At our Streamline Office Space, Love to Ride is on a mission to get people (back) on their bikes, helping our planet become a greener, cleaner, more bike-friendly place to be.
With its UK headquarters at Ethical Property’s Streamline centre in Bristol, Love to Ride is a global online platform that gets more people cycling and works with local authorities, businesses, cycle brands and advocacy groups to achieve measurable and long-lasting behaviour change.
Everyone is invited, whether they ride every day or haven’t been on a bike in years. Sarah Wills, Love to Ride’s Marketing Officer explains: “With Love to Ride, you can track your bike miles, see your carbon savings, set goals, win prizes, and receive support to help you ride more often. We’re really excited about our new app, which will be launching soon. The Love to Ride app will make it even easier to record your rides while you’re on the go. As well as being great fun for users, it will help us generate more data that councils and authorities can use to build better cycling infrastructure.”
Love to Ride’s year-round programme of virtual bike challenges encourages, incentivises and rewards riding, and enables people who are passionate about cycling to help their friends, family and co-workers to (re)discover the joys and benefits of getting around by bike. Throughout May and September Love to Ride run their largest challenges, the Bike Month Challenge and Cycle September, which give workplaces the chance to take part in fun, friendly competition as they ride to the top of their local leaderboards. One participant said: “I hadn’t ridden a bike for over 20 years before the Challenge so it was quite daunting to start with, but I soon built up my confidence. I find it such fun now and an easy way to keep fit.”
Love to Ride demonstrates to businesses that happier, healthier staff who feel supported by their employer are more satisfied and less likely to look for a new job; this can massively reduce costs of sick leave and recruitment. As well as being environmentally friendly, reducing carbon emissions and pollution in our towns and cities, cycling is great for wellbeing: staff who ride to work say they have more energy, are more alert and less stressed (because they haven’t been stuck in traffic!).
As Sarah explains, Love to Ride is all about changing behaviour in the long term: “We carry out quick surveys to discover key information about each person so we can help them overcome any barrier they face so they can start cycling, cycle more often or for transportation.”
The organisation has been based at the Streamline Offices since March 2020 and has grown substantially since then. Sarah says: “We love being in a building filled with like-minded businesses. And being connected to the bike paths works perfectly for us!”