert Southwest, so we are working towards creating bike boulevards and shady corridors to facilitate more comfortable bike commuting during some of the hotter months.

Thorley Industries LLC

Pittsburgh, PA

For us, the commitment to stay in the downtown area with our move to the new building has been the largest investment. The company could have gone with less expensive options outside of the city, but we wanted to keep a focus on being part of our city community and providing all employees full options when commuting. Additionally, we have invested in our starting fleet of company bicycles. Since we have a warehouse located a mile away from our main building, we store 2 bikes at our main location and 2 bikes there so that employees can quickly go between buildings for meetings without the need to worry about paying for parking or dealing with traffic.

Viridian

Fayetteville, AR

Our indoor bike parking has been incorporated into the aesthetics of our office interior space. A vertical four-bike parking rack made of recycled wood serves as a prominent fixture in our front office.

Destinationa Sales & Marketing Group

Arlington, VA

Our company doubled the available bike parking by investing in wall mounted racks in our secure storage room. .. Our increased secure bike parking helped immensely by allowing people to ride to work without lugging a heavy U lock – they can simply hang their bikes in our secure room and not need to worry about security.