Just ten more days left in the Utah Clear the Air Challenge. The results thus far have been really disappointing, to put it bluntly. We are far behind last year in participation levels and even further behind the slightly higher goals set for this year. Please sign up and participate! It's events like this that bring us together as a community to collectively reimagine our lives in this pollution-prone valley and support each other in making gradual but meaningful changes. We need to do this. Air pollution is one of the great moral challenges of our times, one on which each of us will eventually be judged by future generations and (I believe) by God. We need to be able to tell our children and grandchildren that we accepted some inconvenience and a little extra work in order to live in a way that helped preserved our world and their health.I've been trying to do well at this, but I've been far from perfect, and there is no way I should currently be in the top 100. But low participation this year has somehow put me there.
Knock me out of there! I'm not worthy!
You can sign up any time in July, and any measures you've taken in July to cut your car pollution you can retroactively claim as part of your tally. Those measures include carpooling (for anyone in the car except the driver), riding public transit, biking, walking, telecommuting, trip chaining (doing multiple errands by car without returning home between errands), and eliminating trips altogether (for example, making the effort to bring a lunch with you to work if you normally drive to a restaurant for lunch). The basic guidelines and the rules for logging your efforts are here. If you've made a particular eligible trip more than one day you can click on multiple days on the calendar and enter it just once. They also have a smartphone app that helps log new trips, though I don't have a smartphone, so I can't say how well that works.
Also, there are fabulous prizes. :)
P.S. There's an important trip tracking tip that I'm having trouble linking to, so I'll add it as a comment on this post. It explains how you should enter a trip that involves multiple modes of travel (for example, walking/biking to the bus stop, then taking the bus, then returning in reverse order).
From the Clear the Air FAQs:
ReplyDeleteQuestion: I use more than one way to get to work. How do I record that in the trip log?
Answer: You can log each way (mode) easily in TravelWise | Clear the Air Challenge. Let’s say I want to record my commute to and from work for Tuesday. I start my day with a bike ride from home to the Park and Ride and then take the bus the rest of the way to work. Here’s how to do it: From the dashboard, I click on the day I want to record a commute and highlight the “round trip” tab. Next, I record the bike portion of the trip. I set the “Departure Time” to the time I leave in the morning and the “Return Time” to the time I arrive at home at the end of the day. For me, the times are set for 7:00 am and 5:30 pm. Next, I set the mileage and make sure the Bike mode is highlighted and then I click “Log Trip.” Good! I’ve recorded the bike portion of the trip. Finally, I record the transit portion of my commute, making sure the day is still highlighted. I verify that the “Round Trip” tab is highlighted, and I set the time, in the case of my commute, to 7:30 am and 5:00 pm. Finally, I set the mode to “transit” and then click “Log Trip.” If everything has worked as it should, there will be four dots on the calendar day I set. If the dots are not visible, chances are the screen needs to be refreshed. Make sure the dots do appear; this is your verification that the commute was recorded. You can also click on the “History” tab to verify that the information is in the system.