A nationwide competition, organized every year in May in Greece by the bicycle community, aiming to promote the use of bicycles for commuting to/from work.
The idea behind this competition is to create a playful situation of collecting bicycle trips and kilometers for one month, as a motivation for employers and employees to cycle to work. It is organized by cyclists, a "bottom-up" approach.
Since 2011, every year in May, citizens are encouraged to record the days they commute to/from work by bicycle as well as the kilometers they cover. There is no specific target or minimum set - just to identify who will be able to go to work by bike more often during that period towards cultivating relevant bicycle culture which, until now, is focused mainly on recreational purposes and not everyday commuting. They can participate either individually or form teams of a maximum of 4 members. Also, they can state the company they work for, while each company can have multiple teams associated with it.
The results are summed per user/team/company/city and the ranking is based on the number of bicycle days realized. The companies' ranking is according to the total of all the teams under its umbrella, e.g. summing the numbers of all 3 teams coming from one company. The cities' ranking is normalized proportionally to their population, e.g., bicycle days per 100.000 citizens, or cyclist participants per 100.000 citizens, etc. A relevant website (biketowork.gr) and an interactive fb forum have been created for the registration process, recording trips, demonstrating the results as well as achieving mutual motivation and support among participants.
Resources needed
This competition in Greece is organized and ran mostly on a voluntary basis by the cyclist community itself, which makes the results achieved so far even greater. There is no budget for prizes or other needs. If a company is interested, it can provide incentives to its employees to participate more.
Evidence of success
Despite all challenges and the limited resources available, this practice managed to motivate citizens to go by bike to work in Greece! The highest number of participants achieved was 760 people.
Last year (2020) the duration was only 2 weeks instead of a month due to COVID-19, thus the results and participations were a bit lower than in other years. However, even so, 1491 bicycle commuting days were recorded covering over 16360 Km and leading to a calculated CO2 reduction of 3652 Kg.
Difficulties encountered
- limited to no resources - cycling is largely regarded as dangerous due to the lack of safe infrastructure in many areas - cheating phenomena of reporting fake large numbers of kilometers and bicycle days - bicycle culture for recreation and not to/from work - mountainous areas and hills in Greece
Potential for learning or transfer
The "bottom-up" nature of this practice is a very interesting fact of its implementation.
It is an excellent example to highlight that there is no need for many resources and expensive measures in order to achieve measurable results on sustainable mobility. It can be easily transferred to other regions without many prerequisites involved. In fact, the idea and elements of this practice derived from the personal experience of the main organizer who used to participate in a similar competition in Seattle, USA.
Thus, it is proven that it can be easily transferred and adapted to the characteristics of different areas, while becoming the first step towards promoting “cycling to work” habits in every European region.
In terms of lessons learned, apart from the technical work of managing the website, the organizational tasks, the motivation provision, the dissemination plan, and constant public engagement are of great importance for the success of such competitions and campaigns.
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Tags: Commuting zone, Cycling, Environment, Sustainable mobility, Well-being
