Snow may be on the ground now, but spring is around the corner. Take this opportunity to examine how your workplace is supporting bike commuters, and read on for cost-effective and high impact ideas to improve the experience for your employees.

Why biking to work is great and getting better

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of riding an electric bike to work on a well-maintained bike route, you can skip ahead to the next section because this part will be obvious. 

For the rest of us, it can be hard to realize just how much the biking experience has improved in the past five years in the US. A lot happened during the pandemic (an understatement), including a bike lane boom. While traffic was down and crews were able to work safely outside, cities built a ton of new bike lanes. Nearly every US city added dozens of miles of bike lanes: 100 miles in Denver, 115 miles in Austin, 50 miles in Pittsburgh, 43 miles in Providence. The list goes on. And most of these bike lanes build upon newer design safety standards, with buffers and full grade separation. There are simply a lot more places where it’s safe to bike.

At the same time, electric bikes have gotten a lot more reliable, lighter, and affordable. Good entry-level e-bikes start at around $1000, with cheaper options and the secondary market available, too. Many cities across the US offer rebates for e-bikes, driving the price down even further.

For the commuter who isn’t ready to commit to owning an e-bike, bike share continues to expand and improve. Most major cities, and many smaller ones, offer electric and standard bikes to rent for short trips, with new systems rolling out and expanding every year. Check out bikeshare ridership trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Now apply all of these trends on top of the fact that more than half of all trips taken in the US are under three miles – perfect biking distance.

And that employees who bike to work are less likely to develop heart disease and cancer, and in generally live longer lives. And that people who bike are happier while traveling than people who drive. And that replacing just one car trip a day with a bike trip can reduce one’s transportation-related carbon footprint by two thirds.

Sure, some people aren’t ready to bike yet, and biking may not work for every trip, but biking works for a whole heck of a lot, and is only getting better. 

So what does this mean for your employees?

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How to make it easier for employees to bike to work

We’re going to split this into three categories: facilities, culture, and financial.

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Facilities

After someone arrives at work on their bike, where do they go? Where does their bike go? Do they have to walk a long distance, leaving their bike outside in the elements? Do they have to drag their bike up and down stairs, to lock it up in an unwelcoming windowless corner? Or is there a bright, secure, accessible location ready to welcome them to work?

Key factors to consider when designing your office bike parking:

• Short and long term parking. If someone is storing their bike for the day or overnight, they need something fundamentally different than a visitor coming by for an hour. Both are important.
• Accessible. Just because someone is biking, don’t assume they’re so fit they want the challenge of dragging their bike up a flight of stairs. Bike parking should be located as closely as possible to main entrances and on the ground floor.
• Electric-ready. Offer outlets for e-bike riders (assume they’ll bring their own charger, because each bike manufacturer is different).
• Maintenance. Throw in a bike pump and a bike repair stand. Both are quite inexpensive.
• Showers. The chance to freshen up will do a lot to reassure would-be cyclists.

Check out our post from last year’s tour of office bike parking in Cambridge for more info and inspo.

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Culture

Unlike driving alone to the office, biking can be a shared experience, and many people enjoy sharing it. Bike to Work Month every May makes it easy to schedule group rides, informational sessions, and challenges to kick off the conversation after each spring thaw.

Every city celebrates Bike to Work Month differently, so check out the local organizations in your community. Many are hosted by local advocacy groups that organize events throughout the year. Some highlights:

• Philadelphia: Bike to Work or Wherever Day
• San Francisco: Bike to Wherever Day
• Chicago: Bike Month
• Boston: Bike to Work Day
• DC: Bike to Work Day

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Financial

“A really comprehensive bike commuter program is a lot less expensive than I think most people realize. Even for a university, you’re talking in the tens of thousands of dollars, not in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that’s to get the best available program on the market.” Worth Smith, founder of NEMO mobile bike repair from our interview in 2024.

When employers subsidize the costs of driving to work, shouldn’t the same be true for biking?

Even though bike benefits aren’t eligible for tax-free federal subsidy like transit and parking, many employers still choose to offer bike benefits as a tax benefit. Looking around the US, those benefits often look like:

• A stipend for owning and maintaining a personal bicycle. These typically range from $240 to $1000 a year.
• An annual membership to the local bike share program as an employee benefit. These typically cost around $120 per person per year, with bulk discounts usually available.
• Covering membership in a rental program, such as RidePanda, that will deliver a top-of-the-line bike to your employee’s door for a monthly fee.
• Membership in a mobile bike repair service, like NEMO, where available. 
• A daily cash incentive for biking to work. PeopleForBikes offers their employees $4 per ride.

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How Jawnt Can Help

Most legacy benefit providers struggle to offer bike benefits, because they’re newer and don’t fit as cleanly into the healthcare/retirement model. But bikes are the future, and modern workplaces need modern commuter benefits.

• Our platform assembles the best bike benefit providers in the business. Jawnt partners directly with bike share providers, including Lyft and Indego, to provide a smooth enrollment process and troubleshooting. We partner with RidePanda and Unagi to support bike and scooter rentals. We also partner with NEMO in Boston for mobile bike repair. Invite your employees to sign up, learn about their options, and select the benefits that best support their commute.
• The Jawnt Pass offers additional flexibility for reimbursement-based bike benefits. We get it – Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace have the best deals on used bikes, and don’t exactly provide printed receipts. Our Customer Success team works with your team to craft and implement practical, HR-friendly reimbursement policies that support riders, while shifting the burden or reviewing receipts off of your administrators.

To learn more about how your workplace can refresh its bike benefits in time for Bike Month, contact Jawnt today.