In an interesting move for a car manufacturer, General Motors is promoting a bike-sharing program for its employees to get around its 330-acre headquarters in Detroit.
The program is being conducted with Zagster, a bike-sharing company that has developed similar programs for other businesses.
"GM is investing not only in the long-term health and productivity of its workforce, but sending a strong message to other employers around the country that bike sharing is a mainstream transportation option for employees," said Timothy Ericson, co-founder of Zagster.
In order to participate, GM employees simply have to register online and then reserve a bike through a text or app that will give them a code to access the bike. Each bike will also include a small basket to help transport the users belongings.
The bikes will be available to all 19,000 employees who work at GM's Tech Center campus. Employees will be able to use them to go among the 61 buildings located at the tech center along its 11 miles of roads.
This is not the first time that GM has made headlines for its sustainability efforts. Earlier this month, the carmaker announced that it was composting food scraps from the restaurants around its headquarters.
"GM is transforming transportation with our products, plants, people, and partnerships," said GM director of sustainability, David Tulauskas. "This bike-sharing program is a great example of engaging our employees through this first-of-its kind partnership and also helps them look at transportation in a different way than we traditionally have."
Detroit as a city has yet to implement a bike-sharing system like other cities around the globe. Despite this, a system has been a topic of discussion for years. Detroit also has an active cycling community, so implementing a citywide program could be of great benefit to a lot of people.
Zagster has made partnerships with a number of tech companies. After a week of using the program, over 360 DTE Energy employees had joined the program and taken a total of 850 rides. Zagster's service is being used by over 2,750 people in Detroit across the tech companies that are using it.
"This is an awesome idea," said John Waechter, Tech Center design engineer at GM. "I can't wait to quickly get to meetings without walking to a car and finding parking. This is good for exercise, good for on-campus mobility and a nice way to actually learn more about nonauto transportation."
