A Quarter of Pedalling to work
A substantial amount of traffic during peak hours in urban areas is due to work commutes. This causes congestion and pollution. #Cycletowork is an initiative to move a chunk of these trips to cycling either as complete trips or as the last mile.
Traditional cycle to work programs relied on individual motivations and discreet single day events in companies. In order for #Cycletowork to be sustainable over the long term, incentivization is the key.
Infrastructure for cyclists is being planned with non-existent or incomplete data on bicycle riding patterns in the city. It is important to have a consistent data set to allow for data-driven decision making by the government.
Cyclists also face certain challenges while riding, which include harassment and lack of information about products and services. For example, reporting incidents, bicycle repair shops, Bicycle rentals, recreational rides etc.
#Cycletowork is an initiative by the first Bicycle Mayor of Bengaluru — Mr Sathya Sankaran in association with Citizens for Sustainability (CiFoS) and Council for Change. It attempts to bring together the cyclists, the businesses that provide products and services and the government on a single technology-based platform.
https://cycleto.work is a global multi-city platform which as of date has 115 companies across 6 cities clocking more than 40,000 km represented on a leaderboard.
The platform pulls the ride data of employees to their workplaces on a daily basis. The employees register themselves and their companies on this website. The website also lists bicycle repair shops and partners who provide incentives. The campaign has a facility called #motorage which allows people to list harassment incidents anonymously.
The principle behind the #Cycletowork program is to have more people in the companies sign up and perform as many rides to their companies as they can. The leaderboard at https://cycleto.work/leaderboard, reflects this in the ranking methodology.
#Cycletowork is a tech platform launched on the international car-free day 2018, by the then Bengaluru Mayor Mr Sampath Raj, DULT special Officer Mr Muralikrishna, Dr Ashwin Mahesh and myself.
“India is a country of numbers. You need to have numbers if you can effect change and the #cycletowork has done very well at this. We will soon see cycling take off in the city” Bhaskar Rao, ADGP, KSRP said awarding the top companies for the first quarter of #cycletowork program
“We need to increase the number of problem solving people and #cycletowork has exceeded expectations in this regard. It has scaled quickly and empowered more people in companies to spread this cause” Dr. Ashwin Mahesh, Urban Expert said inaugurating the felicitation program for the first quarter leaders of #cycletowork
The leaders during the first quarter of October — December 2018 are CISCO SYSTEMS, QUINTYPE TECHNOLOGIES AND ROBERT BOSCH. They were felicitated in Cubbon Park on 27th January 2019, Sunday. The idea is to continue to reward companies on a quarterly basis. From the next quarter, there will be more categories of recognition.
The program is on the lookout for companies to have long term associations for providing rewards and incentives to companies on the leaderboard. This way of measurement and incentivising will be soon replicated to programs such as Cycle Day, Walk to School and Public Transport Day.
ABOUT CIFOS — Citizens for Sustainability, a non-profit trust, is a citizens group working on transforming neighbourhoods for sustainability & better quality of life. We work on transforming urban infrastructure through sustainable design interventions, participatory planning, funding & maintenance best practices. We achieve social change thru programs like cycle day, walk to school, waste segregation and other empathy building initiatives. The following are the primary domains for intervention: Mobility, Safety, Environment, Health, Education. CiFoS is backed by technical arm called UrbanMorph, with urban planners and domain experts to provide domain expertise & design capabilities.
ABOUT COUNCIL FOR CHANGE — Council for Change is an initiative by the Bicycle Mayor for Bengaluru to collectivise efforts by many individuals and organisations working on the cause of cycling & pedestrians. It will involve the public to channelise efforts and look to help them take it forward.
ABOUT BICYCLE MAYOR — The Bicycle Mayor & Leader Program is a global initiative by the Dutch organisation BYCS, to accelerate the progress of cycling in cities and help get another one billion people onto bikes. Bicycle Mayors are a catalyst to bring together the public and private realms to uncover the massive economic, health, and environmental benefits of increased cycling capacity. There are currently 16 Bicycle Mayors across the globe and Sathya Sankaran is the first Bicycle Mayor from Bengaluru