Car Free Day is one of the 511NY Rideshare team’s favorite annual events. It looked a little different this year—our community kept each other safe with masks and social distancing—but 1,678 sustainably minded individuals across New York State still took the Car Free Day pledge and then participated on September 25 by working from home, taking transit, carpooling, biking, walking, or driving less. ​

The 511NY Rideshare team partnered with Transit Solutions to promote Car Free Day on Long Island. ​

While we were not able to attend in-person events like in previous years, we were still able to connect with our partners through webinars and special promotions. We hosted a Climate Roundtable webinar with speakers from Sustainable Westchester, Sustainable Hudson Valley, and Bedford 2030 and hosted a Higher Education Sustainable Transportation Webinar series with speakers and participants from mobility providers, colleges, and universities across the state.

This year, our team hosted the first-ever Car Free Day Virtual Miles Challenge with Mount Saint Mary College and SUNY Orange. Student clubs from the two colleges demonstrated their climate leadership through this friendly competition to see which group could track the most active (walking, biking, hiking) miles.

Our friends at Bird Scooters provided participants a 50% off code to use on Car Free Day in the City of Yonkers, Circuit (the Free Ride) provided three swag bags, and 5 WITS provided a family ticket package at their West Nyack locations.

Ella at Bard College went car-lite all week to celebrate. She carefully planned her errands, so she only had to drive into town once: “Making sure I don’t have to make the same trip twice saves a lot of miles!” ​

Jordan at SUNY at Buffalo celebrated Car Free Day by working from home: "Friday happens to be one of my work-from-home days, so this year’s Car Free Day [was] pretty easy for me. If I DID have to go to campus, I’d likely ride my bike to South Campus and take the Stampede [bus] to North Campus and where I work.” ​

Thanks for participating in Car Free Day 2020—we cannot wait for 2021! ​