Bath firms are being sought to support a project encouraging car commuters to leave their vehicles at home and switch to using an electric bike instead.
Under the Ride to Work by Bike scheme a small number of city firms will each be lent up to 10 ebikes for employees who drive to six miles or less to work. 
Comprehensive support, including road safety cycle training, will be given to the drivers-turned-cyclists during the six-week trial next summer.
The scheme is being staged by Transition Bath, the organisation aiming to reduce the city’s reliance on climate-damaging fossil fuels, and backed by the Bath & West Community Energy Fund.
Transition Bath hopes using ebikes will overcome barriers for people who are put off cycling by Bath’s hilly terrain or consider themselves too unfit – or perhaps too old – to commute by bicycle.
Just 6% of Bath commuters cycle compared with 39% in Cambridge, a city of similar size.
The project’s objectives are to improve participants’ health and wellbeing – including short-term fitness/emotional health gains and long-term health benefits – as well as reducing pollution and congestion in a city that suffers from both.
Bath is the seventh UK worst city for hours lost sitting in traffic while commuting.
Organisers are undertaking a feasibility study for the project and researching how best to run the scheme and identifying partners.
The project is non-commercial and will be grant-funded. It plans to target small-to-medium sized businesses and other organisations within Bath, and employees of all ages, sizes, fitness and cycling ability – or lack of!
For more information visit website http://ridetowork.bike/ or http://ridetowork.bike/sign-your-business-up/
