Scheme of the Month - Workplace Cycle Challenge, Swindon and Colchester
The Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge aimed to encourage people who hadn’t cycled at all or very little in a long time to get on a bike and cycle to work or just hop on a bike for a period of time and enjoy themselves. Giving people a short positive cycling experience is a good first step to changing people’s perceptions towards cycling and to encouraging them start cycling again. Run over a two week period in July 2008, the Challenge also encouraged those people who are currently cycling recreationally to give cycling to work a go.
41 organisations and 913 people took part. 306 of these participants either never usually cycle or only cycle once or twice a year. 5,283 trips and 49,190 miles were cycled over the two weeks of the Challenge with 3,540 of these trips being for transport purposes.
An evaluation of the programme was carried out in November 2008 to assess the long term behaviour change impact of the programme. After taking part, 82% of participants now intend to cycle more often.
More recently the project was also run with employers in Colchester. Here 405 people took part and 18,023 miles were cycle. That’s the equivalent of cycling from Colchester to Beijing and back. 34 businesses took part in the challenge.
The Challenge was run as part of the CTC Cycling Champions project, in conjunction with the Challenge 4 Change partnership. For more information visit the Results page of the Swindon Cycle Challenge.
For more details please contact Simone Makepeace at CTC
