The City of Kissimmee and a Florida Department of Transportation group promoting new commuting solutions encourages you to ditch your car, find your bike helmet and pedal to work.
If the office is in or near downtown Kissimmee, you’ll be joining dozens of your commuting cohorts.
Friday is Kissimmee Bike to Work Day along the Lakefront in downtown Kissimmee. It’s an initiative of ReThink Your Commute, the FDOT group promoting new and innovative transportation solutions for the region’s workforce.
Bikers will gather at Ruby Plaza at 7 a.m., with a three-mile ride along the lakefront starting soon after. Individual riders may leave the group ride at any point to reach their worksite or destination Friday morning.
If nothing else, riders can experience the freedom from car traffic and the health benefit of a two-wheel ride into work.
If safety is your sticking point, the ride will be slow-paced, and a KPD police escort is expected. Riders will need their own bike (participants can drive to and park at Ruby Plaza), as well as a helmet — free ones will be available at Ruby Plaza during checkin courtesy of Bike Walk Central Florida and FDOT District Five.
Kissimmee-area employers and their employees are invited to participate as a group. Company teams will compete for Top Team based on attendance, and that top team will be presented with the traveling trophy to be displayed in its workplace until next year’s event.
Courtney Reynolds, ReThink Your Commute Project Director, and a board member for the Florida Bicycle Association, said this event, held in Kissimmee annually since 2017, is about promoting smart transportation alternatives for Central Florida’s workforce.
“For folks who are driving five miles or less, if we can make that into a bike trip, it’s a way we can make an impact,” she said. “This is about the opportunity to try it, and working with employers about how their employees get to work in different ways that can make sense to them.”
Cars and bikes aren’t the only ways of commuting, especially to and from downtown Kissimmee — both Lynx buses and SunRail trains have a depot that are about a 10-minute walk from Ruby Plaza where Friday’s bike event will take place.
And those who still need their cars, ReThink Your Commute encourages carpooling and vanpooling. For those who commute into Orlando on Interstate 4, registered vanpools will be able to use the new I-4 Express lanes, which opened this week, for free.
It’s all about reducing carbon footprints, helping drivers’ wallets from the pain of rising gas prices due to demand and pressure from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and making thoroughfares safer.
(Note: visit our social media at Facebook.com/ OsceolaNewsGazette or Twitter @AroundOsceola for updates if inclement weather threatens Friday morning.)
