Bob Giordano, Free Cycles and MIST

Bob Giordano has grown from an idealistic University of Montana graduate student into a powerful voice for sustainable transportation in the Missoula community.

The founder of Free Cycles and it's umbrella organization MIST (The Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation) has come a long way since his 1996 graduate course with U of M professor Steve Siebert.

Giordano remembers hearing his professor's story about riding free bikes in Portland, Oregon.

“Before that, I had never really thought about biking as a solution to a lot of societal ills,” he said.“It really stuck with me.”

Siebert's story sparked an idea in Giordano and he ran with it. Soon after, he and his roommates started Free Cycles, operating with the simple concept of letting Missoulians ride bikes at no cost.

“For the first two years, we just put green bicycles around town. That worked OK, but we knew we wanted to do something more,” Giordano said.

A few years later Giordano developed his idea of sustainable transportation into an organization called MIST. The Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation expanded on the concepts of Free Cycles to promote not only biking, but pedestrian walking, public transit, efficient vehicles and trains.

Because of its near-total dependence on petroleum fuels, the U.S. transportation sector is responsible for about a third of our country’s climate-changing emissions. Reducing transportation emissions is one of the most vital steps in fighting global warming, the Center for Biological Diversity reports. Cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles driven by U.S. citizens are to blame for about two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. transportation sector.

Giordano's local organization embraces three concepts that guide them in the sustainable transportation decision making process.
Using the principals of safety, equity and environmental soundness, staff and volunteers at the organization can analyze projects beyond their gut reaction and choose which projects to support both within the organization and in the community.
Giordano said the pressing issue of climate change has also added an urgency to the way his organizations operate.
“It really hasn't shifted the direction we are going, but it's given us a kick to do more, to do it quicker, to do it better and to speak louder,” he said.
Giordano has advocated many road projects. These include adding more bike lanes, installing roundabouts and changing four lane roads to three lane roads for increased biker and pedestrian safety.
More than a dozen of these road projects have been completed or are in the works around Missoula. 

Missoula's first bike lane was striped in the fall of 1997. Since then, nearly 65 percent of Missoula's arterial streets have been re-striped with bike lanes.

Broadway Street between Toole and Orange streets was converted from a 4-lane roadway to a 3-lane roadway in the fall of 2005. The change has resulted in a safer roadway. Injury crashes have dropped significantly and pedestrians, drivers and cyclists on the most part report that the road feels safer.
The first modern, single lane roundabout on an arterial in Missoula opened for traffic in August, 2009. MIST is continuing to inform the public how to properly use these lanes to increase safety and traffic flow.

Giordano's always wanted people to feel they are a part of his sustainable transportation organization.

“Sometimes in planning projects and big city projects people get left out because they don't know how to make their voice heard, or they feel intimidated,” Giordano said. “Something as simple as a community bike shop can make people feel welcome.”

Giordano's hands-on attitude is one of the reason's Free Cycles and MIST have caught on in the community. He not only works on managerial-type tasks, but sweeps floors and helps teach people how to fix their bikes.

Working at Free Cycles also helps Giordano make his voice heard when he pushes sustainable transportation projects in the community.

“If I had not done Free Cycles as part of the foundation and was just advocating, I don't know how well that would work,” Giordano said.
Giordano's face and name have come to be trusted by community members.
When Giordano is not surrounded by bikes, or talking to people about sustainable transportation, he is likely spending time with his family, or playing music with friends.
He helps his wife with fundraising projects at her preschool. He enjoys playing the violin and mandolin, and also pays the occasional visit to the Kettle House Brewery.
True to his career calling, Giordano enjoys biking, hiking and cross-country skiing.
“For some reason it's in my blood to explore and travel. Working on bike projects and promoting walking paths and better buses and trains in a way is self-serving,” Giordano said. “Not only do I want to do it for the good of the community and the world, I want to do personally.”
Giordano believes using a bike to get around can make a difference because with the less people driving, the less overall pollution being emitted into the air. Riding bikes or walking can also change the way individuals operate in their everyday lives.
“There is something that happens on a very personal level when somebody gets out of the car, and hears the birds, feels the land, tastes the pollution,” he said. “When you are walking and biking you are exposed – you are vulnerable – but you are also able to engage with others in way that I think is more valuable than drivers waving to each other behind a windshield.”
The nonprofit founder likes keeping up with what other people are doing in the community – no matter how big or small.

“What I like a lot about Missoula is there is a lot of people working on organic gardening, sustainable energy, water issues ... on and on and on,” Giordano said.
Giordano also enjoys talking to people who come into the shop. Some of them, he says, are homeless or are about to start a job and don't have a way to get around.
“They always like to tell their stories, and when I hear what they have to say, I can empathize with their situation. I always put myself in other people's shoes, or on other people's bikes,” he said.
“There have been times when I haven't really had more than a couple pennies to my name, and my parents always encourage me to help other people. So it just seems like the right thing to do to include everyone.”

Hannah Motl, Energy Corps

At only 24-years old, Hannah Motl probably knows more about conservation and energy use than the average American learns in a lifetime.

The Montana native has a degree in Conservation Biology from the University of Wisconsin. She's worked in Central and South America. Now, back in Montana, Motl is the first Energy Corps member to come to Missoula.

Motle has been helping the affordable-housing nonprofit HomeWORD monitor energy use in their buildings and helped create new programs to get tenants involved in sustainability.

The Energy Corps program is only in its second year and has a vision to create sustainable energy solutions.

“The whole mission of energy corps definitely aligns with HomeWORD,” said Motl's supervisor at the organization, Jennifer Betz.
HomeWORD receives grants for various energy saving projects – whether it be solar energy systems, water heaters or other technologies. Many of these projects are innovative and even experimental. Because of this, HomeWORD has had varying success with energy saving features installed in their buildings.
Staff at the small organization wanted to be able to gauge the ability of the different features to save energy, and to be able to decide whether or not they were helping residents save money. The nonprofit lacked the resources to make sense of all the information until Motl came along.
Betz said Motl's hard work has helped the organization achieve work beyond their original goals.

“Her flexibility has been amazing,” Betz said.

Motl's been handed a three-inch binder and asked to make sense of manuals about boilers and building systems. Her willingness to learn and transform this information into something useful has been invaluable to the organization.

“She jumps right into it and pulls that data out,” Betz said. “It's helped us evolve and grow as we've seen her capabilities in gathering data and putting it together, and allowed us to expand and brainstorm in terms of what we've been tracking.”

Motl's taken some of what she's learned with HomeWORD and applied it to her own home. This winter she taught a weatherization workshop and decided to make her own home more energy efficient.

Motl weather-stripped and installed a programmable thermostat that automatically turn downs when she leaves the house.

“I did a lot of things to attempt to fix my drafty house,” she said.

The vivacious young professional describes her Lower Rattlesnake rental home as 'the slightly haunted looking one on the corner.'

Outside, the house is dark, gray and in need of a paint job - but inside is much more reflective of Motl's personality. Her living room is open and bright. Art hangs on the walls, plants adorn coffee tables and two large tail-wagging dogs are ready to greet visitors at the door.

Before arriving in Missoula, Motl had been working on conservation and biology-related projects in South and Central America.

“What resonated most with me was when I worked on a permaculture farm in Ecuador,” Motl said.

While there, she learned how systems feed into each other.

“In lesser-developed countries, they can't afford to produce waste like we do and they reuse it in other systems. It was some of the most intuitive things I've learned,” Motle said.

Although the young college graduate found this work extremely rewarding, she ultimately decided she could make a bigger difference back in the United States.

“Obviously there are big issues down there – deforestation, extinction of species – things that need attention,” Motle said. “But I felt like a hypocrite down there. Even though they may be the ones cutting down the trees – we are the ones demanding the products.”
This spring Motl became car-free. She rides her bike or takes the bus - and admittedly has friends willing to give her a ride when she needs it.

Motl is also learning how to garden, and is spreading what's she's learned to others through workshops at HomeWORD and beyond.

Although being an Energy Corps member has many benefits, a big paycheck isn't one of them.

Motl's had to learn how to incorporate sustainable ways of living without spending a lot of cash.

“When you start off without a lot of money forces you to be creative in some ways,” she said.

She's tried to simplify where she can, including the decision to sell her car. She's also been creative in reusing and recycling materials, and deciding where there's wiggle room to spend a little money.

“With gardening right now, it's cheaper for me to buy from the store rather than growing my own, but knowing I'm learning and getting the skills for the future makes it worth it,” she said.

For as much as Motl's managed to accomplish so far, the future is bound to hold many more opportunities for the young twenty-something. She's contemplating going to grad school and can see herself getting into the environmental law or teaching fields.
Her Dad is an environmental lawyer who has worked with Ralph Nader

“His stories have always been an inspiration to me,” she said.

Teaching experiences in environmental education at the Montana Natural History Center, have also sparked Motl's interest.

“It made me understand complex science concepts better when I broke it down to a first grader,” she said. “I also liked getting kids to leave the TV and internet and X-box and getting them excited about catching snakes or fish and identifying plants.”