Your boss should go to this bike summit Friday
Tell your boss to spend tomorrow at Cambia Grove downtown learning all about how to help your workplace be more bike-friendly. Encouraging biking is a great way both to improve employee morale, attract more customers and cut down on your business's dependence on car parking. So it's a win-win-win.
Cascade Bicycle Club's 2nd Annual Seattle Employers Bike Summit is your chance to learn from the experiences of major employers in the city, learn best practices for encouraging biking and discuss how employers can help close the city's cycling gender gap.
Oh, and it's free.
Cascade Bicycle Club and Regence, in partnership with King County Metro, Seattle Department of Transportation and Commute Seattle, will kick off the 2nd annual Seattle Employers Bike Summit on Friday, June 10 at the Cambia Grove Conference Facility between 1 - 4 p.m.
The Summit provides business representatives the opportunity to learn about the rising importance of bike commuting and its effect on the bottom line.
Attendees will learn and share practical takeaways on timely topics such as:
- Small Businesses Supporting other Small Businesses
- Integrating Bikes with other Transit Options
- Private Bike Parking Inventory and Survey
- Encouraging More Women to Bike
The keynote speaker is local business leader and bike commuter Lisa Brandenburg, President of Seattle Children's Hospital. Attendees will hear how Seattle Children's Hospital has made the connection between healthy communities and business strategy, resulting in an award winning commute program with significant results. Seattle Children's Hospital has also achieved top ratings as a Bike Friendly Business.
Summit workshops include:
- Getting There by Bike and Transit: With new local transit services, more commuters are combining biking and transit. Whether taking a bike aboard or storing it in a locker, transit-bike commuters can travel farther, get past uncomfortable spots, skip the hunt for car parking and build in exercise. Learn how to support and grow your share of bike commuters with this option. Get tips from Commute Seattle, Sound Transit, King County Metro and Pronto Bikeshare, and hear from one commuter how her train commute (and her life) changed for the better when she added biking.
- Building Bike Friendly Business Networks: Do you offer visitor bike parking for customers? Offer shower and locker facilities for employees? Provide ORCA Choice or ORCA Business Passport? Then you may qualify for Bike Friendly Business status! Learn how you can be recognized as an official Bike Friendly Business and join a wide network of peers across the city. Learn the benefits of being a Bike Friendly Business from the firsthand experience of employers such as Bryan Miller from Naked City Brewery.
- Bike Parking: Best Practices and Current Options: With rapidly growing public and private improvements in bike facilities, bike commuting is becoming a real option for people of all ages and abilities. Learn how private employers such as Amazon have worked with the city to build out bike infrastructure and amenities that benefit employees, customers and the greater Seattle community.
- Encouraging More Women to Bike: In 2015, only 31 percent of bicycle commuters in Seattle were female. The gender gap in bicycling is seen in nearly every city in the U.S. and is often attributed to a number of barriers that make bicycling to work more challenging for women. In this panel you'll hear about commuting experiences from four women who bike. We'll also hear what employers can do to support women bike commuters, and participants will walk away with resources and actionable ideas to encourage biking to work.For more information on the Seattle Employers Bike Summit, visit https://www.cascade.org/employerbikesummit.