Prizes for Szeged University’s Cycling Employees
The national “Bike To Work!” campaign took place in May, with nearly 5,300 participants, who cycled a total of over 483,000 kilometres – a distance that corresponds to 214 times the length of Hungary’s entire country border. In the campaign, which finished on 31 May, participants saved nearly HUF 70 million on fuel and, owing to the use of bicycles, prevented the emission of 76 tons of carbon dioxide to the air.
Among cities outside Budapest, Szeged proved to be the most biking one: those who joined the campaign have biked to work on a total of 2,521 days. Szeged University, which is firmly committed to a healthy lifestyle and environmentally friendly, green solutions, contributed to this achievement with its own prize draw. The University’s employees who joined the game reached nearly 250 cycling days. These cycling enthusiasts use their bike on an average of four days a week – not only during the campaign but also in several months every year. The winners were welcomed in the central building of the University on 4 July. Perseverant bike use was awarded with gift vouchers, which can be exchanged at URBANGO for, among others, bicycle repair services and a standard bicycle safety kit.
Besides joining the “Bike To Work!” campaign, Szeged University supports the promotion of cycling through its participation in the “Smart Alliance for Sustainable Mobility” project. The aim of this project is to mitigate the problems of traffic congestion, air pollution and noise exposure, with an eye to establishing sustainable city transportation, by supporting environmentally sound travel-to-work and mobility habits of the staff of the participating institutions – primarily the use of bicycles and, second, the use of mass transportation. On the other hand, the beneficiaries plan to jointly build up a data-driven, intelligent transportation system and to offer higher quality transportation services and better information supply for users.
In line with these aims, a bike shelter for 50 bicycles, which will also offer bike repair services, will be installed at the site of the Faculty of Economics and the southern part of the clinics’ park. In addition, the University aims to make cooperation agreements with several bike repair service enterprises, where all university employees could take repair services for discounted prices. Negotiations are also ongoing about the development of the timetables of the community transport services travelling next to the clinic parks, as well as for the installation of ticket vending machines in the clinic parks, hoping that the number of bicycle users and community transport passengers will further increase in the course of the next year.
source: SZTEinfo