France surrenders to practicality, pays people to bike
http://grist.org/list/france-surrenders-to-practicality-pays-people-to-bike/
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Adding to the list of terrible French ideas that includes the fry, the metric system, and, fittingly if arguably, the bicycle, comes an idea to get more people to ride said bikes. It turns out clean air, energy independence, and a healthy body just arent enough for most people, so, according to Reuters, France is going to try paying people to ride:
French Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier, noting that commuting using public transport and cars is already subsidized, said that if results of the test are promising, a second experiment on a larger scale will be done.
The ministry hopes that the bike-to-work incentive scheme will boost bike use for commuting by 50 percent from 2.4 percent of all work-home journeys, or about 800 million km, with an average distance of 3.5 km per journey.
In Belgium, where a tax-free bike incentive scheme has been in place for more than five years, about 8 percent of all commutes are on bicycles. In the flat and bicycle-friendly Netherlands, it is about 25 percent, cycling organizations say.