As the Government announce its ‘Cycle to Work Guarantee’, a national cyclists’ organisation is hoping to encourage workers across the South-east to become regular cyclists.
Following amazing success of the Workplace Cycle Challenges in Swindon, Colchester, Darlington, Somerset, Woking and Wolverhampton, CTC – the UK’s national cyclists’ organisation is announcing that it will be expanding this highly effective behavioural change programme to even more areas.
CTC is working closely with local Primary Care Trusts and councils to reach the health and environmental goals of getting even more people cycling to work, regardless of what facilities their employers have. They will be utilising cycle commuting expertise to work with the Department of Health to deliver £500,000 of workplace challenges.
The UK’s national cyclists’ organisation is also calling on cyclists to add their voices to a new campaign to combat bad driving.
Stop SMIDSY is a major campaign to end the culture of brushing off dangerous incidents with the excuse “Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You”. It aims to change lax attitudes towards bad driving and the failures of the legal system to respond to it when it occurs. By encouraging cyclists to report crashes and near misses on the new Stop SMIDSY website, www.stop-smidsy.org.uk, CTC will build up a picture of how cyclists are treated by other road users, with the ultimate goal of transforming drivers’ attitudes to reduce danger on the roads.
CTC Cycling Development Officer Ian Richardson said:
“The data is consistent across all the locations, proving the challenge is a winning formula to get people back on bikes. It shows the challenge is the first step for many people towards changing the way they travel. It offers encouragement and support to make a short journey by bike to work and gives people the opportunity to get back on a bike again for the first time in years.”
So far over 700 people who have never ridden a bike or who have not cycled in over a year have taken up the challenge and if they all continue to cycle regularly they would generate benefits of around £8million through reduced pollution and health costs.
The programme is a highly effective and unique way to help current cyclists to encourage their colleagues to take up cycling. It pits organisations and individual departments against each other to see who can get the most staff to cycle for at least 10 minutes during the two or three week challenge.
It’s a programme designed for any size business or organisation and it works by bringing cycling to the office and rewards participants with incentives.
To date almost 4000 people have taken part in a CTC workplace cycle challenge and the results speak for themselves: 84% of non-cyclists intend to cycle more after taking part in the challenge. Half of the participants cycled to work, with many opting for the first time to take a short cycle ride instead of driving. In total 191,498 miles were cycled saving 25955kg of CO2 emissions.
Results for individual challenges are available online:
www.somersetcyclechallenge.org.uk
www.wokingcyclechallenge.org.uk
www.darlingtoncyclechallenge.org.uk
www.wolverhamptoncyclechallenge.org.uk
www.swindoncyclechallenge.org.uk
www.colchestercyclechallenge.org.uk
Workplace Cycle Challenges are run by CTC Challenge for Change, a partnership between CTC Charitable Trust and Challenge for Change. Challenge for Change is a social marketing agency that specialises in developing behavioural change programmes that get more people cycling more often.
More information is available via this downloadable PDF: The Workplace Cycle Challenge Programme or online www.ctc.org.uk/workplace.
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