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Becoming a bicycle-friendly employer in Graz

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City: Graz
Audience: Large City
Topic: Mobility Management
Step in the SUMP cycle: Step 7: Select measure packages with stakeholders

More Information:
Eltis.org

Activity description

In 2012 Graz introduced a special financial support model to encourage small and medium-sized companies to implement various mobility management measures. Therefore a competition called ‘Mobility Management for Companies’ was organised in which prize money for the best five proposals were awarded as a grant to be used for implementing the proposed mobility management activities. In 2014, 860 companies were invited to participate in the competition. Twenty-three of them required a consultation and 16 delivered a proposal for the competition. Haberkorn GmbH  submitted an overall proposal with a special focus on cycling and was awarded second place. It received €7 000 . The company has 16 subsidiaries in Austria, Eastern Europe and Switzerland with 1 100 employees in total. In Graz, Haberkorn is located in the outskirts of the city and 30 employees work there.

Lessons learned

A starting point for introducing mobility management activities at Haberkorn GmbH was to address the very high percentage of car use among employees when travelling to work. To improve the conditions for cyclists the company implemented 12 measures. Infrastructural measures included providing bike stands, a bicycle service box, changing rooms, lockers and staff bicycles, as well as motivational measures or awareness-raising actions (such as a test day for special bikes like cargo bikes, awarding prizes for ‘cyclist of the month’, providing healthy breakfast for cyclists, encouraging participation in bike-to-work campaigns, etc.).