Check out this great story from TreeHugger.com that I came across during my morning blog-feed reading:
Norway’s Public Roads Administration (southern region) is giving its own employees a vacation subsidy if they travel to work on their bicycles. For each week or five-day period that an employee rides a bike – or walks – to and from the office, Statens Vegvesen will compensate with four hours of vacation time. When the cyclist rides an entire year to work, that’s equivalent to an extra week of (paid) vacation. The Administration points to increased health benefits to cyclists, but also is using the incentive to decrease road congestion.
In Denmark meanwhile, the Socialist Folkparty, one of the country’s
larger political groups, is proposing to offer cyclists almost two Danish crowns per commuting kilometer ($.36). Who knows how far the proposal may get: cycle-happy Copenhagen is considering banning heavy trucks from the inner city and is installing sensor-driven lights to alert vehicles to cyclists, but deputy mayor for environmental issues was criticized (though the Lady Mayor seems supportive) for his proposal to remove cars from one of the city’s major arteries, Nørrebrogade, to make more room for cyclists and pedestrians…
What would it take to get American companies who are serious about their impact on the environment (not to mention those that care less) to subscribe to a similar methodology?
I work for a sizeable financial brokerage firm and they have a “Trip-Reduction Program” which is merely a drawing each month for a $15 Target gift card. To qualify, you must use alternative transportation (carpool, vanpool, bus, bike) once a week for the entire month. They mainly “push” the carpooling thing, and by that I mean they have a poster in the break room. To my knowledge, there is one other person in my office (out of 200+) who does a multi-modal bike-bus commute…and yet I have never won the TRP drawing.
I am glad that my company at least makes some effort to encourage alternative transportation, but they certainly have a long ways to go. I also know that not all companies in Norway are offering a program like the one described in the TreeHugger article, but still, I cannot help but feel that America is years behind something like that.
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