Pedal Power to the People!

Last year we blogged about the friendly competition between our two New England Autodesk offices to see who could bike to work the most. I am happy to say we have gone global this year. So far the response and participation (not to mention level of competition) has been fantastic. Here are some stats to date:

• Number of months of the challenge: Six (May through October)
  
• Number of offices participating: 20
• Number of participants: 184
• Number of countries represented: Eight (on four continents!)
• Miles ridden in first two weeks: 6779!
• Office in the lead: Waltham - Go Factory!
  

There are two main metrics we are tracking: raw number of miles ridden (per individual and office - for bragging rights) and amount of carbon saved (calculated by what an individual's typical commute distance and mode of transport is.) We are currently calculating carbon savings per mile by dividing the pounds of carbon generated by burning a gallon of gasoline (19.4 lbs) by the average mpg for a passenger car in the US (in 2007, 22.5 mpg). We plan on refining this metric by segmenting by country and asking each participant to enter their car's average MPG.

Below are some graphs created by myself and Factory veteran Lilli Smith using an amazing free piece of software called Tableau. This warrants a separate how-to post because I think this software - and the larger trend of social info-visualization holds some intriguing implications in the context of BIM.

Total Carbon Saved (versus driving a car)

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