Thousands of French employees are being paid to pedal to work, under a government plan to take cycling beyond the Tour de France.

At present, millions of French people use la petite reine (the little queen), as the bicycle is nicknamed, for weekend rides, but relatively few do so to get to work. The transport ministry wants to change that with a system of financial incentives.

The project has been started on an experimental basis at 19 companies, with some members of staff earning hundreds of euros a month to pedal to the office or factory. If the experiment proves a success, all companies will be forced to offer their personnel the bike bonus, according to the transport ministry.

The initiative follows a study suggesting that bicycles account for only 2.4 per cent of journeys in France, compared with 8 per cent in Belgium and 25 per cent in the Netherlands.

The companies involved in the trial employ a total of about 10,000 people, and have agreed to pay their staff €2.50 for every 10km — about £1 for every three miles — that they cycle to work.

Managers say that many employees have taken to pedalling home for lunch to increase their bonus payments. Some are clocking up dozens of kilometres every day; the newspaper Le Figaro says that one man earned €345 in July.

French law obliges companies to meet 50 per cent of the cost of public transport for staff on home-to-work journeys. The authorities also give tax breaks to companies that offset the cost of petrol for employees who rely on their cars to commute.

“This trial will enable us to evaluate whether the system can be extended to the bicycle,” Frédéric Cuvillier, the transport minister, said. “I want the bicycle to become a means of transport in its own right.”

A recent report for the Ministry for Sustainable Development said that France used the bicycle until the Second World War, but then abandoned it in favour of the car.

Although the French still buy three million bicycles every year — the third highest rate per person in Europe, behind Germany and the Netherlands — they use them largely for leisure, according to the report. The result is that the average French person covers 55 miles a year on a bicycle, compared with 500 miles in Denmark.