Italian town moves forward with pilot project that pays residents to commute by bike, not by car
A town in Italy has figured out an easy way to convince residents to commute to work by bike, rather than by car: by paying them.
It’s pretty easy to convince anyone who makes two wheels their passion to commute to work by bike, instead of by car. A town in Italy, however, has figured out a way to make it even easier, particularly for those who may have never otherwise considered it:
By paying them.
In Massarosa, Italy, a municipality just north of Pisa, a pilot scheme put forward by city councillors will offer riders the equivalent of25 cents per kilometre traveled, with a monthly cap of 50 euros. The only requirement? That they take two wheels to work instead of four, leaving their cars, if they have them, tucked away in their garages. With the sums offered by councillors in Massarosa, commuters who swap their cars for bikes could net up to 600 euros in a given year — about $850 Canadian.
Even if they start riding with a bit of a beat-up commuter bike, a year of keeping it up, by those figures, could earn newly-committed cyclists a new pair of wheels by the end of those twelve months. Not a bad pay-out for making the switch.
Funding for the ambitious scheme by the town of Massarosa is drawn from traffic fines collected, and the project itself is an innovative one. During the next twelve months, the pilot initiative will be given a test ride of sorts. Facilitated by the use of a smartphone app, which records the distance traveled each day, the mobile system calculates in hard numbers a cyclist’s total riding and the income accrued. The money collected by the city through traffic fines is mandated by law to be invested in road safety, and that, councillors say, is both the spirit and the ultimate objective of the pilot project.
“The Bike to Work scheme will offer incentives to citizens to ensure the area becomes more liveable,” said Stefano Natali, who emphasized that the reduced number of cars and trucks on Massarosa’s streets will mean an uptick in public health, and certainly quality of living.
Local bike advocates — notably the Italian Federation Friends of the Bicycle, or FIAB, one of the scheme’s authors — hope that other European municipalities will follow in the small Italian town’s lead.
