Ripon College Sustainability: Transportation

October 13, 2014

Carpool, Shuttle, and RideShare opportunities

Ripon College offers members of the campus community a RideBoard. Anyone with access to the Portal (my.Ripon.edu) can access this service once logged on.

In the tab at the top of the page, select "Campus Life". From the Campus Life page, select "Ride Board". From there you can see rides offered and rides needed.

In addition to the personal offers for rides, the College offers shuttle service to airports in Milwaukee and Chicago at the beginning and end of each semester. This service is coordinated through the Office of Student Activities and Orientation.. More information about the shuttles can be found at http://www.ripon.edu/campuslife/transportation/

Reduce your commuting costs by 50 percent or more! Rideshare, feelin' better already!

Finally, if the ride you need still can't be found, or you regularly commute to Ripon College from a neighboring community, you might find a ride the through the WI Department of Transportation RideShare program. Information about that statewide service can be found at http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/travel/commuter/index.htm

October 6, 2014

Ripon College helps Wisconsin rank first in the nation for the National Bike Challenge

The National Bike Challenge has just finished and Ripon College achieved its highest national rankings in the “School” categories: 10th among all schools (out of 147 K-Higher Educational Institutions) and 3rd among all colleges and universities in the nation (out of 109)!

In terms of local pride, we were 1st among all colleges and universities in the state of Wisconsin. Yes, we even ranked better than UW-Madison.

We also had teams in two other categories. In the “Workplace” category, we came in 309th out of 1101 participating workplaces. This was the only category Lawrence University was also in, who came in at #413. Our Ripon College Redhawk “Team” came in 258th out of almost 1300 other teams. All in all, this was a very good showing.

Our totals for this year were solid. We had 28 people signed up and 20 who logged miles during the Challenge period of May 1st through September 30th. We logged 9,554 miles and earned 25,515 Challenge points. While these totals are not quite on par with our record-setting pace of last year, they still kept us very competitive in the NBC rankings.

In terms of the national totals, there were 47,082 riders who logged a total of 23,309,210 miles during the NBC. Wisconsin was the #1 ranked state this year, finally knocking off our past rivals, Nebraska and Vermont. The top individual rider nationally, Eric Nordgren of Topeka, Kansas, logged 18,152 miles over 153 days for 21,212 NBC points. Yes, he averaged over 100 miles a day!

For more results from the National Bike Challenge, visit their website: http://bikeleague.org/content/challenge-47000-riders-23m-miles#anchor

Thank you and kudos to all the Ripon NBC riders for helping Ripon College maintain its strong cycling tradition and standings in the NBC. We hope this will help cycling advocates across the country make the case for cycling and cyclists in the many venues—public policy, economic development, environment—where we need to make a difference. And those of you who weren’t able to join us this year, there is always the 2015 Challenge starting next May! (Submitted by Paul Jeffries, jeffriesp@ripon.edu)