Unique #CycleToWork project gets 1st winner

Which Bengaluru company has the most number of employees cycling to work and the most rides?

Ranked by a unique leaderboard, the toppers will be rewarded on January 24 as part of the unique #CycleToWork project launched on World Car-Free Day.

Kicked off by the city’s first bicycle mayor Sathya Sankaran, the project ranks companies on the basis of the number of registered riders and the trips done. Any private company or team of employees keen on cycling to work can register.

Cisco Systems India’s Cessna facility has topped the first quarter (October, November and December 2018) with 397 rides by 64 registered riders, edging out Quintype Technologies India, with 496 rides by 15 riders. Qualcomm India’s Outer Ring Road facility has finished third with 179 rides by 26 registered riders.

“Kilometres don’t count towards ranking,” Sankaran explains. “The clock started on October 1, 2018. The key is to encourage more people to make more trips even if it means they do fewer kilometres. I will be incentivising the top three companies on the leaderboard with awards every quarter.”

The initiative’s objectives are clear: “Use technology to track and measure the number of people cycling to work and the trips they make; Make this data transparent to authorities so everyone knows there are cyclists on the street and where they go so that infrastructure can be provided to them.”

The third intention is to bring together cycling products and services ecosystem so that the riders can benefit from it.

But why the emphasis on only work commute? Sankaran elaborates: “Most of the peak congestion is a result of the mode choices we make for going to work. Traffic is a collective action problem so the programme gamifies the process using a leaderboard at a company level rather than the individual level to incentivise collective effort.”

Till date, 377 riders from 106 companies have signed up for the #CycleToWork project, completing 4,198 rides and covering 37,875 km. Mapping the rides, it has been deduced that 52% of the registered companies are located along the Outer Ring Road.

This information, says Sankaran, can help in data-driven decision-making on where to provide infrastructure, where to lay a cycling track. This, he adds, is the project’s biggest advantage.