BERLIN, April 30 (Xinhua) -- A nationwide campaign "Cycle to work" that promotes a switch from cars to bicycles was launched by the General German Bicycle Club (ADFC) and the health insurance association AOK on Tuesday.
The ADFC stated that the aim of the campaign, which has been running since 2001, is to get Germans "excited about commuting by bicycle".
"With our summer campaign, we want to encourage hundreds of thousands of people to try out the switch from cars to bicycles," ADFC spokesperson Stephanie Krone told Xinhua on Tuesday.
"For most people, the car is the standard means of transport to get to work, despite the fact that half of all journeys to work are less than 10 kilometers and a third are even less than 5 kilometers long," Krone said.
"Since it has been proven that employees riding bicycles are less often ill, fitter and more motivated, this is also a benefit for employers. And definitely for the climate," the ADFC spokesperson added.
The campaign "Cycle to work" which will start on May 1 will encourage employees and students in Germany to cycle to work or university on at least 20 days until the end of August.
"Around 10,000 cyclists in Saxony and Thuringia" alone were expected to take part in the campaign, an AOK spokesperson told Xinhua on Tuesday.
Last year, 250,000 Germans took part in the "Cycle to work" campaign and pedaled 49.5 million kilometers instead of driving, according to the ADFC.
The German bicycle club recently recorded a slight decline in the proportion of people that cycle to work. In 2016, just under 11 percent of commuters in Germany travelled by bicycle compared to a large majority of 65 percent who commuted by car.
The German cyclists' club attributed the low number of cyclists to the "often unacceptable" condition of bicycle infrastructure in Germany.
A 2017 study by the German Ministry of Transport found that Germans would like to use bicycles more frequently for everyday purposes, provided there were "more and better cycle paths" as well as more parking spaces for bicycles.
