Free Bikes for Employees

Increasingly, not only municipalities but also private companies are seeking to mitigate their parking and clean-air compliance problems by offering employees cheap or even free bicycles. In the process, they have created dedicated cyclists out of people who were once committed motorists. The Nabisco bakery in Buena Park, CA, gives away new bicycles to employees who commute to work three out of five days for a six-month period. Those who commute on their own bikes are given $300, the cost of a moderately priced new bike. Ten percent of the plant's 480 workers now commute regularly by bicycle, helping Nabisco satisfy the Los Angeles area's stringent new anti-pollution rules. “These commuters have become biking enthusiasts,” reports Nabisco transportation coordinator Byron Kemp. “For them, biking is now an important social activity, and they regularly participate in fun rides on weekends.”

Similarly, Apple Computer, as part of a Commuter Alternatives program, provides free use of mountain bikes for employees at its Cupertino, CA, facility. The chemical company Ciba-Geigy — though notorious in the New York region for toxic discharges into the Atlantic Ocean — was able to avoid building a new garage at a facility in Switzerland by encouraging its employees to ride to work. Any worker willing to give up his or her parking space was given a new bicycle, an option 230 employees chose. [5]

Copenhagen and several other European cities have actually experimented with public provision of bicycles to anyone who wishes to ride in the downtown area. Typically, the bikes are withdrawn from municipally furnished racks by depositing a token costing about $3.50, and then replaced in similar racks (with token returned) at the end of the trip. Among a number of other European examples, the Borough Council of Sutton (a district in London), has created a bike pool and offers employees a mileage allowance of up to 58 pence per mile (roughly $1). Erlangen, in Germany, has purchased bicycles for the use of City Hall staff. In an experiment begun in 1992, reminiscent of Amsterdam's legendary “white bikes” in the 1960s, the English towns of Hertfordshire, Exeter and Stratford-upon-Avon provide free green-painted bikes to anyone wishing to use one. [6]

Closer to home, the Downtown Management Commission of Boulder, CO, has made available 100 bicycles and 50 helmets for residents and tourists; all that's required is a credit card as a deposit. Champlain College in Burlington, VT, gives bikes to students who agree not to keep a car on campus. [7]

New York City should follow these leads, first by offering at-cost bicycles and secure indoor parking spaces to city workers who now hold parking permits, including police and fire department personnel, judges and mayoral aides. The Department of General Services should create a bicycle pool, giving city employees both the option and the economic incentive to ride (such as mileage allowances or the part-time or full-time use of city-owned bikes). The city could also implicitly encourage cycling by instituting a fee for car parking that is now free to privileged employees but expensive to taxpayers in terms of land and other auto-related subsidies.

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