Get More People Cycling

The Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge

Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge was the UK pilot of a CTC Challenge for Change behavioural change programme designed to encourage more people to cycle, more often. It was implemented in Swindon in July 2008.

What is it?

The Swindon Cycle Challenge involved organisations, and the departments within them, competing over a two-week Challenge period. The objective was to see which workplaces were able to encourage the most staff to ride a bike for 10 minutes or more. The organisations and departments that got the highest percentage of staff to cycle for each size category won an award. Incentives were also used to encourage individual participation.

Topline Outcomes:

38 Organisations took part
250 departments within these organisations registered
914 people participated – 310 of whom were ‘non-cyclists’ before the Challenge
49,190 miles were cycled – the equivalent of cycling twice around the world
5,407 cycle trips were made, 3,540 of which were for transport purposes
Approximately 15,174 kg of CO2 was saved by people who cycled for transport

Participants:

191 hadn’t ridden a bike in over a year
97 had ridden about once or twice in the last 12 months
130 were riding about once or twice a month
97 were riding about once a week
139 were riding 2-3 days a week, and
228 were riding 4+ days a week

In total 418 people were cycling only once a month or less.  We now have an ongoing relationship with this group of people, an ideal audience for us to continue to encourage to cycle more often.

Objectives

The aims of the Challenge were to:

1. Encourage people who did not cycle to take up cycling
2. Encourage people who were cycling occasionally (1- 4 times a month) to start cycling more regularly
3. Encourage people who were not yet cycling to work to start cycling to work
4. Raise awareness about the benefits of cycling by word of mouth, through local media and via the internal communications channels of the participating organisations.

The primary target audience were non-cyclists. The main objective of the Challenge was to encourage 200 non-cyclists to ride a bike as a result of their participation in the Challenge. (A non-cyclist was defined as someone who either had not ridden a bike in over a year or who had only ridden a bike once or twice in the previous 12 months.)

What’s the theory behind it?

A Workplace Cycle Challenge is an ideal way to introduce more people to cycling. Instead of promoting cycling through traditional methods, such as advertising and information on the benefits of cycling, a significantly more effective way to get people cycling is to get them to actually experience what it is like to ride a bike.

Giving people a fun 10 minute cycling experience quickly breaks down negative feelings towards cycling, replacing them with new, positive attitudes.  When people experience what it is actually like to cycle (as opposed to what they perceive it is like to cycle) they find themselves saying:

“Hey, this isn’t so bad after all. Cycling isn’t as scary or as hard as I thought. It’s actually quite easy to ride a bike, and it’s fun!”

This is an ideal first step to encourage more people to start cycling.

Evaluation

To evaluate the results of the programme participant surveys were carried out at baseline to find out about participants’ previous cycling behaviour; two-weeks post intervention to discover what barriers’ participants perceived to cycling more often in the future and to explore intended future cycling behaviours; and three-months post intervention to explore any changes that participants had made to their cycling behaviour since the Challenge.

Measurable Results

The Swindon Cycle Challenge was effective at:

1. Getting more people to start cycling

Of the respondents who reported at baseline that they had ridden a bike in more than a year prior to the Challenge, at the three-month follow-up survey:

• Ninety-three percent (93%) reported riding a bike since taking part in the Challenge;
• Thirty-two percent (32%) reported they have been cycling once a week or more since the Challenge; and
• Fifty-five percent (55%) can now be classed as either occasional cyclists (37%) or regular cyclists (18%).

2. Getting occasional cyclists to start cycling regularly

Of the respondents who before the Challenge were cycling 1-3 times each month:

• 38% at the three-month follow-up survey reported an increase in their cycling and were now cycling once a week or more and 21% could be classed as regular cyclists after the intervention.
• Of those respondents who were cycling once a week prior to the Challenge, approximately one third (30%) reported an increase in their cycling and at the three-month follow-up survey could be classed as regular cyclists.

3. Getting more people to cycle for transport purposes

• Twenty percent (20%) of respondents who were not cycling at all before the Challenge reported cycling to work once a week or more three-months after the intervention.
• Twenty-three percent (23%) of respondents who were cycling to work 1-3 times a month increased their cycling to 2-3 or 4+ times each week to work three-months after the intervention.
• Twenty-two percent (22%) of respondents who were formerly cycling once a week to work reported an increase in their cycling to 2-3 or 4+ times each week to work.

4. Increasing people’s level of physical activity

• Forty-nine percent (49%) of respondents who were physically active on two days per week before the Challenge, reported being physically active four or more days each week three-months following the Challenge. Furthermore, 21% of these respondents reported getting the recommended level of physical activity each week (30 minutes a day on five or more days each week) three-months after the Challenge.
• Eighty-seven percent (87%) of respondents who were physically active three or less days each week before the Challenge reported increasing their level of physical activity since taking part in the Challenge.
• Thirty-two percent (32%) of respondents who were physically active three days a week before the Challenge reported getting their recommended level of physical activity each week (30 minutes a day on five or more days each week) three months after the intervention.

Value

The Challenge met the objectives set at the outset and exceeded expectations. It was a highly valuable programme at actively engaging people and encouraging them to think about their behaviour. Comments from participants showed that it helped give people the push they needed to get their bike out and to get into the habit of cycling. It helped them realise how fun and enjoyable cycling can be.

As well as encouraging more people to cycle more often, the Challenge also had a number of other benefits including:

• Database of cyclists – It created a database of cyclists and ‘non-cyclists’ that could be used to continue the behavioural change process and used to implement follow-up interventions at groups to help them become more confident cyclists.
• Puts a spotlight on cycling – The large number of employees cycling during the Challenge served to highlight cycling related issues within participating workplaces. Creating more cycle friendly workplaces was a positive side effect of running the programme.

Due to the success of this programme, it has since been run in other towns and cities – see a list of towns here.

Challenge website: www.swindoncyclechallenge.org.uk

Contact

If you work to get more people cycling and are interested in finding out more about the benefits of this programme, then please feel free to contact us.