Public Works: Getting Paid to Bike to Work

Commuters in France will earn 25 cents per km for cycling to work. Here's why that should happen in Toronto, too.

By Peter Goffin

France is getting serious about bicycle commuting. Last week, the French government kicked off a six-month pilot project that involves paying people 25 Euro cents per kilometre to bike to work. Twenty French employers, with a collective 10,000 employees, have volunteered to participate. At the end of 2014, the government will evaluate how many people took up bike commuting, what type of transportation these converts gave up in favour of cycling, and what kinds of accommodations employers made for bike commuters. If all has gone well, the scheme may be renewed and expanded for 2015.

This is only France’s most recent gambit to reduce car traffic and promote alternative methods of commuting. Paris, in particular, has been trying to brand itself as a bike city. The capital’s Bixi-style bike-rental program arrived on the scene in 2007 and has grown into one of the largest in the world, with more than 20,000 bikes available for rent from 1,800 24-hour stations. Paris has also been creating hundreds of kilometres of bike lanes and mixed-use, bike-friendly routes around the city. It’s even experimented with allowing cyclists to ignore red lights on roads with speed limits under 30 km/h. And, on March 17 this year, the French government banned cars and motorbikes with even-numbered licence plates from driving in Paris. After one day, government officials declared that the ban had achieved its goal of reducing air pollution, and traffic was allowed to return to normal.