Bike Friendly Businesses: Best Practices and Strategies

Active commuting is associated with a number of health benefits, though less than 1% of Americans bike to work regularly. Bike Friendly Businesses (BFBs) are employers who encourage a bike-friendly culture within their organization and are awarded a designation by the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) at multiple levels (bronze through platinum). The purpose of this study was to examine the practices of current BFBs.

Methods: BFBs around the country were recruited from the LAB’s list of current BFBs. Interested BFB representatives completed a brief survey describing their company and were then interviewed to examine the culture of bike friendliness within their company, specifically examining encouragement, education, engineering, and evaluation. Two researchers coded responses using thematic analysis.

Results: Businesses (n=17) were primarily set in Pennsylvania and were of varying size and designation level. Common themes discussed by businesses that promote a bike-friendly workplace included: using incentives to encourage biking, offering social activities/events to encourage biking for employees, providing bicycle education opportunities within the business and community, having strong bike parking and bike-related infrastructure, and developing a plan for the future of their bike-friendly business. While businesses with a higher designation offered greater resources there did not appear to be any differences on the basis of size.

Conclusions: These results indicate that BFBs that have a strong bike culture have a few defining factors separating them from those lacking in support for biking. This information is useful in assisting businesses aiming to become more bike-friendly and support biking among their employees.