Dragon Boat Festival!

Dragon Boat Festival is quickly approaching! If you are familiar with this event, then I'm sure you are as excited as we are to attend and race against other creative teams!

"'The Finger Lakes Dragon Boat Festival is one of the few dragon boat events, in this part of the US, that draws from all major cities in the Northeast Corridor that provides both a well produced event and the beautiful setting of Central New York. The festival in Ithaca is becoming a "must" on the race schedule of many teams.'"

-Ken Wong, Philadelphia Dragon Boat Association, U.S. National Champions

Read more about this festival and its origins here!

This year's festival will be taking place on July 14th-15th. Hope to see you there!

Way2Go Photo Contest!

Way2Go hosts Retiring from Driving Photo Contest!(Ithaca, NY; June 15, 2012)Tompkins County's transportation education initiative, Way2Go, needs a photo for its new Retiring from Driving informationial guide, and we want YOU to capture it! From June 14 to July 20, Way2Go is hosting a photo contest for the image that best reflects the theme for its latest brochure for retiring from driving. The photo contest is open to all.

The grand prize for the competition, in addition to being featured on the Way2Go website and brochure, is a gift certificate to the Finger Lakes Baker Company. Participants must submit their original image along with contact information to staff@Way2Go.org. Once the entry window closes, voting will take place on Way2Go's Facebook page from July 23rd-27. Way2Go urges you to participate, vote and take charge of your transportation!

Rain, Rain, Embrace the Rain (Gadgets)!

Feeling a bit unmotivated to bike where you planned today? Is the rain making things seem more difficult to accomplish? Here are some gadgets to help enjoy the rain and to avoid getting soaked by the downpour. These gadgets range from super simple to assemble to innovative and over the top! I hope you enjoy!

Uberhood Umbrella! It protects the biker from rain and sun without obstructing visibility. This hands-free gadget seems innovative yet, we'll let you decide on your own how you feel about it!

This next gadget is a retractable bike roof. This is another gadget that seems to offer a way to avoid sunburn and getting soaked by the rain.

The third gadget of the day is called the nubrella. Also hands free and protects your sight and relatively realistic!

Lastly I have two more innovative bike concepts to share with you! The Cycle Sol and Torkel Dohmer's ThisWay commuter bicycle have both caught my attention and I definitely am excited to see how far the concepts are taken to reality.

Cycle Sol: solar powered bicycle

Torkel Dohmers' ThisWay: the winning design of a competition that was themed around designing a 'transportation oriented' bicycle to try and attract people who don't ride at all, and have had zero prior interest in cycling.

Hope you've enjoyed this post and hopefully are inspired to start designing some ideas yourself! Have a beautiful day! Rain or Shine!

Kayaking to the Farmers' Market!

Now that summer has arrived, the weather is beautiful and there is an abundance of Ithaca must-sees to explore. One of the best experiences I've ever had in Ithaca, was an amalgamation of natural transportation and food!

 

If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend kayaking to the farmer's market! It is refreshing, eye opening, and quite innovative in terms of transportation. Bring a waterproof camera with you if you can to take pictures and document the adventures!

Leading Footsteps...

Ithaca's mayor, Svante Myrick, has taken admirable steps to commit to using alternative transportation by giving up his car and "prime downtown" parking spot. The original parking spot will now be used as a mini-park public space for friends.

15% of Ithaca residents walk to work. According to this article, 'Myrick hasn’t given up driving entirely; he belongs to the local Ithaca Carshare and told the Ithaca Times, "I love driving … I miss my car." But he’s also working to enhance Ithaca’s transportation options. On his campaign website, he wrote, "The answer to too many cars is not necessarily more parking spaces … We can change traffic patterns and parking behaviors by providing alternative methods of transportation which are more affordable, reliable and convenient."'

Although Mayor Myrick took a big step to changing his lifestyle, it doesn't take giving up your car entirely to help the community. Little everyday adjustments can be made to help promote awareness like taking advantage of public transportation, carsharing, carpooling and bikeriding instead of driving and having to look for a spot to pay and park. In the meantime, we hope to see you during Ithaca Festival this weekend! Thanks for staying in touch!

Parking Panda!

Every morning, before I go to work, I’m in the habit of checking my email, and every now and then, I stumble across an article that a colleague has sent me that inevitably causes me to become so engrossed in it that I’m late getting out the door.  This morning’s treasure was about a new service in Baltimore, MD and Washington D.C. called “Parking Panda.” 


Imagine that you are one of those lucky people who has off-street parking in your city.  Every morning, you pull out of your driveway to go pick up your carpool (hint hint) and your driveway sits.  Empty.  And alone.  All day.  “Wouldn’t it be great,” you think to yourself, “If I could rent out my driveway for a fraction of the cost of a parking permit or meter downtown?”


The Parking Panda must have been having the same crazy thought, because that’s exactly what’s he decided to do.  If you’re lucky enough to live or work in Baltimore or D.C. you can check out Parking Panda and see if someone near your workplace has a free driveway that you can use for the day for a fraction of the price of a parking permit downtown.  Or, you could always couple it with a bus pass, and still spend less than you would on parking. 

Now… if we could just get the Parking Panda to come to Ithaca…..


-Ray Weaver, Way2Go Program Educator

AWayWeGo!!

Welcome and thanks for joining us here on the brand-spankin' new Way2Go BLOG!

Way2Go, a program of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, is transforming our community’s culture of transportation among users, providers, and decision makers, so that everyone can meet their transportation needs with minimal environmental impact, to achieve a more sustainable and equitable future. Needless to say, we're not quite there yet! Despite our unusually robust and sometimes underutilized array of transportation services, options, and support programs here in Tompkins County, we’ve still got some perplexing problems to solve: unequal access to transportation, safety issues for pedestrians and cyclists, air pollution and its related health concerns, pain at the pump, and more.  

We plan to use this blog to address not only the problems we face, but also to provide interesting, meaningful, and educational content on other transportation-related issues and topics.  We're hoping to engage readers who are already knowledgeable and excited about transportation, as well as those who are seeking to learn more and widen their perspectives. Indeed, we here at Way2Go will be blogging about our many interestes and concerns, but we also want to know what YOU want us to do! Have a curiosity about test-driving electric cars? Ever wonder how to use the bike racks on buses? Want to know more about local transportation culture? Send us your thoughts and we'll oblige!

So, how often do you think about transportation and access to it? Chances are, if you have a car readily available, it’s not the first thing on your mind. On the other hand, folks who regularly take the TCAT bus, who are members of Ithaca Carshare, who utilize Zimride, or who walk and bike to get places, probably find themselves thinking and talking about transportation far more often. Either way, it's a fair bet that there is a wide range of perspectives among each of these groups. That said, the other major goal for the Way2Go blog is to create and foster a space where members of our community of all stripes can express their own points of view and dialogue with each other about all things related to transportation.  This means WE WANT YOU to create content too! Anything is fair game, as long as it's related (even loosely) to transportation of some sort. Share your photos, videos, stories, and experiences with us! Pose questions to the rest of the community! Spark a transportation revolution one blog at a time! If you're interested in contributing, please email us at staff@way2go.org.

As we like to say, “we’re on everyone’s side,” and we’re part of a global movement to "reinvent (how we use) the wheel."  We hope you’ll join us again soon!  

-The Way2Go Team