City's Bicycle Mayor throws up Cycle to Work Challenge

To encourage bicycling as a form of commuting, Bengaluru’s Bicycle Mayor Sathya Sankaran is set to introduce a ‘Cycle to Work’ challenge from October.

A pilot version of this challenge is set to start on September 22, which is the World Car Free Day.

The registration is open for any private company or a team of employees of the company who are enthusiastic about commuting to their workplace on a cycle.

Speaking to DH, Sankaran said: “The main purpose of this initiative is to track the number of people in the city using the bicycle to commute to their workplace. Interested companies or a group of employees can register through an app that would be launched very soon.”

“A month’s time will be given to register and at the end of six months, the team with the highest number of people commuting to work by cycle, with the highest distance covered, will
be presented with a trophy,” he said.

“If a company is not interested in registering, employees from the company can form a team and register themselves. There will be a mentor chosen to guide the
participants throughout the challenge,” said Sankaran.

The initiative aims to find out the number of cyclists, the popular routes in the city and the average distance covered by a cyclist.

The data collected will be presented to the authorities concerned to take up a bicycle infrastructure project across the city.

“The data will be shared with the policymakers, where they can go ahead with the bicycle infrastructure in the city like cycling lanes and docking stations in the most commonly used routes,” he said.