Ada County Encourages Cycling with Employee Tune-up

Ada County rolled out a bicycle tune-up program for its employees to coincide with and support the “May in Motion” event organized locally by ACHD’s Commuterride. The program was designed to target employees who own a bicycle but don’t use it as often as they would like. Its goal was to provide employees with an incentive to try bicycle commuting.

The Ada County Employee Transportation Coordinator and George’s Cycles arranged a deal in which George’s would provide a free basic bicycle tune-up during May to Ada County employees. In return, Ada County would reimburse George’s Cycles for each tune-up at a slightly discounted rate. To participate, employees would be required to present a coupon to George’s, available through the Transportation Coordinator on a first-come first-served basis. Several employees had to be turned away after all one hundred coupons had been claimed.

By month’s end, 50 of the 100 project participants had redeemed their coupons. The Employee Transportation Coordinator polled those 50 people and received 30 responses. Of those 30 respondents, 14 had done no bicycling but 16 reported having commuted a combined total of 1,458 miles by bicycle during May.

Since the poll didn’t address each rider’s past riding habits, we cannot be certain about how many people our program encouraged to ride more versus how many it supported in their normal bicycle commuting routine. Generally speaking though, this program was viewed as a success; and we are discussing the possibility of re-running the tune-up program during next year’s May in Motion. Many changes to the program are possible, though. It has been proposed that we add a small charge per coupon in the hopes that this will discourage participants from requesting coupons but never redeeming them.