Last week, Le Monde reported on a new Plan Vélo announced by the French Minister of Transport, Frédéric Cuvillier. The plan, in fact, seems quite modest, but it includes an interesting idea. The government wants to encourage employers to offer a financial incentive to employees who bike to work.
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Under the program, Employers who sign up would pay bicycle commuting employees 25 cents (a quarter of a euro) per kilometer travelled. So, for example, someone whose round-trip commute was 10 km per day would receive 2.50 euros, or 12.50 euros a week and 50 euros a month.
It’s not a lot, but if I were still working and lived in France (mixed emotions there), it would probably get me to ride to work. I can think of several nice things I could buy with an extra 50 euros a month. And maybe even a new bike every couple of years.
The incentive to the employers would be a reduction of certain employee-related payments currently made to the government. The Transport Ministry estimates receipts from these payments would drop by about 110 million euros, an amount representing the public cost of the bicycle commuting proposal. In addition to the incentive proposal, the Plan Vélo would encourage local governments to take advantage of a “tool box” of measures to facilitate bicycle use in urban areas.
As a measure to do something serious to reduce automobile use and carbon emissions, this Plan Vélo seems terribly limited. In 2012, the Sarkozy government announced a similar plan with a target of having bicycles account for 10 percent of commuting trips by 2020. According to the Le Monde article, bicycle commuting currently accounts for just 2 percent of such trips. The Hollande government doesn't seem to be proposing any targets. Still, the financial incentive idea is intriguing. Assuming the government goes ahead and adopts the program, I’ll be interested to see how many employers sign up and what the response is among employees.
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