EU project gets half a million commuters into cycling

Approximately 300 companies in 12 European countries became cycle-friendly in 2015-2016, encouraging half a million commuters to get on their bicycles, through the Bike2Work project. As part of the initiative, funded by the European Union, any of these companies, governmental or non-governmental organisations can now get certified for being a Cycling Friendly Employer.

“Convincing employers to increase their cycle-friendliness was not and is not an easy process,” Marco Ciarrocchi, Project Officer at the European Cyclists’ Federation, told Cities Today. “At the beginning, the Bike2Work consortium organised training sessions for employer coordinators responsible for cycling issues to enable them to support cycling-related campaigns and actions and advise employers on how to improve their bicycle-friendliness. A successful tool was the Guidebook for bicycle-friendly employers, a manual that helped SMEs promote cycling in operation and build an in-house cycling culture.”

For the past two years, the European Cyclists’ Federation, together with 12 project partners, worked on the Bike2Work project. The main objective being to encourage a significant modal shift from motorised commuting to cycling. The project targeted both: employees and the change of their commuting habits through campaigns, as well as employers, convincing them to meet the needs of cyclists.

“Several factors made campaigns successful: gamification, competition, and rewards were key elements in every successful Bike2Work initiative,” added Ciarrocchi. “The idea of competing against your colleagues or another company moved people to say ‘why not?’ and it worked well. What differed was the campaign duration, some considered four weeks more effective, others extended the campaign for a longer period of up to four months.”

Diverse Bike2work campaigns were organised in participating countries, and results went far beyond emissions savings (more than 20,000 tonnes of CO2 saved in one year); across the board, employers endorsed bike to work schemes and commuters cycled more than 145 million kilometres.

Romanian Telekom and Italian Decathlon have both published their experience with the Bike2Work project, and the positive impact that the initiative had on their companies: illness costs were reduced, employees became more productive, and infrastructure costs were saved.

“Bike2Work also aimed at gaining support from local, regional and national authorities by providing advocacy tools and encouraging policy changes in a number of participating countries,” said Ciarrocchi. “The consortium integrated existing policies and studies in Europe to show how a bigger effort must be put in place to reduce advantages that favour commuting by car and turn them into fiscal incentives for active modes of transport such as cycling.”