What if the adage metro-work-sleep became “bike-work-sleep”. Without going as far as proselytizing, a group of experts advocates the use of the bicycle for home-work journeys by pleading for the generalization of the IKV. Understand: the bicycle kilometer allowance. The report submitted to the Minister of Transport’s table on Wednesday, December 20 aims to encourage companies to take charge of their employees’ bicycle journeys by establishing a reimbursement, like the taking charge of part of the subscription to public transport. The authors of the report are betting on an ambitious objective: to generalize the IKV in companies over the next 4 years in order to reach 1.4 million employees cyclists by 2022.
The bet is ambitious while to date 700,000 people come work by bike. The French do not have the bicycle reflex of the Dutch: 70% of home-work trips of less than 5 km are made by car, according to INSEE.
Health benefits to pedal
The approach of the experts, including the deputy (LREM) Matthieu Orphelin, the Cycling Territories Club and the Ecological Factory, is motivated by a concern for well-being: moving more to be in better health. In the Netherlands, the implementation of IKVs since 1995 has made it possible to reduce sick leave by 15%, according to AFP. For companies, this would translate into a gain in productivity without straining their budget. By imagining a reimbursement of between 20 to 25 euros per month, the bosses would not be harmed according to the authors of the report who made the calculation: the “average cost of generalization of the IKV, by 2022, reaches less than 23 euros per employee and per year in the most ambitious hypothesis “, they specify in the document taken up by AFP.
It remains to convince the French to leave their car in the garage to pedal even in winter. The virtues of cyclingno longer need to be demonstrated: the activity maintains cardiovascular health and maintains shape and shape by limiting the risk of injury (preserved joints).
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