Ideas & motivation for a switch to the bicycle

The inten­tion of the Nation­al Cycling Plan 2020 (NRVP 2020) is to moti­vate more peo­ple to cycle to work. The goal is to make cycling more attrac­tive and safer and to strength­en the so-called envi­ron­men­tal alliance of pub­lic trans­port, walk­ing and cycling as a whole.

Heil­bronn Uni­ver­si­ty was involved in the NRVP 2020 from 2018 to 2021 with the research project “Pendler­RatD” led by Pro­fes­sor Jana Heimel. The goal of the research project was to encour­age com­muters who dri­ve to work to switch to bicy­cles. A plat­form was pro­grammed to sup­port the test per­sons dur­ing the entire process.
This project was fund­ed by the BMVI, the Dieter Schwarz Foun­da­tion, Lan­des­bank Baden-Würt­tem­berg (LBBW), Bosch e‑Bike and the AOK, and was active­ly accom­pa­nied and sup­port­ed by more than 30 orga­ni­za­tions from the Stuttgart and Heil­bronn region.

“The poten­tial of the bicy­cle as a main­stay of the trans­port turn­around is huge. Some­one needs to aggres­sive­ly take on the role of motivator.”

- Pro­fes­sor Heimel of Heil­bronn University

In total, more than 100 test sub­jects par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sec­ond pilot phase in 2020. The vast major­i­ty of the par­tic­i­pants* were equipped with a ped­elec for sev­en months and also received inten­sive sup­port dur­ing this phase. Sat­is­fac­tion with regard to the envi­ron­ment, time, health and costs is high­er among cyclists than among all oth­er road users. The major­i­ty of the sur­veyed dri­vers would like to cycle to work. Over 51% of respon­dents said they would.

What keeps the test cyclists from not using a bicycle on a daily basis?

Coro­na and the asso­ci­at­ed pos­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing in a home office were the main rea­sons in the sec­ond pilot phase why trips to work were not tak­en. In addi­tion, inap­pro­pri­ate route chains and weath­er were cit­ed as gen­er­al rea­sons for not using a bicycle.
Dur­ing both pilot phas­es, the fol­low­ing and main results were obtained. A total dis­tance of 120,586 km was cycled by all test per­sons. This cor­re­sponds to 2.8 times around the world. Approx­i­mate­ly 19 tons of CO2 were saved in the process. On aver­age, each of the par­tic­i­pants com­mut­ed 34 km per day and thus spent 78 min­utes per day on the bicy­cle. More than 85% of the test cyclists want to con­tin­ue com­mut­ing by bike.

Now the project is enter­ing the next phase. The research project will become a nation­wide roll­out of the first phase by mid-2024. Results from Pendler­RatD will now be rolled out across Ger­many in a three-stage process. To this end, pilots will be orga­nized with a total of at least 200 test cyclists. This year, the pilot will start in the south­ern Ger­man states. In par­al­lel, the Pendler­RatD app will be con­vert­ed into a native app with appro­pri­ate design and usabil­i­ty and expand­ed to include a tick­et­ing and report­ing sys­tem. Fur­ther­more, a report­ing sys­tem is to be devel­oped and linked to exist­ing munic­i­pal IT sys­tems, among oth­ers, in order to enable the expan­sion of infra­struc­ture in the munic­i­pal­i­ties but also at employ­ers (show­ers, chang­ing rooms, park­ing facil­i­ties or sim­i­lar) through push and pull mes­sages. A pos­si­ble per­ma­nent switch from car to bike can work if the switch is made as easy as possible.

One test cyclist sum­ma­rizes her expe­ri­ence as fol­lows: “It was so great to be able to try this with the e‑bike. Now it’s a sense of free­dom when com­mut­ing, you’re not stuck in traf­fic any­more, which is great.” The first bike han­dover, is sched­uled for April 1 in Neckar­sulm (pos­si­bly also at the HHN Edu­ca­tion Cam­pus). Cur­rent­ly, the third Pendler­RatD study is under­way to eval­u­ate, among oth­er things, cur­rent com­mut­ing behav­ior and atti­tudes toward com­mut­ing and to com­pare them with the results of pre­vi­ous stud­ies over time.