Bicycle plan good for environment

2 March 2007

BRUSSELS – Making a bicycle compensation scheme obligatory for employers could result in significant benefits to the environment. It could in fact equal the effects of planting a million trees. Hans Bonte, MP for the Flemish Socialist Party has a bill ready to submit.

The bicycle compensation scheme is currently facultative. The government grants this compensation to civil servants, and some private sectors and businesses do the same. About a third of the working population can get 15 eurocents per kilometre if they travel to work by bike. “Everyone should be able to claim this compensation,” Bonte says.

The MP says the compensation should stimulate more workers to choose this means of transport. He referred to the federal government’s study which showed that seven in ten people go to work by car. Only 6.4 percent use the bike. Among workers who are granted compensation for using the bike however, this number increased by a fifth, to 7.6 percent.

Subject: Belgian news