What’s the next best thing to driving when regular gas prices are going as high as $3.20 a gallon in Louisville? After reading an article in the local morning paper, is Kentucky finding a better alternative to not only avoid high gas prices and lines at the pump but while also includes doing their part to better the enviroment while accounting to fitness goals all at the same time?
“I’ve been car-free since 1999,” says Jackie Green of “Bike Couriers Bike Shop” at 107 W. Market St. And even though Green’s wife is stated as sometimes using a car to get from their home to her employeer as a physician’s assistant, Green has said that he has only used the car once in the past six months and that was solely for a family emergency which leaves him to relying on walking, riding a bike or taking the city bus to get around.
The couple started a bike courier service in Louisville approximately five years ago, eventually opening a companion bike sales and service shop onto it last summer.
“We’re trying to walk the walk, or ride the ride, as it were,” Green stated in the article I read within the local paper. “It takes a lot of determination, but we’re determined to do it. As a society we really have no choice other than to do things like this, because our economy is going to change. The future is on us now.”
With more than one hundred new bicycles in their showroom and two bike mechanics in the back, a dispatcher and four riders who handle courier services from downtown to Zorn Avenue, the Highlands area, the University of Louisville, the West End and even towns across the Ohio River. “All of us making a living off downtown bicycles,” Green said to the local newspaper. “That’s a little renaissance.”
The bike shop’s clients seem to include everyone from homeless people needing a chain repaired to millionaires with all-carbon, high-end racing bikes which are in need of new brakes.
Originally a native to Louisiana, Green spent his childhood in Brazil before returning to the states in order to earn an English and speech degree from Louisiana College. He then worked years later as a personnel management recruiter for the automobile industry. cek tarif
Green’s Downtown Bike Couriers service now sub-contracts with two automobile courier companies – Zip Express and Now Courier along with two pharmacies are among his major high-end customers. The cost of most Bike Couriers deliveries is just merely five dollars.
“His product is filling a niche that is environmentally sound, gets some cars off the street and in many cases is a much more efficient way to do it, especially for small packages and envelopes,” says Ron Ping to the local newspaper who is regional manager for Now Courier as he also said that the bike courier business is an advantage due to it’sfowntown deliveries because it frees up company vehicles for more longer distance jobs.
Green is aware that his change from driving a car to riding a bike, walking or taking a bus is not a resonable alternative for many others. However, he believes that it’s a decision that many others eventually will consider for economic and environmental reasons.
