You can help with local outreach to your community, to schools, workplaces, faith communities, and other community groups. You can help reach out to local businesses to get prizes. You can help publicize with social media, press releases, posters, and other creative ideas you bring. Or contribute to the website, or help solicit sponsors. Interested in volunteering for this year’s challenge? Contact the Volunteer Team at drivelesschallenge@gmail.com.

Have a friend who might like to get involved? Click here to invite them

Looking forward to a great Drive Less Challenge 2012.

Adina Levin
Drive Less Challenge

The Drive Less Challenge continued to expand in 2011, with many more participants doing less solo driving, traveling green, and reducing carbon emissions. The 2011 Drive Less Challenge had ten participating communities, with about 900 participants taking 9000 green trips. All together, participants racked up about 90,000 green miles, the equivalent of nearly four trips around the globe. This displaced about 45,000 pounds of CO2 emissions. Participation was more than three times the level in 2010, in the number of participants and amount of green travel.

Congratulations to the prize winners for Drive Less Challenge 2011 overall:

The Drive Less Challenge offers many ways to win, since people have different choices available to them. Some people are able to avoid driving alone completely; others need to travel places where there is no good alternative to driving. People who have access to transit for the routes they travel can take the bus or train. People who are healthy and able can bike and walk. People who share travel plans with neighbors can carpool.

Participants shared stories about their Drive Less Challenge Experience. Tom Fensterman of Los Altos used to be an avid mountain biker, but hadn’t ridden a bike since surgery on his ankle. He used the Drive Less Challenge as motivation to ride to the train in Mountain View and take Caltrain to his job in the city, getting exercise and reducing stress.

Eva Iglesias talked about ways that she encouraged over 200 kids in the San Carlos schools to participate with public recognition for biking and walking to school.

Everyone who took the effort to consider their own travel patterns and to take advantage of green travel is a winner. Our community as a whole is a winner when we make changes to reduce driving and save the environment.

Communities and groups are important, since our travel habits are reinforced by those around us. These are the largest groups that participated in the Drive Less Challenge this year:  

Burlingame: Susan Castner-Paine, Jeff Londer
Cupertino: Linda Gohl
East Palo Alto: Brent Butler
Los Altos/Hills: Margie Suozzo, Karen Janowsky
Menlo Park: Joe Walmsley, Leah Strichartz
Mountain View: Ellen Gibson
Morgan Hill: Ain Indermitte
Palo Alto: Bret Andersen
Redwood City: Carol Cross
San Carlos: Eva Iglesias
Sunnyvale: Heba El-Guendy, Ian Emmons
Party coordinators: Leah Strichartz, Susan Caster-Paine
Outreach: Joe Walmsley
Outreach, organization: Bret Andersen, Adina Levin
Founders: Mitch Slomiak, Carol McClelland, Gail Slocum

Blazing Cloud software made improvements to the Drive Less Challenge tool, including making it possible to report on results for hundreds of participants in ten communities. Sarah Allen, Bill Devine, Jen-Mei Wu, Liah Hansen, and Walter Yu ensured that the Drive Less Challenge started and finished smoothly.

Publicity sponsors including Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto Online, and VTA helped spread the word.

More than 84 local retailers contributed prizes for Drive Less Challenge winners, and helped to encourage local shopping as a handy way to drive less and stimulate the local economy. Stop by and thank these local merchants for contributing to the Drive Less Challenge.

View Drive Less Challenge 2011 Prize Sponsors in a larger map