A
Andrew Reddaway
Guest
I tend to come up with hare-brained ideas on holidays. I was riding
the Otago Central rail trail in NZ last month (very good btw), so this
one is cycling-related Dunno if it's been thought of or tried
before...
There must be heaps of people who are interested in riding a bike to
work/uni/school, but need advice, help and moral support. This
newsgroup provides some of that, but maybe more people can be helped in
a more structured way.
How about a volunteer "cycling buddy" scheme, with input rewarded by
"brownie points" (BP) in the form of vouchers for cycling gear?
Newbies would start at a website with a discussion forum that links
them to volunteers. Possible kinds of input that would earn BP:
- General advice: posts, links, articles (rated on usefulness).
- Add to/update a mapped, annotated database of commuting routes.
- Accompany a newbie who commutes on the same route as you.
There would be costs for infrastructure, admin, publicity and BP. I
guess the funding would have to come from the government - perhaps
funded as an anti-obesity initative? Cycling groups too.
The biggest practical problem I can see is people claiming BP for bogus
input, especially for accompanying newbies. But that's probably the
most valuable part of the scheme. Can't think of a good way to
administer that - maybe digital photos could help somehow...
What do you think? I don't have any plans to organise this myself by
the way, just an idea for someone else to run with!
the Otago Central rail trail in NZ last month (very good btw), so this
one is cycling-related Dunno if it's been thought of or tried
before...
There must be heaps of people who are interested in riding a bike to
work/uni/school, but need advice, help and moral support. This
newsgroup provides some of that, but maybe more people can be helped in
a more structured way.
How about a volunteer "cycling buddy" scheme, with input rewarded by
"brownie points" (BP) in the form of vouchers for cycling gear?
Newbies would start at a website with a discussion forum that links
them to volunteers. Possible kinds of input that would earn BP:
- General advice: posts, links, articles (rated on usefulness).
- Add to/update a mapped, annotated database of commuting routes.
- Accompany a newbie who commutes on the same route as you.
There would be costs for infrastructure, admin, publicity and BP. I
guess the funding would have to come from the government - perhaps
funded as an anti-obesity initative? Cycling groups too.
The biggest practical problem I can see is people claiming BP for bogus
input, especially for accompanying newbies. But that's probably the
most valuable part of the scheme. Can't think of a good way to
administer that - maybe digital photos could help somehow...
What do you think? I don't have any plans to organise this myself by
the way, just an idea for someone else to run with!