Bike Love Palo Alto
The Concept
Motion and Palo Alto TMA are developing a first-in-the-world “Bike Love” pilot featuring five unique aspects:
We provide daily incentives for verifiable active modes commute trips for home-to-work and home-to-Caltrain up to $600 per year per commuter - $5 per valid day and $10 to onboard the app.
Geofenced location tracking confirms bike, e-bike, e-scooter, and e-skateboard work commutes to downtown, Cal Ave, or one of 30 Caltrain stations. (See valid areas)
Incentive dollars may be instantly redeemed at local merchants via reloadable Visa® Reward Cards, compatible with Apple Pay® and Google Pay™.
By restricting transaction authorization to local merchants, program funds are recycled back into the local economy, multiplying program impact.
Persuasive marketing utilizing door-to-door, in-person outreach to 800 businesses encompassing technology, light office, government, and service workers.
Bike Love addresses public transit’s decades-old FIRST MILE Problem as expressed by our transit operator partner letters:
“VTA supports active modes and recognizes the importance of bicycles as a way to extend the reach of transit. One of the greatest challenges we face as a transit operator is the low density of our suburban county and long distances to transit stops.”
“Caltrain encourages passengers to use sustainable transportation modes, including bicycling, to get to and from stations.”
“Commute.org’s strategic plan includes a task to ‘encourage more San Mateo County commuters to use bicycling as an alternative to driving alone for both first/last mile commutes as well as full-length commutes.’”
Bike Love scales to other cities and major employer commute programs, increasing transit ridership at no cost to transit operators.
There are only 11 bike commute incentive programs in the entire US. Bike Love provides the highest amount of incentives, using the most sophisticated technology.
How do we use your data?
For coordinated customer support and for survey research, PATMA and Motion share ownership of your email address and mobile phone number.
Motion is a trip activity tracker app headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with customers in Europe, Canada, and the US. Bike Love is a Motion/PATMA bike commute incentive program that the app enables.
The Motion app is provided to you by ByCycling International B.V. The app is covered by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 and the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We do not share or sell your personal information. We delete your data when you request account deletion. As far as the use of the Virtual Visa card, our full software stack is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliant.
We prepare status and research reports for PATMA and the federal Transportation Research Board (TRB). Bike Love is TRB Transit IDEA project number T-99.
We will report anonymized data about the impact and effectiveness of Bike Love:
Number of active users in Palo Alto
Number of trips per user per month
Distance traveled
GHG saved
ZIP code level (there are about 30,000 people per zip code in the Bay Area) map of active trips.
Our reports will never include personally-identifying information like your name, email, street address, or mobile number.
Our 18-page privacy policy can be found here: https://himotion.co/privacy-policy. We took pains to create a readable policy document.
Please take a look to our short explainer video below:
Note: onboarding to the program might not be the same as reflected on this video as this is an older version of the app. Please follow the official steps below.
Step-by-step guide to joining Bike Love
Before getting you started, please check some notes:
- University Ave and California Ave workers, or City of Palo Alto staff/employees that currently drive to work for at least 3 times per week. You can earn incentives by biking to work, OR biking to a Caltrain station and taking the train to Palo Alto. See all valid areas here.
Rewards are meant to be spent at local merchants in Palo Alto. Transactions may get declined when spending outside Palo Alto.
Join the program in 3 simple steps
Follow these steps to be ready to buy a coffee with your initial $10 reward.
2
Find and join program
2.1 Search program
After you install the app, you will be welcomed with a screen to join a program. Type "search" and simply search your program by typing the "Bike Love" on the "By keyword" tab.
If you are already a Motion app user, go to the "Programs" tab and tap on "Add Program".
2.2 Fill out signup form
When joining a program, the app will request you to fill out an application form. Please make sure to answer all the questions truthfully, as the answers you give are sensitive to reject or approve your application.
After you fill out the signup form, the app will check whether you are eligible or not. If your form is accepted by the app, you may continue with the next step, otherwise you will have the chance to appeal the decision within the app.
3
Issue and add a Visa® card to your device's wallet
3.1 Card issuing
When your form is accepted the app will automatically issue a virtual Visa for you, which in this case, it will be already funded with a $10 USD gift.
However, notice that the card is not ready to be used yet, as you need to add your card to your device's wallet in order to make payments. Proceed to next step.
3.2 Add card to Wallet app and verify
⚠️ Please follow the guide and add your card to app wallet by:
Copy each of the card details.
Open Wallet app on your phone and paste details.
Verify card through instant sms or call-in option
If you have any trouble at this step, please check the below guides for each platform:
3.3 Verify all the steps
As the last step for joining the program, please make sure you have completed all the steps before continuing, it is important as otherwise you might not be able to enjoy all the benefits of joining the program and make payments.
That’s it! You have now joined the program
From now on, every time you make a bike trip within the valid zones, you will earn $5 USD worth of Credits (Cr.).
If you have any issues during the onboarding, please reach out to hello@himotion.co
Bike Love valid zones
4 Extra notes
4.1 ☕️ Make your first purchase
Once your Virtual Visa is verified, you may tap and pay with the Virtual Visa, just like any other NFC (Near Field Communication) credit card.
To the right is a typical Apple Wallet app. The silver VI (Virtual Incentives) Virtual Visa is the default credit card in the wallet (you can change this in the Wallet app settings. Note that the VI card in the Wallet is the same card as in the app, but it has a different appearance at the moment.
⚠️ Notes
If at the moment of payment the cashier asks you for “debit or credit card”, please choose credit card.
If you are requested a debit card PIN number at the point of sale (we’ve heard reports that this sometimes occurs at Whole Foods Market), please just press the green button as if there is no PIN.
4.2 Using the App: Virtual Visa Card balance check and funding
You can check the balance of spendable money on your Virtual Visa card via Programs > Bike Love Palo Alto > Rewards > Card balance.
When you pay with your card, your current Balance is decreased accordingly. Reload your card (as long as you still have Credits available) by tapping on “Add funds” or "Redeem" whenever your card balance is too low.
4.3 App 'Dashboard': Tracking your trips and earning [green] coins A.K.A Credits
You can track a ride by either letting the app track and detect your trip automatically, or manually, by tapping the "Start activity" button.
After recording an activity, a green coin icon appears when your trip has qualified for an activity in the program, meaning it earned you Credits.
If you tap the trip with the green coin (or any trip), a Trip Map is displayed. On the Trip Map, travel modes are Green for biking, Blue for walking, Red for driving.
