We've teamed up with CTC and Cyclescheme to invite 20,000 businesses to take part in the first National Workplace Cycle Challenge. The Love to Ride Challenge is a competition between organisations across the UK to see who can get the most staff to try riding a bike.
In 2015, the Challenge will run from 8-28 June and will be a major annual event in the cycling calendar. The aim is to get as many people as possible to ride a bike and log their trip during the Challenge period. Organisations will compete on local and national league tables to see who can get the highest proportion of their staff to ride for ten minutes; they will be able to compete between offices in different locations around the UK and against similarly sized companies.
It’s free for organisations and individuals to take part and there are six size categories for companies and a range of individual and team prizes to be won. Local Authorities can sign up to support and boost participation in their area, whatever budget they have to promote cycling.
We want every LA to be able to join in, so we've drawn up a range of options from fully bespoke programmes supported with local Challenge Managers, to a Freemium package with no frills.
Love to Ride, CTC and Cyclescheme together have 157 years’ experience of promoting cycling. CTC, the national cycling charity, has 67,000 members and was formed in 1878 when cycling was emerging as a mass mode of transport and leisure pursuit. We've run Workplace Cycle Challenges on three continents and engaged 110,000 people.
Over the last 12 years we have developed a unique behaviour change model and accompanying website and mobile app. Cyclescheme started 9 years ago and has provided over 450,000 bicycles to commuters through a tax-free benefit scheme. We recruit ‘Challenge Champions’ – regular cyclists who encourage their colleagues to try riding – to promote our Challenges in businesses and organisations.
John Cooper, Sony Mobile’s Champion for the London Cycle Challenge 2014, said, ‘It was fantastic to find a competition which wasn't about riding marathon distances, but about participation and team effort’.
Phillip Darnton, Chair of the Cycle Rail Working Group, had this to say about the Love to Ride Challenge: ‘Cycling to work or to and from the station is quick, convenient, reliable, cheap, healthy, and helps with congestion and pollution. The hard part is getting started, which is why the National Cycle Challenge is such a great idea: it’s a fantastic way to get people on bikes with their friends and colleagues’.
From our partners
Laurence Boon, Marketing Manager for Cyclescheme: ‘We are very excited to be supporting Love to Ride. Their focus on behaviour change and encouraging a modal shift in commuting habits is very closely aligned to what we are trying to achieve here at Cyclescheme’.
CTC’s Marketing Director, Matt Mallinder: 'We’re delighted to be joining Love to Ride and Cyclescheme in this initiative. We call on all of the UK to take to their bikes in 2015. Through this partnership and the Love to Ride Challenge, we hope to inspire and support thousands to realise the health, economic and wellbeing benefits of cycling’.
