Transcript exported from the video version of this episode - Note that it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:06 - 00:00:22:04
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and this is a special bonus episode featuring Ryan Birkicht from People for Bikes. We were talking about a new incentive program to help employers encourage their employees to ride bikes more often. And that program is run through the Ride Spot software. Bike Perks is what they are calling it.

00:00:22:04 - 00:00:28:10
John Simmerman
And Ryan's going to give us a little bit more information about that. So let's jump right into it.

00:00:32:01 - 00:00:34:25
John Simmerman
Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:00:35:07 - 00:00:39:15
Ryan Birkicht
Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to talk through all things bikes today.

00:00:39:27 - 00:00:45:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I'd love to have my guests just kind of give a quick introduction. So who is Ryan?

00:00:45:18 - 00:01:02:06
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah, so my name is Ryan Burkett and I am the director of Enterprise Partnerships at People for Bikes, which is a fancy way to say that I'm responsible for engaging employers in their journey to becoming more bike friendly businesses.

00:01:03:15 - 00:01:06:23
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. And what did you do before?

00:01:07:24 - 00:01:18:29
Ryan Birkicht
So before people for bikes, I was working for a bike manufacturer called Pacific Cycle. It's the holding company of Schwinn and Mongoose bike brands out of Madison, Wisconsin.

00:01:19:19 - 00:01:21:05
John Simmerman
Okay, great. And where are you based out of?

00:01:21:28 - 00:01:42:07
Ryan Birkicht
I actually live in north northwest Illinois, a small town called Galena. But people for bikes, staff is majority is in Colorado, front range of Colorado. And then about a third of us are spread across the country and work remotely. And I'm one of those remote workers and testing.

00:01:42:09 - 00:01:47:22
John Simmerman
That's great. So so why bikes? I mean, why are you so passionate about working in this industry?

00:01:48:11 - 00:02:08:21
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah, that's a that's a great question because that actually parlays really well into my role of people for bikes. So I about ten years ago I got a job in the bike industry working for a bike rack manufacturer, and at that time we were incentivized to commute to work using our bicycle to like kind of practice what we preach.

00:02:08:21 - 00:02:38:23
Ryan Birkicht
So there's a little bit of like a commuter incentive program that was encouraging the staff to participate in the bike industry by riding their bikes more often. So I took my employer up on that offer and started riding my bike as a form of transportation to work. And it really ended up being kind of a transformative experience in my life where I felt like those trips that commute was I was taking myself out of traffic and the frustrating perils of trying to drive your bi hour, drive your car to it to work.

00:02:39:05 - 00:03:00:16
Ryan Birkicht
And I was able to actually just like enjoy nature and see unique things from the seat of my bicycle. And it felt it was really an opportunity for me to experience life in a different way. And that passion, to use the bike as a form of transportation carried into my mind. Second job in the bike industry, which was that working for Pacific Cycle.

00:03:00:26 - 00:03:26:06
Ryan Birkicht
So at Pacific Cycle I joined our bike committee at work, which was tasked with a similar role, which was engaging the rest of our staff to ride their bike as a form of transportation and or for exercise. So I found a lot of passion in that volunteer role. And while I was at People for Bikes or excuse me, at Pacific Cycle, I was also the liaison between Pacific Cycle and People for bikes.

00:03:26:06 - 00:03:44:14
Ryan Birkicht
So I heard of this new role come in, come in live at people for bikes that would be basically responsible for helping corporations across America develop a similar programing for for their staff. And as I kind of jumped at the opportunity, it's just made a lot of sense for for my life and my passions.

00:03:45:00 - 00:04:00:23
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, that's that's fantastic. That's good stuff for for folks that may not be super aware of who people for bikes is. Can you just give like a really quick throw thousand foot level of of who the organization is. Yeah. People for Bikes is.

00:04:00:23 - 00:04:37:04
Ryan Birkicht
The nation's largest bicycle advocacy organization. And we also act as the bike industry's trade association. So about half of our business is really focused on helping grow the bike industry. And that work is funded by bike industry members. So bike brands, bike parts, everything else they pay a membership do to help advance our work. And then we also the other half of our business is really focused on the individual rider and bike advocates from across the country to help provide a safer and more fun experience of them riding in their region.

00:04:37:27 - 00:05:06:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, fantastic. And this is the landing page for the organization as a whole. And yeah, at the top there you can see corporate members. That's where you can sort of log in and and pop into there. Yeah, that's a great overview of the organization. I like to think of it as kind of the the the arm. Yes, the lobbying arm of the manufacturers and the folks that are quote unquote, getting the stuff built and sold and all that.

00:05:06:03 - 00:05:31:09
John Simmerman
And then the other side of it is is really encouraging people to ride, you know, getting more people riding bikes, more often and then also assisting with, you know, the environment, helping, you know, make the environment more conducive to to riding, being able to to make it safer out there. So lots of advocacy work from, you know, from the innovation side.

00:05:31:09 - 00:05:44:05
John Simmerman
You take a look at the different campaigns and and all of that. So for your group, what what part of the organization or within are you in, like the local innovations or where do where do you kind of fit in the hierarchy?

00:05:45:05 - 00:06:10:27
Ryan Birkicht
Yep. So the the way that makes the most sense for my brand delineate our work is we kind of have three major verticals. We have our policy work, we have our infrastructure work, and then we have our participation work. So those three verticals tend to interact with one another, but they really are coalescing to that same mission of getting more people riding more often within the three pillars.

00:06:10:27 - 00:06:21:29
Ryan Birkicht
My specific programing falls under participation because it's a program that encourages more people to ride more often. So that that's the that's the vertical I work with in.

00:06:22:12 - 00:06:55:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's fantastic. That's great. And when I heard about this program, I thought immediately of TDM, you know, transportation demand management programs and, and it sounds like you get a taste of that, you know, within your own companies that you were working for of like the incentive that an employer might have to to be able to encourage their employees to not drive into work and there's you can possibly cover you know, some of those reasons as well.

00:06:56:03 - 00:07:20:11
John Simmerman
But yeah, this is the article that was published just this last month in January about the program that we're going to talk about in a little bit, but more globally, talk about a little more in depth as to why it is advantageous for corporations to encourage their employees to be able to want to walk, bike and or take transit.

00:07:20:11 - 00:07:24:27
John Simmerman
You know, anything other than driving in a single occupancy vehicle to their place of work.

00:07:25:17 - 00:07:57:24
Ryan Birkicht
This this answer kind of varies by business, but I would say generically, a lot of organizations that are based in densely populated areas tend to the primary driver of this type of program is reducing parking dependencies. So a lot of like urban and urban centers, a lot of businesses are are leasing or paying for their parking spaces. So they tend to run these commuter incentive programs to reduce parking dependencies so that they are freeing up money in that capacity.

00:07:58:19 - 00:08:26:02
Ryan Birkicht
But we've also done a lot of qualitative research in the past year while we were kind of piloting this program at People for Bikes, where we reached out to our newsletter subscribers and kind of asked them like, so this is the individual, this is the individual that's actually riding. We asked them like, what motivates you to ride? And what we found is it's drastically different than what the business owner or the business itself is, is seeing as the benefit of the program.

00:08:26:12 - 00:08:52:05
Ryan Birkicht
So you kind of have a little bit of this juxtaposition of trying to educate the employer on here is the reasons that would benefit your business to offer this type of programing and then having them then present the programs to their staff in a way that presents the benefits for the staff members themselves. Because a lot of times the individual riders they want to ride for health and wellness benefits and that could be mental or physical health.

00:08:52:16 - 00:09:06:18
Ryan Birkicht
And then the actual business wants to provide the program to either reduce parking dependency or that a lot of times it's sustainability initiatives trying to work towards a net zero carbon emissions as an organization and things like that.

00:09:07:07 - 00:09:30:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And so the program that we've been alluding to is, is this one here? So the Bike Perks program last year you guys debuted that program within the People for Bikes organization to, like you said, sort of kick the tires on it and get a sense of that. And I get the sense that there's also a a technology angle to this.

00:09:30:17 - 00:09:32:23
John Simmerman
So why don't you go ahead and describe it more in detail.

00:09:33:18 - 00:09:59:01
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah. So one of the one of the major pieces of offering a an incentive program or a program that encourages people to do any type of activity is you need a way to track participation. And people for bikes luckily has a ride recording and sharing platform already in place. It's called Ride Spot so we took Ride Spot as as the tool we were going to use the track participation.

00:09:59:01 - 00:10:19:21
Ryan Birkicht
And the nice thing about it is it allowed me to, as the program administrator myself, I could see participation happening live. So if you went for a ride this morning, I could see that this afternoon and I could comment on that ride to show you some encouragement and just kind of validate that that experience. So Ride Spot is the tool that we ended up using to run our program.

00:10:19:21 - 00:10:27:18
Ryan Birkicht
And it's also the free software that we offer for organizations who want to want to implement a similar program at their location.

00:10:28:06 - 00:10:51:03
John Simmerman
Great. And we'll pop on over to the right spot link in just a moment. But I wanted to linger on some of the details of this little debut. We're Kicking the Tires pilot program. And that was that. It was, you know, people for bike staff earned $4 for each ride logged and they could earn up to 20 $400 per year.

00:10:51:13 - 00:11:24:17
John Simmerman
And then we look at some of the data that we were able to see. We saw a 92.7% of the staff participated, you know, well over 7000 bike trips total recorded and, you know, pushing 32,000 miles ridden. Well, okay, it is people for bikes. So, you know, that makes sense. And were you surprised, though, by by these this data that, you know, the set that came in and obviously it must have been encouraging.

00:11:24:17 - 00:11:27:10
John Simmerman
But but was it as a surprise to you?

00:11:28:15 - 00:11:55:17
Ryan Birkicht
Absolutely. So I ended up I was really responsible for setting a budget at the beginning of the year for for our programing. And I had set that budget with an aggressive assumption that we'd have about 25% participation was my was my guess, you know, nationally when you offer a bike encouragement program, I believe Bikes Make Life Better was the organization whose where I pulled this data from.

00:11:55:17 - 00:12:25:18
Ryan Birkicht
But they they said about 2 to 5% of individuals will ride their bikes to work as a form of transportation without an incentive. And then if you add an incentive, you can try and push that number up to close to 10% is like the the gold standard. So assuming that we are people for bikes and we're going to far exceed this gold standard of 10%, I made the aggressive assumption, in my opinion that we'd be around 25, 25%.

00:12:25:18 - 00:12:48:10
Ryan Birkicht
So, you know, quite a bit higher than the national average. And we ended up landing, I think it was it might have been in that article, but I want to say it was closer to like 43% as like a producer participated across the year. Yeah, we had 97% participate in the program like, so they at least logged one ride during the course of the year.

00:12:48:10 - 00:13:19:06
Ryan Birkicht
But right, right. 43 like 43% were regularly logging rides. So we ended up blowing the budget out of out. So I had to reset the budget for 2023. But it did it did surprise me. And we learned a lot about, you know, what incentivizes folks how to remove barriers effectively. There's a lot of barriers involved with this type of programing and learning how to remove those barriers to increase participation is like that's the secret sauce.

00:13:19:06 - 00:13:28:24
Ryan Birkicht
And we really learned a lot in 2022 that we're now being able to hand over for free to organizations in 2023 to get their staff writing as well.

00:13:29:09 - 00:13:56:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, And just to be clear, I speak a lot here on the Active Towns podcast and the work that I do with the Active Towns initiative about that balance between the infrastructure, the environment that we build out in our communities and making sure that we're building all ages and abilities facilities. And you know, for, for many years we've talked about, hey, we just need to build this infrastructure out.

00:13:56:07 - 00:14:27:13
John Simmerman
We need to be able to get it, you know, that that build it and they will come concept. But at the same time when we're talking about true cultural change that you have to have both. You have to have the hardware, you know, the built environment and the infrastructure, the network, if you will, out there built. But you also need to have the software, you need to have the the policies and the programs and the incentives to be able to to help reinforce and as I like to say, activate that hardware.

00:14:27:22 - 00:14:51:17
John Simmerman
And so that's what this really is. I mean, you guys are getting down to the, you know, a and really fun and center based program to be able to encourage the activation of hopefully a very safe and inviting network of facilities out there in in the city. And so that's going to vary widely from city to city for each organization.

00:14:51:17 - 00:15:04:21
John Simmerman
But I just wanted to kind of put that into context that what we're talking about here is is a cool, fun, engaging incentive program that would be, you know, that activation of hopefully the wonderful hardware that's out there.

00:15:05:23 - 00:15:33:19
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah, you said that really eloquently. And that's also a very similar thought process that we approach our work at people for bikes with. So as I mentioned, with the policy participation and infrastructure pillars, infrastructure is is necessary for people to feel safe and encouraged to ride in their communities. So that hardware you speak to is definitely something that we put a lot of resources towards to really develop connected infrastructure that people can ride safely.

00:15:33:19 - 00:15:48:25
Ryan Birkicht
And then and to your point even more, then we also offer these programs to now not only showcase where that infrastructure exists, but also be able to then incentivize and encourage folks to want to ride that infrastructure on a regular basis.

00:15:49:11 - 00:16:14:16
John Simmerman
Fantastic. So in the article, there's a hyperlink to this page. So this is the enterprise dot right spot board landing page. And so I'm assuming that this is the landing page for folks to be able to go to, to be able to learn more and and learn about trying to engage their their organization, their community and what happens when you hit the received demo.

00:16:15:15 - 00:16:29:07
Ryan Birkicht
Yep. So the received demo puts you directly in contact with me. Okay. I am able to walk individuals through kind of what does this program look like if if your organization wanted to participate so.

00:16:29:08 - 00:16:32:29
John Simmerman
Oh, boom. Yeah. You're not kidding. Yeah. Or directly in touch with your calendar.

00:16:33:13 - 00:17:02:01
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah. You can book 30 minutes with me right now if you want it and tested. And through that demo, I'd basically just like ask the individual, you know, what kind of organization do you work for and what's your goals with putting in a bike program? And then based on the feedback that they give, I kind of walk them through how the ride spot software can then help them achieve their goals of getting more people riding for whatever reason it is that they think necessary.

00:17:02:27 - 00:17:07:16
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Does it make sense for us to take a look at this short video from right spot?

00:17:08:07 - 00:17:12:01
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah, absolutely. This just gives you a quick demo of kind of what ride spots able to do.

00:17:12:06 - 00:17:23:00
John Simmerman
I think that would be helpful too. I don't think I've done a profile on ride spot here on the channel yet. So let's let's take a look at this.

00:17:23:00 - 00:17:46:15
Video Voiceover
Meet Sam. Sam used to watch your friend's adventures from the sidelines until she learned about the new app ride spot developed by people for bikes before discovering Ride Spot. Finding a place to ride was a total pain in the butt. Now it's easy ride Spot gave Sam the confidence she needed to brush the cobwebs off her bike and start writing ride spots.

00:17:46:15 - 00:18:11:08
Video Voiceover
Turn by turn, audio directions mean that Sam can keep her eyes on the road and still know which way to go. The app gives Sam tools to ride on her own or join a group ride she can even use ride spot to find social events or workshops put on by her local bike shop. Sam enjoyed today's group rides so much that she wants to share her positive experience with Ride Spot.

00:18:11:12 - 00:18:28:28
Video Voiceover
It's a breeze. Sam can publish a map of her route along with details and photos from the ride. Now other riders can follow Sam's map and enjoy the same route download Ride spot now to discover and share great bike rides.

00:18:31:03 - 00:18:42:18
John Simmerman
Cool. Cool. So. So. Clearly it's more than just a tracking program for an incentive. It sounds like getting under the hood there. There's there's a lot of stuff going on with right spot.

00:18:43:13 - 00:19:12:19
Ryan Birkicht
Yeah Red Spot had several years of development prior to bringing on the functionality to allow organizations to use it as their tracking tool for the incentive programs. So it has a ton of functionality built into it and some of that functionality is still being leveraged to accomplish our national campaigns. So almost every month we run a different philanthropic challenge to lift up and amplify the mission of marginalized communities.

00:19:13:01 - 00:19:37:04
Ryan Birkicht
So for example, this month, in the month of February, we had the Black History Month challenge, which which is being run nationally through red spot and as organized as individuals join that that national challenge and ride in solidarity with the groups we identified. We then provide a cash donation to those organizations to help amplify and extend their mission.

00:19:37:04 - 00:19:55:03
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. And what would you say are the most frequent questions that you hear when an organization or group reaches out to you and and are maybe, you know, kicking the tires and trying to figure out whether this is the right program for them.

00:19:56:13 - 00:20:12:17
Ryan Birkicht
I would say the question I receive the most often is how much is it after I kind of walk them through, especially when I'm walking ten people through the demo and showing how comprehensive our programing is and how how the software works. Everybody is kind of apprehensive and they're like, All right, well, let's let's pause for a second.

00:20:12:17 - 00:20:34:16
Ryan Birkicht
How much does this thing cost? And it luckily, being a nonprofit and having a grant that funds our work on this program, we're actually able to provide it at no cost. So that's exciting news to share with folks when I'm providing that demo. And then the second question is kind of how the incentives work. So what what type of incentive does people for bikes offer?

00:20:34:16 - 00:21:02:18
Ryan Birkicht
What type of incentive does the is their employer responsible for offering? And as I mentioned, we run these national these national challenges for these philanthropic partners. So the nice thing is those those national challenges are intended to supplement your you're very private challenges for your organization. So people for Bikes does offer actual material prizes for individuals to participate and complete those philanthropic challenges.

00:21:03:00 - 00:21:36:21
Ryan Birkicht
So People for Bikes does provide some incentives for participants, but then the organization itself oftentimes adds their additional incentive package. So you had brought up that screen, that kind of recap or the article that recapped our People for Bikes program, and you had mentioned that we were paying staff $4 per trip. If an organization wanted to do something similar, they would be responsible for that whatever cash benefit they want to align and and some decide to do a more holistic benefit, like a gift card for a gift card raffle for everybody who participates or something along those lines.

00:21:37:10 - 00:22:16:13
John Simmerman
Right. Right. Interesting. And I think a big part of what maybe some employers might be thinking through is, you know, well, how do I create an environment that helps to encourage our and my employees to be able to want to to bike to work. And in the case of a of an organization that might also be a customer facing business, it might also be and make it convenient for my customers to show up here by car or by not by car, you know, by by bike as well.

00:22:16:20 - 00:22:24:13
John Simmerman
And in other words, becoming a bike friendly employer, but also becoming a bike friendly business.

00:22:24:13 - 00:22:24:21
Ryan Birkicht
Yep.

00:22:25:15 - 00:22:27:06
John Simmerman
So that's a.

00:22:27:22 - 00:22:57:00
Ryan Birkicht
A little bit separate of a conversation. And the program that I work on, the League of American Bicyclists, they actually have a certification of bicycle friendly that's called their Bicycle Friendly America program. And within that program they have bicycle friendly business certification and they have a great list of the different things that a business owner should do from an infrastructure standpoint to really maximize their space, to encourage people to arrive by bike.

00:22:57:11 - 00:23:02:16
Ryan Birkicht
So I would I would definitely encourage people to visit League of American Bicyclists website to find out more.

00:23:03:00 - 00:23:35:01
John Simmerman
And I do notice that you guys do have a webinar from this past August on transforming communities through bicycle friendly businesses. So I'll make sure to include a link in our show notes for this episode and in the video description down below so that folks can pop on over to that. And you're absolutely correct, The league American bicycle itself has had a bicycle friendly businesses incentive program or rating system or whatever they call it, and they do a good job of walking through some of those things.

00:23:35:21 - 00:23:59:23
John Simmerman
And some of them are the hardware like, Oh, by the way, do you have bike parking facilities? By the way, if if a fair number of your employees are going to be cycling a a great distance, you might want to consider locker rooms and a shower facility. If it's environment where, you know, folks can easily ride a very, very short distance.

00:24:00:00 - 00:24:19:24
John Simmerman
Well, maybe maybe a shower and locker facilities aren't necessary if it's a truly welcoming environment and there's a nice network of pathways to get there because they may not be showing up, you know, hot and sweaty. They may be it may be a situation where it can be more Dutch, like where you can just ride your normal work clothes on your bike, getting to work.

00:24:19:24 - 00:24:23:01
John Simmerman
So, you know, context sensitive for sure.

00:24:23:25 - 00:24:54:07
Ryan Birkicht
That webinar that you just showed on the screen actually includes Amelia Neptune from the League of American Bicyclists and myself on the same of talking through our different programs and how they work in unison to to try and make America a better place to ride your bike. So that's a perfect webinar to share with your with your listeners, because I think it does a really good job of showcasing the work of People for Bikes and League of American Cyclists and how we're working together to make America the best place to ride a bike.

00:24:55:01 - 00:25:13:13
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. Well, hey, Ryan, to close us out, we're coming up on Bike month coming up here in the United States. What would you like to to say to the audience about this incentive program Ride spot and Bike month and and how can you all help out.

00:25:14:27 - 00:25:42:03
Ryan Birkicht
It's a great question thank you for asking that. The May Bike month is a really easy and natural launch point for a program that we've been discussing today. So for organizations who are interested in improving their bike culture at their workplace, May Bike Month is just a really natural fit to want to get participating. So a lot of times communities are running activations during May Bike month that they encourage employers to get involved.

00:25:42:25 - 00:26:00:13
Ryan Birkicht
So if if this is a program that sounds like it's something that's interesting to your organization and you feel like your staff would get behind you encouraging more bike ridership, then let's get on the phone and get talking before May bike months. We can get a program in place for May 1st and we can really just kind of hit it.

00:26:00:13 - 00:26:05:06
Ryan Birkicht
May bike month out of the park, and then the program can then continue throughout the rest of the year.

00:26:06:09 - 00:26:26:12
John Simmerman
Fantastic. And once again, that landing page is Enterprise dot right spot, dot 0rg, and that received demo button is the button you want to smash because that will take you right to Ryan's calendar and you can get on on his calendar to figure this out. Ryan, thank you so very much for joining us here on the Active Towns podcast.

00:26:26:12 - 00:26:28:08
John Simmerman
It's been such a pleasure now.

00:26:28:08 - 00:26:33:01
Ryan Birkicht
Thank you so much. This is a great interview and I really, really appreciate the time to talk through the program.

00:26:33:18 - 00:26:52:00
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below. And of course, download the app, click on the demo button so you can learn more information from Ryan if it's appropriate for you to be able to include this within your organization. Again, thank you so much for tuning in.

00:26:52:00 - 00:27:14:12
John Simmerman
This is John signing off. There was new much activity health and happiness cheers and again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on patron buy me a coffee YouTube super thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

00:27:14:23 - 00:27:23:25
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.