Gear Up for Bike Week and beyond

We had a great forum yesterday looking at how to support people to cycle and planning for the year ahead. Thanks to everyone who joined in.

Bike Week is a great time to run activities to encourage cycling in your workplace or community. Christina Neubauer of People on Bicycles spoke about how we can build people’s confidence to ride. “Riding a bicycle requires knowledge and skills and, if people have not been on two wheels for a while, they may need some help, Christina said.

Running a cycle skills workshop or a social ride in a safe environment or matching people up with regular riders they could do initial rides with are all good ways to build skills and confidence. Showing staff end of trip facilities, making pool bikes available and profiling people who ride in (at a staff meeting or on the intranet) can help too.

“Building infrastructure for cycling is important, but we also need to encourage its use,” said Fiona Goodbody of the Department of Transport’s Cycling team. You can help ‘activate’ cycling infrastructure by holding activities in your workplace or community during Bike Week, which runs from March 15 to 24.

Leon Ebbelaar of the City of Melville drew on his experience to suggest how to make Bike Week events successful. These include: go where the people are (e.g. well used public place or on a commuter route), provide food (a great engagement tool), hold themed rides to engage different people (e.g. a ride to places of historical interest or a glow ride at night for families) and promote routes people might not know of (the way we drive is not usually the best route to cycle).

There are resources on the Your Move website to help you 'gear up' for your Bike Week activities like peddling a winning breakfast. And you can use the Your Move calendar and concise activity plan to plan your activities across the year - boost employee health, reduce emissions and earn rewards for your workplace to boot.