Toto Sugito

A devoted cyclist, Toto Sugito is building a bike riding movement, Bike 2 Work, to reduce air pollution and improve city transportation in Indonesia.

Toto and his organization, Bike 2 Work (B2W) are raising awareness about the economic, health, and environmental benefits of cycling for urban dwellers in Jakarta and other big cities in Indonesia. B2W’s goal is to introduce biking as an easy and healthy means of transportation by pushing for local governments to create bike lanes and storage places, providing a motivational support network of cyclists, and giving people access to safe, affordable, and convenient bikes.

Toto is successfully bridging the gap between public issues such as pollution and health problems and individual lifestyles, encouraging people to recognize their individual role in larger social problems and participate in collective action towards solving these problems. He and the B2W community have empowered people by motivating them to take action on emission pollution and energy problems by simply cycling and reducing city traffic. B2W serves as a useful network, connecting people to each other to share ideas and help make public and private bicycle use more convenient, such as arranging for special bike parking at workplaces and collectively pressuring local governments to build city bike lanes.

Toto began his strategy to convert Jakarta to a cycling friendly city by reaching out to poor urban workers, the group that still relies most on bicycles as an inexpensive means of transportation. Toto and his team then moved to generating a demand for bicycles within the middle class. The middle class is growing rapidly across Southeastern Asia, and is a difficult group to break into because the majority can afford cars, and rely on them as symbols of social status as well as convenience. Another target group is students: B2W has organized bike drives in schools to promote cycling as a mode of transportation for students and teach younger generations about the environmental problems Indonesia faces in the present and future. Toto’s B2W community has spread throughout 31 cities in Indonesia, from Aceh in the far west to Papua in the Far East, and now has a diverse membership of 11,000 cyclists, including workers, CEOs, students, lobbyists, government officials.

The movement has spread rapidly with the help of Toto’s creative public media campaigns and by individual-to-individual motivation. Toto has also gained political leverage, reaching out to the President of Indonesia to get local governments’ support for all B2W Chapters. The scaling of B2W is supported by a commitment to design new products and support the growth of bike businesses. B2W has developed and overseen the manufacture of affordable bike designs while bike shops, workshops and leasing companies for bikes are emerging throughout the country.

Jakarta is home to about 11 million people, and is known for its poor public transportation system and traffic jams. Rapid population growth in Jakarta has brought more private cars, motorcycles, and other vehicles onto the streets of the city, in turn creating grater pollution and smog. Inevitably, the air pollution caused by vehicle emissions has reached levels above the safe limits set by the World Health Organization. Official data states that in 2003, Jakarta streets were infested with 3.4 million motorcycles, 1.99 million passenger cars, 467,000 trucks, and 392,000 buses: the vehicle to person ratio is almost one to two. These vehicles make up 68 percent of total energy consumption. Air pollution has a significant impact on people’s health, the environment, and the economy, as health care costs increase every year. On average, unfortunately, people only have 18 "good air” quality days in year, a measure determined by certain chemical levels in the air. Data in 2004 cited that 46 percent of all illness cases in Jakarta were respiratory-related.

Jakarta’s limited infrastructure gives very few alternatives to driving as a form of transportation. With the growth of a middle class population, bicycles are increasingly considered a second-class means of transportation for the poor. In the city of Jakarta alone, more than three million people ride motorcycles every day for the sake of convenience and avoiding traffic jams. The middle class population tends to use bikes only for sport or as a hobby- only as recreation. Furthermore, the hot weather and dangerous traffic conditions become major barriers to many cyclists in the city.

A survey conducted in 2005 stated that only 122 bikes passed the main road of Jakarta in one day, and most of them were mobile sellers, not commuters. Cyclists are often deprived of the proper infrastructure to commute safely. There are no supporting facilities available at public places or at the workplace. The city government and transportation authorities do not yet provide adequate planning to protect people’s health, reduce emissions, and thus address global climate issues.

It is often difficult to motivate people to take concrete action towards solving social, economic, and environmental problems because many people feel that as an individual, they cannot create change, or they simply do not factor these problems into their daily decision making processes. Though they cannot avoid the effects, people feel no personal connection with public issues such as pollution.

Toto and the B2W movement give people a concrete method to address transportation and pollution problems by changing their own behavior. Toto’s most powerful strategy in making bicycles an easy and attractive mode of transportation is by making B2W communities as concrete role models in addressing the transportation and pollution problems. B2W was first established in 2004 as a community by Toto and his colleagues in mountain bike clubs who were all moved by concerns over congestion and pollutions in Jakarta.

In 2004, 150 mountain bikers, cycled to and from their workplace campaigning for B2W. In this first year of campaigning throughout the city, Toto involved grassroots people such as vendors already using bicycling as their mode of transport to participate and spread awareness of this alternative lifestyle. In 2005, the formal B2W community formed, with new members rapidly joining. Toto pursued an inclusive membership of many different backgrounds, ages, and social classes in order to build solidarity and reduce the perception that cycles are only for those who cannot afford cars. This diverse community works as a support network, members encourage one another to maintain consistency in how often they bike. Once organized, B2W registered as an association, with official “Chapters” in different cities. B2W hosts riding safety clinics, free bike services, bazaars, and rallies to encourage a sense of community.

During the second year of the campaign, Toto made a priority of involving the middle the hardest group to wean from a reliance on cars. He reached out to the senior management of companies with largely middle class employees, sharing a presentation of B2W’s mission and successes, and the potential benefits to encourage biking to work: less transportation costs, healthier employees, and a greater sense of community among staff. For example, B2W has worked with PT. Telkomsel (a national IT company) to create a policy that mandates that the company’s 200 workers must bike to work once a month. This change was observed to increase worker productivity. Since then, 20 more companies in Jakarta have become members of B2W.

B2W’s campaigning strategies emphasized that there are virtually no barriers to entry to become a member of B2W, making the transition to biking easy. Toto has created a series of simple, practical and encouraging messages for the B2W campaign. The first step for cyclists is to follow a simple pattern of behavior dubbed “3M” – start cycling for yourself, short distances, and now, not later. Toto created a B2W logo to give a sense of a community to members that see each other while biking throughout the city. In June 2008, he managed a campaign event mobilizing 1500 B2W bike workers in Jakarta. He has engaged top government officials, including the president of Indonesia, the Minister of the Environment, and the City Mayor of Jakarta, to join his bike rallies. By engaging public officials, Toto creates leverage for policy change while also gaining wider public support for the movement. Since the rise of the B2W movement, the link between personal transportation habits and greater climate change is beginning to take hold of the Indonesian public and government institutions. B2W received a request from the Minister of the Environment to hold Bike for Earth Goes to Bali (BFEGTB) rally to open the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), held in Bali in November 2007. Toto used the convention as an opportunity to build further support for B2W. A team of 15 cyclists (all together around 50 people, including doctors and mechanics) biked from Jakarta to Denpasar, Bali. They biked 1,440 Km in 28 days, picking up cyclists from chapters in different cities to join the rally. Four Km before the final destination, the President of Indonesia joined the group, which had grown to 1000 cyclists over the course of the journey. This campaign was well covered by the national and international media, attracting throngs of people along the route.

In order to make bicycling a part of the planned transportation system, Toto is allying with other organizations committed to the benefits of bicycling to persuade the city government to create bikeways for the ever growing number of bikers in Jakarta. His community in Jakarta has successfully advocated the idea of a city-wide “car free” day on some designated roads once a week. A partnership with the City Park Bureau has facilitated the pilot of a green lane that links three city parks in Central Jakarta. In the long run, B2W hopes to create bikeways that link 800 city parks in the metropolitan city of Jakarta. This special bikeway has also been replicated by other B2W communities the cities of Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya. In a big city like Jakarta, bikers can potentially be the feeders for trains and buses–the backbone of a city's public transportation system. Given the fact that most bikers are commuters, Toto and his team are currently planning to set up a bike parking lot in train stations and bus terminals to work with the current transportation system, not against it. This strategy of allying with the city government and lobbying for the integration of bicycle paths in existing infrastructure has been used by other Chapters in different cities.

B2W’s city chapters have easily spread across Indonesia, and there are routine campaign activities almost every month in each B2W community. This national B2W community stays well connected with an active online network, cohesiveness of projects across cities (such as the green lane project), and national campaigning events. The information and experiences exchanged over the internet have allowed the movement to reach a wider audience very rapidly. The national campaign on B2W annual anniversary or the International Earth Day is run in all city chapters throughout Indonesia. The B2W community does more than simply coordinate events, it also serves as a support network; Toto and his B2W community in Jakarta rescued a community in South Jakarta that was hit by a flood recently.

The B2W communities have also been able to make significant and lasting changes in their own workplaces. They propose that companies and building management work together to motivate workers to bike more often by setting up special bike parking lots and public shower facilities. Currently, 20 prominent companies, including, Siemens, Niagra Tower, and TransTV, have participated in the movement together with their workers. In addition to providing the bike parking lot and public shower facility, they even officially inaugurated their company’s biker community with the support of B2W. Some companies even provided bike loans and technical facilities for repair and maintenance for their employees. Due to the growing number of bikers, some leasing companies have also recently emerged, to help people whose greatest barrier to cycling is the initial investment in a bike. Since many B2W members are commuters the B2W Research Team is also studying a possibility of setting up bike parking lots in other public places.

B2W is not only helping design a bike-friendly city, but also working on innovative products to make biking easy, safe, and affordable. Toto and his team have designed a low-cost B2W bike and partnered with the Polygon Company to manufacture the bikes. So far, 1,990 B2W bicycles have been sold across Indonesia, with the most success on Java Island. Toto and the team are currently in the process of incorporating a folding mechanism in the affordable bike model, a unique mechanism for which the Polygon Company is famous. The folded bike, known as the “Dahon” product within Polygon, will help people cope with the limited support facilities for cyclists in the city (they can easily carry it onto a bus, for example). Toto has also partnered with Totobobo to provide cyclist masks at an affordable price. A few B2W members have even opened up their own bike-related business: B2W has inspired people to live healthier lifestyles, contribute to a healthier environment, and start new business ventures. B2W is now spreading their campaign to students with their “Bike For School” campaign. Together with the Indonesia University Alumni, Teachers Club, Center for the Betterment of Education (CBE), and with the support of the Indonesia Oil Company, Toto organized a bike donation drive in schools. The bikes will be lent to poor students who cannot afford to pay for their transportation. The program is helping students focus on their education rather than financial restraints while teaching kids as early as possible the value of social environment and a healthier generation. 1500 bikes have been donated, and 1500 students received bikes. Many schools now have their own Bike For School communities in Jakarta, with hundreds of student participants.

Toto has loved bicycling since a young age. He learned to bike from his cousin and had his own bike by the time he was in the fifth grade. He spent much of his time cycling, which often made his mother angry as he skipped his Koran reading courses. Toto recalls that as a teenager, he courted his girlfriend riding around on a bike rather than in a car.

Since he was young, he has liked sports, and he played on school basketball teams from junior high to university. He was often appointed the class leader in school as he liked to coordinate events and was good at rallying people. In high school, he started to do mountain biking with his friends and has been very active in mountain bike clubs since. In 1983, during his early university years, he and his friends won a bike race. He studied machine engineering at the University of Indonesia, although he wanted to be an architect. Nonetheless, soon after graduated he and his brother, an architect, set up an architectural consulting company.

One day in 2004 while he and his friends from the mountain bike club were enjoying the fresh air and mountainous scenery, he faced the disturbing reality that unless things changed, their children would not be able to enjoy the same environment as he and his friends did. They all then agreed to work with the Jakarta community to do something about the traffic congestion and pollution problems, and set themselves as role models for social consciousness by biking to work. Toto’s vision is to change the perception of bicycles as recreational or symbols of low social status, and for people to take the idea of bicycles as alternative means of transportation seriously. Toto’s ambition is to create a global movement on this premise, and that Indonesia serve as a role model for the world.