Promoting Bicycle Commuting

How does an organization promote more of it's staff to commute in something other than one person in one car?  Well, we experimented with trying to make some sort of a reward and party system.  The idea was simple: build up a collection of "things" until a threshold is reached, then throw a party for everyone.

We got two fishbowls and filled one with pennies. (We wanted to use links from a bike chain, but it turned into too much of a hassle to get enough.)
For each trip to or from work, if you ride your bike, take mass transit, or car pool, you move one penny from the source to the destination.  When all of the pennies were moved into the destination, we through a pizza party.  All staff were invited - not just those who were moving the pennies.
We then started all over.  About half way through the second round, people stopped moving pennies.  After several months, the whole thing went away.

Why did this effort fail?

Well...

First off, I'm not sure it was a total failure.  We have a group of dedicated bike commuters, which is pretty good for a hilly location in the rainy Pacific Northwest!  However....

One thing we did wrong was the party.  We invited everyone to it, but we didn't do a very good job of explaining what was being celebrated. One group of folks were having a small meeting nearby - they came and got some pizza, then went back to their meeting - not much of a chance for interaction there!

The real problem with this approach, though, is that it was putting the burden on those who had already modified their behavior in  positive manner.  Those who car pooled or rode bikes or mass transit were the ones who had to take some action (be it minimal) and move a penny.  One day someone put a note in the jar that said "Why bother?" rather than moving the coins.  It seems that maybe the people who need to "take action" are those who's behavior we want to modify?!

An example of this is from a colleague who visited us from a working farm/ ee center outside of Hong Kong.  When someone there goes anywhere that involves an air flight, they have to personally plant some trees from their nursery into the field that offset their share of the carbon emitted by the flight.

Back to IslandWood, it's hard to out that burden on our fellow staff members.  Some live far away, not all feel physically fit enough to ride bikes, the weather is often cold dark and wet, and others have strange hours that make it hard to get everyone to change their behavior. Is it worth making someone feel guilty everyday if they live 25 miles away and we have no good public transportation options?  Seems to me that rather than winning them over, we'd be doing the opposite.

For now, my personal solution is to lead by example.  I used to ride a recumbent bike so that kids would see it and maybe talk about it and question their assumptions about bikes, etc.  Now I just try to make it visible that biking to work is a viable option.  Maybe if - I every find a sugar daddy - someday I'll get my current dream bike that not only raises the issue of getting around, but how can that be sustainable.  (Check out the Pandurban Bamboo bikes at Renovo in Portland, OR)