Not much sustainable transport

I am in the sustainable transport group of this valley’s sustainability initiative. We are just a bunch of volunteers with full-time commitments, and one professional facilitator. We try to make a difference with the limited facilities we have.

One of the ideas we had was do a “cycle to work" day. There already are national and/or international ones; if you google when they are, you get the impression there are several. But we thought we would encourage some people from our area who normally commute to the Bangor area by car, to try it by bike. The idea would be that we, from the sustainability transport group, get together at a central place in the morning, and would ride to Bangor/Menai Bridge with the people who would show up. There might be some people who would give it a go that way. And we may be capable of sorting out coffee and cake on the other side. There is a small budget for these things! It might draw people in who need a little bit of encouragement, but not much. And we didn't have to stick to an official cycle to work day. We also thought that the winter was probably not the time.

We agreed on a day in April. We figured we needed to advertise it a bit, to get people interested. I have my project Strava; I make a concerted effort every day to post a pretty picture of my deniably beautiful commute on the platform. If I'm doing that anyway, we might as well publish this far and wide. People who follow me on Strava are already on board with cycling to work! Or at least the possibility thereof.

We don't need to restrict ourselves to pictures, of course; additional useful information could be maps of how I get to work, and information such as how much CO2 emissions you save if you leave the car at home, and how much fuel money you don't have to spend. I asked Chris, the facilitator, to either think of places where he could put all that, so I could send it to him, or for him to give me access to these places so I could put it there myself. He is paid by Gwyrddni, sustainability organisation, which has other close ties with Partneriaeth Ogwen. Surely these organisations have pages on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or any of these places? If I could post on these I would reach a much more suitable audience.

It is already March and I haven't heard anything from Chris! In spite of repeated reminders. Time is ticking. I am starting to wonder a bit if this will happen. If we don't advertise it, no one will come. And then my fellow cyclist Pete and I would just stand there alone, and then just bike to work as we always do. That wouldn't make much of a change. I hope something will start happening soon!

Below some pictures from my Project Strava: