Biking Like Beijingers
Biking is the preferred mode of transportation for 39 percent of the Beijing population, and with the upcoming Olympic influx, more bikes will hit the narrow hutongs of the Chinese capital than ever before.
To promote this transport option, Beijing launched public education campaigns to encourage walking and bike riding and upped bike rental availability. While one source (from the Wall St Journal) reports over 100 new bike rental locales, another (from newindpress.com) totals 200 bike rental venues overall, most near subway stations and hotels to provide city-wide rental and easy-return services.
Without a doubt, biking has been the preferred mode of transport for environmentalists, but mainstream organizations in the US are encouraging their employees to also take the bike lane—and providing incentives for those who do.
A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle spotlighted Siegel & Strain, an architectural firm in Emeryville that pays employees who bike to offsite work-related meetings instead of driving. Since the company historically covered expenses for such trips via car, they figured it was only fair to award those who bike at the same rate—about 58.5 cents per mile.
The Chronicle notes that other companies have also adopted bike-related policies. Design-firm Words Pictures Ideas pays employees ten cents for every mile they bike, even if they’re just riding for fun on the weekend. (They also donate an additional ten cents per employee mile to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.) Tech behemoth Google also makes charitable donations based on employees biking to work, and Yahoo rewards employees directly with free lunches and movie tickets for bike commuting a certain number of days.
King County, WA (home to Seattle and its surroundings), has a program in which commuters who work outside downtown Seattle can earn a $20 voucher for any month they carpool, bike or walk to work for more than half their workdays.
If companies in the notoriously hilly Seattle and Bay Areas can manage to make this shift, maybe others in lower lying regions can as well.
To size up whether promoting a bike-to-work campaign is right for your company, check out the SF Bike Coalition’s Employer Guide at: http://www.sfbike.org/?employers
There’s even time to do so before the Olympics begin.
