Get More People Cycling .com

We did a 3 month post intervention survey of participants of the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge.

It was quite astonishing to get the following results.

Of participants who were ‘non cyclists’ before the Challenge (i.e. they hadn’t ridden a bike in more than a year):

32% of former ‘non-cyclists’ are now cycling at least once a week
20% are now cycling 2-3 days or 4+ days each week
93% have cycled again since the Challenge
20% are now cycling to work at least once a week
15% are now cycling to work 2-3 days or 4+ days each week

To get 1 in 3 non-cyclists to start cycling regularly thanks to a programme that you’ve run is a great feeling.  As is getting 1 in 5 people (who before the Challenge programme hadn’t cycled in years!) to cycling regularly to work.

Of participants who were only cycling about once a month before the Challenge:

38% are now cycling at least once a week or more, with
21% now cycling 2-3 or 4+ times a week, and

So as you can see, we’ve managed to significant proportions of the ‘non-cyclists’ and ‘occasional cyclists’ who were involved in the Challenge programme to cycle more often now.

We’re now keen to get similar Challenge programmes run in other towns around the UK.

If you’re interested in finding out what running a Challenge in your town would involve then please feel free to get in touch.

We’re currently putting together an evaluation report with all the findings and outcomes from the Swindon Challenge.  If you’d like a copy I can send you one by email.

Please contact:

Thomas Stokell
email: thomas@getmorepeoplecycling.com
phone: +44 (0)79 8430 9265

Here’s some quotes from Challenge Participants that help bring some colour to the above stats.

Here are some quotes from Participants of the Swindon Workplace Cyce Challenge.

We asked participants in a recent 3 month post intervention survey why they have continued to cycled.  We also asked participants in a two week post intervention survey why they will continue to cycle.

“My bike was stored in my shed for around 4 years before I started to ride it again. Now I’ve been back on my bike I’m really enjoying riding it again.”

“{The} Cycle challenge reminded me that I can do it, and not only that, enjoy it!”

“Up until July of this year I hadn’t rode a bike in 15 – 20 years! So I’m really pleased that I have kept to cycling 2-3 times a week ever since.”

“It has got my husband, children and me to go on cycle rides out as a family now. It is nice to get fresh air and exercise. “

“Had my cycle reconditioned and found that I enjoyed using it for short journeys as it was more convenient.”

“I went out to buy a bike for the challenge – it’s something I’d been meaning to do for a while but I hadn’t got round to it…the challenge was the push I needed!”

“We now have a child seat & helmet for my daughter and it’s lovely for us to go for a bike ride as a family.”

“Because it made me feel much better afterwards. I also realised that it took me no longer to ride to work than it would do to get  the car out, drive it, park it etc in addition to the cost of the petrol.”

“The main reason is that not only did I get on my bike, my husband and two children did too. So family bike rides on Sunday will be my main reason. I will also cycle to work. This will keep me fit and save on petrol.”

“Because I found the cycling experience a very enjoyable one.  I also am able to get out and about Swindon a lot more and quickly as I was previously walking to places.  Lastly, it has become part of my fitness routine.”

“To justify the cost of my bike bought during the cycle challenge,(I hadn’t cycled for over 17 years) I will need to continue riding at least 1 day per week, more if I can manage it!”

“My daughter enjoys riding her bike and i had forgotten how much fun it can be.”

“The cycle challenge has made me realise that cycling is fun and good for you!”

“Mainly because my kids will make me do it & now that they know I can ride a bike they wil pester the hell out of me.”

“I cycled with my children and found the experience enjoyable”

“I got it out of the pile of stuff in the garage making it more accessible”

“During challenge cycled to places that I use to regularly drive to, and found didn’t take as long as expected.”

“Because i enjoyed it more than i thought i would, it was easier than i thought and i like the idea of keeping fit and traveling to work at the same time.”

Here are some more things that participants have said about their participation in the Cycle Challenge.

The Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge went very well and exceeded even our expectations of what a Workplace Cycle Challenge could achieve.

Topline Outcomes:

• 38 Organisations took part
• 250 departments within these organisations registered
• 855 people participated

Participants:

• 161 participants hadn’t ridden a bike in over a year
• 110 – have cycled ‘maybe once or twice’ in the last year
• 122 – cycle about once a month
• 96 – cycle roughly once a week
• 135 – cycle 2-3 days a week
• 218 – cycled 4+ days a week

383 people were cycling only once a month or less before the Challenge.  This group of people is an ideal target audience who we’ve now got a relationship with and who we can now assist and encourage to cycle more often in future.

Two Week Follow-up Survey

We sent 5 different surveys out to 5 different groups of participants. This is so we could ask specific questions that were relevant to each target group, e.g. people new to cycling.

Responses from people who hadn’t cycled in over a year

1) Thinking ahead to next three months, will you be riding your bike:-

Definitely more than I did before the Challenge    52%
More than I did before the Challenge                       31%
About the same as I did before the Challenge        7%
Less than I did before the Challenge                        1%
Definitely less than I did before the Challenge       2%
I don’t know                                                                 6%

83% of people who hadn’t ridden a bike in over a year now intend to cycle more often after taking part in the Workplace Cycle Challenge.  Only 3 people said they’d cycle less (one said because they don’t own a bike, and the other two because of the weather!).

5) How likely is it that you would take part in the Challenge again if it was repeated?

Very likely           75%
Quite likely          25%
Quite unlikely      0%
Very unlikely        0%

100% of people who hadn’t cycled in over a year would take part in the Challenge again.  This shows that people did have a positive cycling experience when they took part in the Challenge.

4 Month Follow-up Survey

We’ll be doing another short survey of Participants in October to find out if people have been cycling more often after taking part in the Challenge.

Thanks to the CTC

The CTC funded the Swindon Challenge, so a big thanks to them for seeing the potential this programme has to change behaviour and get more people cycling.

Want a Summary Report?

If you’d like a summary report giving more details and stats from the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge then send Thomas an email and he’ll email a report to you: thomas@getmorepeoplecycling.com

This week we’ve received even more positive feedback from participants of the Swindon Cycle Challenge.

Hi Tom,


Thanks for organising a great challenge! We usually run bike week events but your local challenge proved a much better way to get people onto bikes. I’m really keen to promote cycling as a way of getting around so will be watching your blog for furthe developments.

I’ve been quite entertained by it all actually. I offered my road bike to people to have a go, and some of the expressions and comments you get from people when they see the 25mm, slick tyres are quite fun. But generally it’s got people talking about cycling a LOT here, and 4 new people had a go, which is great!

Ross

——

Up until the challenge I hadn’t ridden a bike for well over a year.

I did actually enjoy the bike ride – its funny how easily you forget how much pleasure it brings

I am now glad to say that I have bought a bike and am planning on using it a lot more.

Regards,

Jackie

——

Tom

This was a great thing to do – and was exceptionally well done!

Many, many thanks!

Mark (keen cyclist-commuter)

——

I’m so pleased to have taken part in this challenge. I live in Chippenham, and for months have been wondering ‘could I, could I possibly…’ and the challenge promted me to give it a go. Of course, having done the journey I realised that it really is no trouble at all – in fact it’s a pleasure! Due to time constraints however, I can only realistically do it once a week (possibly twice), in the summer. But am now considering getting the train to Swindon, & then to cycle up to Halcrow. I do prefer to cycle the complete route though – it’s just easier to get on the bike and ride, isn’t it? And who knows, maybe cycling is the winter, in the dark won’t be so bad after all.

I’ve also taken advantage of the cycle scheme to order myself a super new road bike, and look forward to that arriving.

Anyway, the bug has well and truly bitten!

Best wishes, and thanks,

Jo

——

Thanks. I did actually enjoy it (and have continued!). I was surprised at how good the cycle tracks in our local area are.

Adie

——

Hi Thomas,
Looks like the Challenge was a great success for you, so well done for
that. You did a great job organising it all, & the website was really
good.

We really enjoyed taking part, so hopefully there’ll be another one
at some point that we can be part of. The bike racks downstairs were
nearly full up, which was a great sign that lots of people were giving
cycling a go.

I’ll keep logging my mile on the website – nice to see the mileage building up.

Have a good weekend!
Cheers
Joy

Once again these types of comments really help to add colour to the numbers behind the Challenge which demonstrate statistically that this programme gets more people cycling.

Read more comments people have made about the Challenge in an earlier post.

We’ve managed to get some pretty good media coverage in Swindon to promote the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge.

Radio

Brunel FM covered us three times a day over the two weeks of the Challenge at 8:40am, 12:40pm and 5:40pm. They gave coverage such as this brief radio update.

They have also done four interviews with us so far including this radio interview that went to air the day after the Challenge:

So how did we get this pretty sweet deal?

1. Add value to their business – We were able to offer them something new and Swindon specific to talk about which helps keep their radio shows fresh, interesting and relevant to their audience. The Swindon Challenged involved 38 organisations which collectively employ over 25,000 people in Swindon. We informally gave them exclusivity for radio coverage of the Challenge. We put their logo on the website. We encouraged Challenge participants to tune in to Brunel FM and listen to updates on how the Challenge is going.
2. Make it easy – We emailed them updates that they could easily read out on air. We gave them human interest stories.

Newspaper

Similar lessons can be learned when working with newspapers. We’ve had three articles in the Swindon Advertiser (the main local paper in Swindon) including this article.

1. Add value to their business – The Challenge is a relevant story to many of their readers (17% of Swindon’s population was employed by the 38 organisations involved)
2. We wrote good media releases with assistance from the CTC that could easily be turned into good newspaper articles.
3. We took interesting photos and sent these to the paper (rather than them having to send a photographer out).  Interesting photos help make the paper more interesting to readers.

Newspapers often have a policy of not publishing articles based on press releases unless you spend some money with them on advertising space. So the CTC did purchase an advert space to promote the Challenge on and in return the paper wrote an article on the Challenge.

That might seem a little greedy of newspapers to operate like that, but the ad didn’t cost a great deal and they’ve continued to publish all our subsequent press releases without us needing to purchase any further ad space.

In Summary

Keep in mind that it’s an exchange when working with the media. They can help add value to your business if you can help add value to theirs.

Below is some of the feedback we’ve received from participants who took part in the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge:

I love reading this type of feedback. Evaluations and statistics can give you the hard facts to say that a programme works, but it’s these kind of comments that bring this data, and the Challenge itself, to life.

Read more feedback here

The Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge is a fun, free competition designed to get more people cycling.

Organisations and departments in Swindon UK will compete to see who can get the most staff to hop on a bike and give cycling a go.

People only need to cycle for at least 10 minutes or 1 mile for their participation to count. They can ride wherever they feel comfortable, at any point over the two week Challenge period (Monday 14 July to Sunday 27 July 2008).

It’s all about encouraging people to experience for themselves how much fun cycling can be and to experience what it’s actually like to ride a bike (as opposed to what they perceive it’s like to ride a bike).

The Challenge is a fun way of getting an existing network of cyclists to encourage their colleagues to hop on a bike and have some fun cycling as part of the Challenge. This is a great first step to then encouraging these people to start cycling.

This workplace cycle challenge is a behavioural change programme which is effective at encouraging more people to take up cycling. It is also proven to encourage people who cycle recreationally to start cycling for transport purposes.

The Challenge is being funded by the CTC – The UK’s national cyclists’ organisation.  The Challenge is one of the CTC’s Cycling Champions projects which has been funded by Big Lottery.

See the Swindon Cycle Challenge website for more details on the Challenge.

It’s going to do great things for cycling in Swindon.

The Bike Wise Business Battle – New Zealand

The Bike Wise Business Battle is a behaviour change program which has been successful at encouraging more people to take up cycling.

In 2007, 505 businesses and 10,000 people participated. 25% of participants either never bike or bike only a few times a year. As these people were the target audience of the programme getting 2,684 ‘non-cyclists’ to experience what it’s like to ride a bike is an great result.

Follow up research of the 2006 programme indicated that 25% of these ‘non-cyclists’ continued to bike more regularly after the Battle. 54% have consciously elected to cycle rather than use a car.

Find out more about this Workplace Cycle Challenge

The ultimate aim of cycling promotion is to change people’s behaviour so that they choose to cycle more in future. The key to changing people’s cycling behaviour is to change their existing perceptions, attitudes and beliefs that they hold towards cycling.

As long as the environment is then conducive to the new behaviour (eg. there is a safe space for cyclists on the road) you will achieve behaviour change.

Advertising is a form of promotion which can only go so far to achieving a change in people’s cycling behaviour. While advertising may be able to change perceptions about cycling by making it appear cool, desirable, good for you and the environment, it will have a hard time challenging and changing all the other beliefs and attitudes people have towards cycling. For instance the negative beliefs that biking is hardwork, scary or sweaty will not be challenged sufficiently by advertising alone.

The best way to change people’s attitudes and beliefs towards biking is to simply get them on a bike. I think this is the fastest way to breakdown people’s past negative beliefs about cycling, and create new positive beliefs and attitudes towards it.

Once people experience what cycling is actually like (as opposed to what they ‘perceive’ or imagine cycling is like) they find themselves saying, “Hey, this isn’t so bad after all. It’s actually quite easy to ride a bike, and it’s fun! I could do this more often in future”.

If your aim is to encourage more people to cycle then a great first step is to get as many people as you can who don’t usually bike to hop on a bike and give it a go for 10 minutes. For most people it is not a big ask to get on a bike and have some fun.

Making this 10 minute ride a fun and positive experience they can do with friends, family or colleagues is an ideal way to instill some new positive attitudes towards biking and therefore influence people’s future behaviour. This is exactly what The Bike Wise Business Battle achieved in New Zealand.

Encouraging people to experience what it is actually like to ride a bike is, in my opinion, the best way to promote cycling, and encourage more people to take up cycling.

That’s what I think. What about you?