By Brenden Nickels
Brenden Nickels is an office assistant at Kraus-Anderson’s Minneapolis office.
In the fall of 2017, I wrote an article entitled “There’s Lots of Ways to Arrive, Don’t Drive,” where I promote “World Car Free Day” by writing about everything one can use to travel besides driving your car. These include taking the bus or train, carpooling, walking, and riding a bicycle. However, with 66% of working people in America now working from home ever since the coronavirus arrived, this, like everything else, has experienced a major change.
For instance, here at Kraus-Anderson, we had some employees take transit to and from work, the writer of this article included, but with the pandemic, we’re all now using our cars for everything. “It’s interesting how the pandemic has shifted my ability to get around by bike, walking, or public transportation,” said KA Project Coordinator Brendan Ward. “For a while, I was scared to ride the bus because of COVID-19, but now I just don’t need to. I hope that once the city opens back up again I can be less dependent on my car again. I loved taking the bus and walking everywhere.”
How you can celebrate World Car Free Day
“World Car Free Day” will continue to be celebrated by the City of Minneapolis on September 22nd, as usual. This time, they will still focus on all the other transportation methods that you can use when you have to run an errand or any other necessary trip somewhere. For instance, Metro Transit’s buses and trains continue to run. You will need to have a mask on, of course, and there is a 10-person limit for a regular bus (15-person for a larger bus) to enforce social distancing.
Another new mode of transportation that Move Minneapolis (the city’s sustainable transportation board) is promoting is Nice Ride. Nice Ride is where you use an app on your phone to rent a bicycle or a scooter to ride from one place to the other. A new option that Nice Ride has is electric bikes (or e-bikes), which are just like regular bicycles, except they have an electric motor you can also use to move instead of just pedaling. In Minnesota, e-bikes have to have operational petals and cannot go faster than 20 mph. You have to be 15 to ride one, and unlike cars, don’t have to be licensed to use them.
Move Minneapolis has a website all about World Car-Free Day. There, you can register to take a survey about your car-free experience and get the chance to win a Pedego electric bike. Also, you can sign up to attend webinars related to living a car-free life during the pandemic.
You can also find out more about the different types of alternative transportation at Meet Minneapolis’s website at www.moveminneapolis.org. So, on September 22nd, see if you can try out all the other ways to get from one place to the other besides your car. The advantages haven’t changed: you’re still saving money that you would’ve spent on parking and gas, and you’re still helping out the environment by cutting down on fuel costs. Just remember to put on a mask first and keep away from others, of course.
