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The Palo Alto Transportation Management Association has received a federal grant to develop a new app that incentivizes workers to commute by bike to selected locations in the city.
The “Bike Love,” created in partnership with the trip activity tracker app Motion, gives bike commuters $5 per day — up to $600 a year — and pays $10 to set up the Bike Love app. It also applies to trips on electronic bikes, scooters and skateboards.
The rewards apply to trips in downtown Palo Alto and the California Avenue area and at 30 stations along the Caltrain corridor, including in Menlo Park and Mountain View. The app knows the user is at those locations using geofencing.
Within a minute of arriving at work, a $5 reward shows up on the rider’s Apple/Google Pay Virtual Visa debit card, which they can spend immediately at local shops and services. The rewards help support Palo Alto businesses.
The program is currently in a pilot phase.
“Workers are already using the app, and we are hoping to onboard 80 more users by the end of the year,” Justine Burt, executive director of the Palo Alto Transportation Management Association, said in an email.
Motion, based in the Netherlands, plans to collect anonymized data on the program that captures the number of active users, total of trips each month, distance traveled, greenhouse gas emissions savings and amount of active trips by ZIP code.
For more information about the Bike Love program and to register, visit paloaltotma.org/bikelove.
Palo Alto’s Bike Love program incentivizes workers who receive $5 a day for biking to selected locations in the city, as well as 30 Caltrain stations. Courtesy Motion.
I would suggest that bike security would help. There are daily reports of bikes being stolen around town.
Restore library hours instead! Why are we paying the commuting expenses of commuters coming to PA when they already outnumber residents 4:1??
Everything for the business community and nothing for residents is getting very old.
Bike Love is the US’s first “active first mile to transit” commute incentive program (Bike Love also rewards bike-to-downtown and bike-to-Cal-Ave). As far as bike-to-work incentives, we’ve only come across two other TMAs and 8 employers that provide bike-to-work incentives.
No PA residents were taxed to fund this program!
The City’s 2012 Bicycle + Pedestrian Transportation Plan has an unrealized goal to double bike commute trips, and Bike Love helps achieve that goal. In a carbon-neutral 2030 PA, we’re all going to be biking much more.
Caltrain has undertaken an ambitious program to increase first-mile biking to Caltrain, by installing more than 330 electronic bicycle lockers at 22 stations. Caltrain has funding for hundreds of additional e-lockers. This effort gives commuters a secure place to park their bike, increasing Bike Love’s chances of success. Pre-pandemic, Caltrain was overflowing with bikes on board trains and sometimes prevented cyclists from boarding due to full capacity. Because Palo Alto job sites typically require only a three-block walk to work from Caltrain (six blocks is about the maximum), the majority of bike-plus-Caltrain commuters will park their bike at Caltrain, rather than bring the bike on board a train.
This might be a good program but this claim seems a bit incorrect:
“No PA residents were taxed to fund this program!”
since the program seems funded (in part?) via a federal grant (tax dollars some coming from PA one would presume).
The Bike Love pilot program seeks to get drivers to start biking. The hope is once they discover biking is fun & feasible they’ll continue to choose bikes and feet over cars. Participants need not be commuters, they can be residents swapping out their local driving for biking (or e-scooting, etc) trips.
The Bike Love program was sponsored by the Palo Alto Transportation Management Authority (PATMA). The TMA is not a City agency. It is a non-profit organization made up of local businesses and institutions that provide funding for and management of transportation programs. PATMA’s mission is to reduce Single-Occupancy Vehicle trips, reduce traffic and demand for parking in the downtown and California Avenue business districts. This is why those areas are part of the geo-fenced area. Historically PATMA received most of its funding from some of the revenues from the downtown parking garages, though COVID’s shift in commute patterns may alter that funding arrangement. PATMA might explore the possibility of interested businesses sponsoring the Bike Love program to expand the area and number of people who can participate.
Reducing traffic, reducing spillover parking, reducing carbon emissions by getting people out of their cars and onto transit, bikes, and feet, and incentivizing people to shop at local businesses, these actions improve the quality of life of all Palo Alto residents, not just “the business community”.
Griping that PATMA is working to get people out of their cars and onto bikes instead of expanding library hours is under-informed, but now you are better informed. PATMA’s mission is transportation related, and there are other organizations whose mission is to support libraries, etc. If libraries are your thing, head on over to http://www.fopal.org... The myriad mission-driven groups and passionate people of Palo Alto each pull their individual colored threads to collectively weave (and mend) the city’s beautiful tapestry.