The bicycling community is deeply indebted to the good folks at COTA for agreeing to install bike racks on all its buses and for doing the free, summer-long Bike `N Bus program. And we are all also greatly indebted to Columbus Outdoor Pursuits for providing the 20% local match to the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant that COTA got through the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) to do it all. As the success of the free Bike 'N Bus program became apparent through the summer, COTA had to go back to Columbus Outdoor Pursuits a couple times to ask Columbus Outdoor Pursuits to increase its pledge for the local match, which COP did.

If we all want to do the free Bike 'N Bus promotion again we will need to get behind a request for another CMAQ grant. Do we need to do another summer of promotion? We need to hear how much support there is out there for doing it again. I know from feedback at the first Energy Awareness Day at Crestview Middle School Saturday October 1st — where people had another opportunity to practice loading a bike on the COTA demo bus bike rack — that a LOT of cyclists haven't used Bike `N Bus yet and are still getting acquainted with Bike `N Bus.