Roll, Stroll or Ride the Bus on Friday

By Matt Poms Thursday, May 20, 2010

The City of Williamsburg is encouraging commuters to take to the streets sans cars Friday, hosting its third annual Roll or Stroll to Work Day. Commuters are urged to ride their bicycles or walk to work that morning, and the city is supporting the effort by manning five “energizing stations” throughout the area from 7 to 9:30 a.m.

“The whole event is set up to promote biking and walking as an alternate way to get to work,” City Planning Director Reed Nester said. “We’re doing this event every year to provide an incentive in the hopes that, once you try riding your bike to work, you’ll find it’s an easy thing to do. Hopefully every year we’ll pick up some people that have tried it and like it and start occasionally riding their bike to work instead of driving.”

Other forms of green transportation, such as carpooling are also encouraged. Williamsburg Area Transit is providing vouchers for free bus trips. Get the vouchers, and more information about Friday's sponsors, by clicking here.

The “energizing stations” will be located at High Street, the Williamsburg-James City County Courthouse, Jamestown Road at the Cedars B&B, the corner of York and Page Streets, and Merchants Square at College Corner. Bottled water and granola bars will be provided to commuters, while participants can register for prizes and gift certificates donated by local businesses.

Bikes Unlimited is providing a free “Fix-a-Flat” service, for those who run into mechanical trouble.

Nester, who lives in Skipwith Farms and works at the Stryker Building, biked his three-mile commute to work 110 times last year.

“I consider it a pretty ideal commute; I can ride through some pretty neighborhoods and avoid some traffic,” he said. “It starts your day out right.”

The planning director said that the city and both James City and York counties had made vast improvements to their infrastructure in the last 20 years, and that events such as Roll or Stroll to Work Day were key in raising awareness of alternative forms of commute.

“The more people you see out biking, the more incentive you have to make improvements,” he said. “We started to work on bicycle facilities in 1992, and if you look at the greater Williamsburg area since then, we have close to 50 miles of bicycle facilities.”

Nester cited the creation of the Regional Bikeway — which encompasses all three jurisdictions — and smart city planning as improving the environment for bicyclists.

“Having this interconnected system of streets and sidewalks really empowers people to design their own routes on streets that are more bicycle friendly,” he said. “I can wind my way through various neighborhoods, so I can do my commute with very little time spent on major traffic roads.”

While biking is an environmentally efficient mode of transportation, commuting by bicycle provides a host of other benefits as well.

“It’s good exercise. You feel good about getting from place to place under your own power,” Nester said. “It’s a good stress reliever, too.”