Bike2Work: and the winners are...

Bike2Work is a popular initiative to promote cycling that was launched in Switzerland in 2004. Every summer, it mobilises some 50,000 employees from more than 1100 companies and organisations across Switzerland. This year, CERN established itself as the main player in French-speaking Switzerland.

The main motivation for Bike2Work is the joy of the cycle commute. Biking contributes to your fitness and reduces pollution and congestion on the roads and in car parks. During this year’s Bike2Work, over 9 million kilometres were recorded across Switzerland! Out of these, 97,462 kilometres were pedaled by the 126 CERN teams participating in the initiative. In this friendly competition, CERN established itself as the main player in French-speaking Switzerland, although EPFL was not far behind with 124 teams. However, CERN beat EPFL by a large margin with regard to the number of kilometres cycled, as our colleagues in the canton of Vaud reached only 63,000 kilometres. Even ETH in Zurich was behind CERN in terms of kilometres; their 160 teams cycled 84,000 kilometres. The full set of statistics are available here.

Some of the 503 CERN participants were also lucky enough to win some nice prizes: in particular, Frank Gaede from the Physics Department won 7th prize, a fancy foldable bicycle, while others won sunglasses and chocolate bars and seem equally happy.

Enjoy your commute and bike safely!

by Jens Vigen, "Bike2Work" coordinator for CERN