About a month ago, there was a pretty sweet article featured in the Dispatch (posted on CU here) about “Ecobucks”. I’ve been thinking about it some more as I off and on consider biking again. I used to ride pretty regularly for fun and exercise, but not so much for actual transportation.
Simply put, the Ecobucks program is a company incentive offer to employees who opt to utilize alternative transportation. For every day an employee rides a bike or walks to work, they get a dollar. For every day they carpool or ride the bus, they get fifty cents. Certainly not a large sum of money (especially if you work at a law firm downtown) but I think it could build some watercooler buzz in most offices and play upon the competitive spirit between coworkers. Usually all it takes is a small bit of incentive to get people interested in trying something new.
What I haven’t figured out yet, is how the program is enforced. I’m sure it’s probably easy to spot the bikers and bus-riders in a small company of 25 people, but how could someone larger like Nationwide or LimitedBrands run a program like this?
If anyone has tried this out and can share some insight, I’d love to hear about it.
it’s on the honor system. Doug Morgan was at a Bike-To-Work Week planning meeting today and that’s what he said.
That makes sense for a small company, but I wonder if there’s some easy way to keep tabs on it for a large company where it would be easier for people to abuse the system.
I think most large companies subsidize employee parking so that rates are below market. Most companies also offer some level of subsidy for COTA monthly passes.
It makes more sense for them to lift the parking subsidies and add more $$$ to their COTA subsidies. They could also use the extra parking money to invest in bike infrastructure (showers, lockers, racks, etc…).
I have actually been pondering this for sometime….how to get the Eco-bucks system to work within a larger institution: Ohio State University for example. Perhaps the key is getting it started within smaller departments/schools/offices/sectors of the institution as a pilot program. Although it is an honor system in the general sense, there could be one person who is assigned tracking responsibility in a spreadsheet or on a calendar which is visible to everyone in the department. I think the calendar approach would serve as an accountability measure, since everyone would see the names of folks who say they are biking, walking or busing to work.