Whether a supporter for Team East or Team West for the 2015 CMT Great Race; Relay to the Rails, the event was a win for the region with the number of partnerships, local media participation and overall community wide advocacy for multi-modal options in St. Louis. While Team East took home the win for 2015 and the bragging rights for the next year, the region won with a fun and exciting way to promote all the alternative modes available in St. Louis on both sides of the river.
CMT’s Great Race 2015: A Relay to the Rails integrated biking, carsharing, ridesharing and transit as the teams raced to the final destination in downtown St. Louis. This new approach helped to raise awareness about the viable alternative transportation options that exist, demonstrate how seamlessly these modes can be integrated together, and for the first time, enable the organization to extend this event into the Metro East. More specifically, the competition placed two teams against one another. One team biked and carshared to the Shrewsbury MetroLink, met additional teammates and took the train to the finish line downtown. The other team utilized biking and ridesharing to the Belleville MetroLink station, met additional teammates and then took the train to the finish line downtown. The amount of celebrity participation in this year’s race exceeded all expectations with representatives from print, radio and tv on board for the event including:
- Don Corrigan, editor of the Times Newspapers;
- Guy Phillips, host of the Phillips & Company Morning Show on Y98;
- Pat McGonigle, anchor of Today in St. Louis on KSDK Newschannel 5;
- Jade Harrell, host and producer of iHeart Media community affairs show, “Community Connections” and PM Drive Show Host on Hallelujah 1600/iHeart Radio;
- Scott Rizzuto and Tony Patrico, hosts… of The Rizzuto Show on 105.7 The Point;
- Cat Criswell of The RiverFront Times;
- Kyle Buettner, producer of The Martin Kilcoyne Show on The Big 550 KTRS;
- Matt Chambers, meteorologist and show host of Great Day St. Louis on KMOV Channel 4;
- Jill Moon, lifestyles editor and assistant content manager of The (Alton) Telegraph; and
- Angela Hutti, meteorologist for Fox 2 News;
- and representatives from Great Rivers Greenway, Enterprise, CMT, Metro and the Clean Air Partnership.
“One of our goals of this event was to showcase that workday commuters have options on both sides of the river that extend beyond sitting in traffic, alongside others who are also driving solo in their own personal vehicles. We were able to achieve this goal and much more through the significant partnerships created around the event to promote many of the transportation alternatives in the region, the benefits of utilizing these modes including the implications to our air quality, health, and economic benefits. Not to mention this fun and exciting event helps demonstrate the benefits the region derives with its world class transit system, greenways and more,” said Kim Cella, executive director of CMT.
Thanks to Mayor Francis Slay and County Councilman Pat Dolan for naming the winners for the Great Race 2015.
Thanks to our local partners who made this event possible: Clean Air Partnership; Enterprise Rideshare and Enterprise Carshare; Metro; Great Rivers Greenway; Embassy Suites St. Louis – Downtown; AECOM and Pi Pizzeria. Thank you!
For more pictures from CMT’s Great Race 2015, click here.
