City Ciclying, a SaMBA Pilot
CITY CYCLING is a competition that involves completing as many daily journeys as possible in an environmentally-friendly manner using your bike over a 21-day period. Whether you ride every day or cycled only rarely until now. Every kilometre counts!
Problem
The county of Emmendingen, located in the south of Baden-Württemberg in Germany and close to the city of Freiburg, is the perfect example of a rural area with high dependency on the use of private vehicles. Cycling is not yet a largely used form of transportation, also because the respective infrastructure is not in an optimal state, which impedes cyclists from switching from theirs cars to using their bikes more often. Therefore, the county has decided to take part in the CITY CYCLING campaign that promotes cycling and contributes to climate protection.
Description
The City Ciclying initiative believes that the most effective way to convince someone to cycle is not to merely reel off its countless benefits. Instead, they should get on a bike for themselves for 21 days.
To bring more people to that competition, statistics show just how many people are already using their bike and thus contributing to climate protection. In order to encourage even more people to switch permanently from their car to a bike, there is a need for cycling infrastructure that allows them to reach their destination quickly and safely, facilitating that change from private cars to bycicle.
To help draw attention to cyclists’ needs, CITY CYCLING also targets local politicians. After all, it is them who makes the decisions when it comes to the cycling infrastructure – and thus to the practical local climate protection. During the campaign period, they take the handlebar perspective to find out for themselves where their municipality already caters to cyclists’ needs well and where there is still room for improvement.
In order to help achieve those goals, the RADar! reporting platform offers an interactive map on which cyclists can enter reports of disturbances in the cycling infrastructure (e.g. potholes). They simply place a pin with a comment on the road map and the administration can react transparently on the same platform. The RADar! reporting platform can be operated from a desktop PC or smartphone.
Lessons Learned
• Key-stakeholders should be approached early
• Involvement of companies was successful to reach the people
• Know the gatekeepers, key-stakeholders, and decision-makers in the involved organisations
• Critical issue: to intercept car users; usually only those who already use the bike join the campaign
