Design for Living: Bike-riding for beer

Bella Mossa, or Good Job, is an initiative in Bologna to encourage cycling, walking, and public transport. Photo / Supplied

In the Italian city of Bologna, population one million, they're bribing people with beer and icecream to ride bikes. And they're doing it with that most versatile of transport technologies: a smartphone app.

It's not Bologna's first attempt to reduce the number of cars in the city. They've even tried banning them downtown during the day, but it wasn't popular. You can't do what the voters don't want. So in 2017, urban planner Marco Amadori persuaded the council to try incentives instead.

They call it Bella Mossa, or Good Job, and it works like this. You download the free app and use it to log each "green journey" you make: on a bike, or walking, or on public transport, with GPS making sure you don't cheat. The bike option is especially popular.

You get points for each trip, up to a maximum of four a day, and you can redeem those points with any retailer who's signed up to the scheme, simply by getting them to scan your phone. People buy beer and icecream, go to the movies or maybe just get a discount on their supermarket shop.

Getting points per trip rather than by distance travelled means that even for short trips you're incentivised not to drive. That would be especially important here: a University of Otago study in 2019 estimated two-thirds of car trips are shorter than 5km and one-third are less than 2km.

As for putting a max on the number of trips per day, that gives people the incentive to keep using the app every day. Bonus points are on offer for people meeting set exercise goals.

Bologna has other cycling incentives in place too. A network of cycleways connects the city with towns throughout the region: a great way to get among the beauty of the Italian countryside.

The Ravaldone Project encourages people to report abandoned bikes, which will be picked up and restored before being sold or offered to people who can't afford to buy. The project is a work scheme for people in "difficult situations".

And Bologna benefits from Italy's participation in the EU subsidy scheme for e-bikes and e-scooters. You can get €500 (about $850) off the cost of a new pair of wheels.

Ride share bikes in Bologna. Photo / Supplied

There are two big things about all this and both of them, to date, seem to have eluded the politicians and officials in charge of our own transport systems.

One: incentives are great for modifying behaviour.

Two: incentivising the use of e-bikes would be vastly cheaper, easier and quicker than building enormous new infrastructure for electric cars, buses and trains. When it comes to carbon reduction, congestion and health, it might even be more effective.

Design for Living is a Canvas magazine series presenting good ideas that make cities better.