A total of 21 people (so far) from 10 countries have signed up for this cycle parking course and you all have different knowledge and experience. Please add your short introduction here. It's not necessary but if you would like to add a photo as well, that would be great.
Hello everyone,
my name is Jelena Nikolić and I am from Kruševac, Serbia. I’m M.Eng in Architecture and I’m working in a Department for Investments, economy and environment in City Administration of the City of Kruševac as a Senior Associate. I worked in a Department for Urban Planning and Construction on monitoring procedures for the development and adoption of the Plans, giving opinions and suggestions before adopting the Plan and issuing of the necessary documents for the construction: information about location, location permit, building and use permits. I also was in a Department for Inspection Activities where I worked as a Building inspector. Before the City Administration, I worked in the project bureau as an architect on designing project for various types of buildings.
Kruševac, the city rich in tradition and with centuries-old history, is located in the central part of Serbia. One of the main traffic corridors E-75, which leads from South-East Europe to Western Europe, intersects the sub-region on the Northeastern side of Krusevac. The construction of the E-761 is planned in the vicinity of the industrial zone of the City.
Kruševac is a city and municipality, and the administrative center of the Rasina District, in central Serbia. It covers an area of 853.97 km2 and has 101 settlements, of which only the municipality center Krusevac is urban. Its total population is 131.368 inhabitants (by 2002 census).
- Population (total): 131.368 inhabitants (by 2002 census)
- City Area: 57.347 inhabitants (43.7 %)
- City Area & Suburban: 78.599 inhabitants (59.8 %)
- Rural: 52.769 inhabitants (40.2 %)
Today, Kruševac is facing the problem of insufficient number of parking spaces in the urban part of the city, poorly developed system of public transportation, lack of bike paths, a small landscaped area, and as a consequence, there is increased air pollution and noise, which is especially noticeable in the city center.
Public transportation has been organized through the system of bus and taxi stations. Great traffic density, low service level and reduced traffic safety in urban area are the consequence of improperly organized public urban and suburban traffic. There is no sufficient parking place downtown.
Bicycle traffic is not developed.There is no bike paths. Bicycle traffic is in parallel with the car traffic (on a same road), which is not very safe. Older people generally use a bicycle when they go to grocery shopping (or green market) and younger ride a bike to the lake or to the mountain Jastrebac (near the city). In several places in the city there is a simple urban movables for parking bicycles. It is absurd that bicycle traffic is not developed, given that in the city is a factory for the production of bicycles.
City of Krusevac has no adopted strategy dealing with traffic issues. The Krusevac City Assembly has adopted in 2011 Sustainable development Strategy 2011-2012 as well as Spatial Plan of City of Krusevac (Official Gazette of City of Krusevac No. 4/2011)
Hi Jelena,
Thanks for the detailed description of Krusevac.It sounds like you have quite a bit to do to improve cycling but a sustainable development strategy is definitely a good thing to have. I think you should be able to use it quite a lot to support development of cycling.
I look forward to hearing more in the coming weeksl
Bonnie
Hi Bonnie,
Yes, we will have a lot of work to improve cycling in our city. I think this course topics and sharing experience with colleagues from other cities will help me a lot.
Jelena
Hi guys,
First of all, I would like to say that it’s a pleasure to be a part of such a useful practice sharing project. Describing myself shortly I’m Urban and regional planner interested in Sustainable Urban development and trying to implement Sustainable Urban mobility Plans (SUMP) into the cities of Lithuania. At the moment I’m a chief specialist of Road Transport Division in the Ministry of Transport and Communications of the Republic of Lithuania. My responsibility covers legislation of SUMP, design of all transport system, included cycling lanes, electric vehicles, footpaths and other issues related with territory planning. I have a master of Civil engineering (Urban transport systems) with useful practise in ERASMUS studies at the Napier University (Edinburgh, UK) and three years practise working with general and special plans of Lithuania regionals and cities and international projects.
Lithuania - quiet a small country with approximate 3 million population. Capital – Vilnius (population around 540 000). To be honest, not so much cyclists, but during two or three years cyclists numbers are increasing. Unfortunately our country don’t have any statistics of trips made by bikes, but nowadays it reached just 3 % into the modal split. Each city has their own strategy of cycling lanes implementation and different amount of cycling lanes km. In 2013 Klaipėda (port city) was nominated as a Cycling city for their decisions improving quality of cycling. Vilnius has the first bike sharing system in Lithuania with 33 inner stations. Cycling infrastructure is well developed near the Baltic Sea, where the "Seaside cycle route" provides a cycle path along the EuroVelo 10 (Baltic Sea route). Slower development is taking place in the Eastern part of the country along EuroVelo 11 (East Europe Route).
1st pic. Tree of the bikes in Kaunas
2nd pic. Cycling lane. Vilnius.
Hi Gintare,
Like Jelena above, you also mention an SUMP. That should be valuable in building cycling in Lithuania since - I assume - the plan supports further development of cycling as a sustainable mode. Also interesting to see that there's an increase in the past couple of years. That's a trend in many places. I also love your bike tree!
Bonnie,
My mission is to try to implement SUMP in Lithuania, not just have a paper on the municipalities table, so hopefully number of cyclists sudden increase and after two, tree or even five years cycling infrastructure will be high quality and full of users. Let’s wait and see (with cross fingers for more sustainable future).
Best,
Gintare
Hi Gintare,
interesting presentation and intersting bike sculpture! You mentioned that each city has their own strategy of cycling lanes implementation, is it posible to find that on internet on english?
Regards,
Jelena
Jelena,
Thanks for compliments, looks we all have some nice practise to share. Unfortunately municipalities don’t have strategies translated in English. If I will be able to find something, will send you for sure.
Greets from Vilnius
That will be nice, thank you!
Best regards,
Jelena
Hi Gintare and everyone,
If there's anything on line - even in Lithuanian - it would be great if you could share it. While they're not perfect, it's amazing how much you can understand using translation tools. The great thing about all of us talking here is that we can help each other find useful documents in different languages that we would never otherwise find.
By the way, I just posted a link to the new Slovak National Cycling Strategy in Unit 2 if anyone is interested in that. I thought it was good to see such a document from a Central European country.
Bonnie
Hello,
My name is Jesús Martínez. I’m from Lugo, a small city in the Northwest of Spain. Lugo is an old city (2000 years aprox) with an old pedestrian city centre surrounded by a roman wall (UN World Heritage).
Its population is around 90.000 h, and its cycling mode share is 0,5% aprox. But it could be much higher if you take into account that 50% of the streets have slopes below 1%, and 84% below 4%.
I am a Civil Engineer. I work as a freelance for public and private clients mostly drafting projects and writing reports. Along years I have done works related to port and maritime works, water treatment and sewage and, lately, urban planning and sustainable mobility proposals.
My experience with bike parking is only related to those included in some street or urban planning but, due to the lack of bike infrastructure or interest in it from authorities, this experience is scarce and theoretical.
Hi Jesus,
Nice to meet you online. I was interested to see how specific you information was on the steepness of the hills in Lugo. Clearly you've thought about that from a cycling perspective, but it doesn't sound like the hills should create an impossible barrier. And from your photo, the city looks quite compact, meaning most distances should be manageable by bike.
Hi Bonnie,
The data I used is from the SUMP. And yes, the city is around 5x3 km. You can go from one end to another in about 15 minutes (half an hour if you go from south to north because of the slope).
The problem is that we have two rivers, and people who live near them need to go uphill a little bit to reach the city centre.
Cagliari also has the center area that is uphill but thru the new bike sharing there are 35 new pedelecs to assist in the uphill ride. The problem with these however, is that they are used to go to the top but are left there...... Additionally, although bike sharing stations were built to provide charging for these pedelecs, city planners failed to provide charging stations for the general public for privately owned pedelecs and electric automobiles, private or publicly owned.
Kevin
Kevin,
I am afraid Lugo is in an earlier stage than Cagliari. We have some public bike stations (very few a randomly located) and the problem with them is the opposite: people use them to go downhill, mostly towards the Unviersity Campus. But I think this is a problem you will have everywhere. You will always have origin/destination stations depending on the hour or day. Thats why the public bike systems are, in my opinion, a very expensive system. You need a lot of management and maintenance.
I hope in the next years we can convince the city managers to improve the situation, but without any infrastructure (even parking) you can't tell people to use their bikes without secure parking or streets. And the public bikes are no real alternative right now.
I think this photograph sums up the situation here. The bike sharing system is out of order since two years ago and people lock the bikes to anything but those racks:
Jesus,
how you can convince the city managers to improve situation? Do you have any example?
In my city people use their bikes, but there are no bike paths. There are a few spots in a city where you can park a bike, but usually people tie their bikes to a traffic sign or tree.
I think that city managers and planners are not aware how many people ride a bike in a city.
As you can see on the image below, bikers use the same road as car or pedestrians.
Jelena,
I've been trying to convince the city managers for many years. I have propose to the mayor (with the council engineers) the SUMP development with a Bike Plan. (I have to admit that I have interest in that because I am engineer and I hope to be part of the team, and I drafted the proposal).
He promised us to start this plan this year, but we are still waiting.
But even if there is no plan, you can do a lot of things with almost no money. Bike parking is very cheap, and due to the complete lack of them, here you can see for yourself where to locate them.
Nowadays we can tie our bikes to sign posts (legal) and trees (ilegal) but that's not the way to promote bike use and you have perhaps one sign post every 50 or 100 m, that's not the solution.
And could be even dangerous, because people use the gas pipes to park their bikes, and someone could think of steal the bike by cutting the pipe.
Here is my bike as an example:
But it's very dificult to deal with people who spend almost 2 M€ in one pedestrian street in the city centre and this is the bike park they choose (in a back alley, with no use):
Obviously is always empty, and people use the street funiture to park their bikes:
Jesus,
thank you for the answer and photos. In my city also don't exist proper cycling infrastructure, and people use light poles, traffic signs and trees for parking, as is the case in your city.
I wish you a lot of success in the work on the SUMP.
Regards,
Jelena
Just an update to tell you that we now have over 30 people registered for this course from 15 countries. I would like to strongly encourage more of you to share your ideas and your cities with the rest of us. This can serve as a wonderful platform for learning and exchange if we all participate (and if anybody is worried about imperfect English - please don't). We'd love to hear from you.
Dear all,
Nice to take part in this international course. Interesting construction and I am curious to learn more about you situation. I prepared my presentation in a Word-file, so please do open the file attached. I am curious to hear what you think of our cycle situation.
Best wishes,
Bert
Hi Bert,
You in the Netherlands are definitely dealing with different problems from most other people in this course!
I do have a couple of questions for you though: some of the examples of cycle parking you showed in your photos are what I would call "wheel benders." Do people like using them? Or do they just see the stands as an indicator of where to park and then park their bikes next to them rather than in them (as many people do in Bremen, where I live)?
And what about shelter for bikes? I could imagine people would prefer to have a roof over their bikes at the station if they leave their bikes there all day every day? Is that an issue that people talk about in Elst?
Thanks!
Bonnie
Hi Bonnie,
I do agree our situation in Elst is quite different to that of other participants, but I hope they might get some inspiration out of it and see that bicycles can even cause problems, when there are too many of them.You are right about the wheel benders. We see more bicycles parked next to the device and you are also right about the shelter. I do not know why they have not built a roof over the parkings (the older parkings did have a roof).
Hi everybody,
my name is Cristina Pellegrini and I'm currently working for the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Reggio Emilia is a middle-sized city in the northern part of Italy, in the middle of Padana Plane, with about 170,000 inhabitants.
The system of urban mobility sees high rates of per capita displacements, rather small distances, and a strong use of the car, but the location in the plain territory and the compact size of the city make it competitive to use bike, which currently accounts for almost 20% of all trips, one of the highest rate in Italy. The overall mobility strategy is presented in Reggio Emilia's SUMP (2008), a strategic program on sustainable development in mobility with priorities on transport-territory integration, cycling and traffic regulation and restriction. Cycling has a decisive role in this strategy: the SUMP has been integrated by the BICIPLAN, the Plan of the cycle network, aimed at
building a general "bicycle-friendly" environment by developing services and infrastructures for cycling, increasing road safety in urban area for cyclist and pedestrian, and promoting changing in mobility behaviours and lifestyle.
My daily work is running EU funded projects, especially on cycling, urban logistics and mobility management. In the past I managed a EU project on cycling (CARMA) in my hometown, Parma, to get more people on bikes through targeted marketing campaigns, while now-among other things- I’m running INVOLVE, an INTERREG project aimed at involving the private sector in mobility management. We are realizing a pilot project specifically targeted to small and medium enterprises with no experience in mobility management, convince employees to leave car at home to go to work and companies to invest in other modes of transport-and cycling above all- won’t be easy but I’m here to get new ideas about it, together with hints on how to further improve our cycling policy.
Cristina,
Would love to invite you here for a seminar on "Cycling Promotion". You could give a 30 minute (or more) introduction then perhaps a 2-3 hour workshop on related initiatives for a fruitful meet. Please provide an "off-line" message to kbl1198#yahoo.com
Kevin
I'm originally from Huntington, West Virginia (USA) but have been living in Italy since 1981 and in Cagliari, Sardinia since 1995.
For the past 12 years, I've been a teacher in the Italian public school system but have been lobbying for rights and a sound cycling infrastructure in the region since 1997
My experience with cycling infrastructure has been its promotion through the local affiliate of the Federazione Italiana Amici della Bicicletta (FIAB), "Città Ciclabile", of which I am one of the founding members and ex-president. I have attended and organized various initiatives revolving around the promotion the use of the bicycle for transportation and bicycle road safety issues. After being asked by the local municipality to assist in the set up of bike parking areas in the community I am confident that my input was considered and, based on the research I conducted, the municipality established four bike parking areas. Even if only limited in number and practicality they served as a basis for opening the minds of local planners to the topic.
The population consensus of 2010 shows Sardinia's capital city's population at 156,720. However, the surrounding townships bring the the population of the province to over 500,000.The only cycling infrastructures currently available are the four bike parking racks and the bike sharing stations, in use since 2012, have been recently increased to from four to ten raising the total number of available units from 35 to 100 for the population.
Apart from the parking stations the city finally has around 8 kilometers of cycling paths and an additionally planned 14 that had been on the back burner since 1997. Mostly greenways for past time cycling that pass through parks and not through the city for true urban cycling.
Happy cycling.
Kevin
Cagliari recently subscribed to the Europeans Cyclists' Federation's "European Cycling Challenge". Although providing the initial subscription fee (€1k), the city has not shown plans of further promoting this event apart from a press conference held just this week letting the public know of this unbudgeted initiative. A Bike Office, initially publicized during the Eurpean Mobility week 16-22 September 2011 has yet to be established. There's still a long road ahead.
Greetings from Madrid,
I apologize for arriving so late to the forum. I am involved in the imminent launching of the public bicycle system in Madrid and it has being almost impossible for me to follow the whole course. I will try to contribute with some experiences in these two days.
I am technician in communication and strategy development in the Transport Public Company of Madrid, supporting the Department of Mobility of the City Council in many issues related to the cycling policies.
Madrid (3,2 M people) has a very low rate of cycling mobility (under 1%) but we are registering important shift rates in the last years (298% of growing since 2004). From 2008 we are implementing the Master Plan for Cycling Mobility in Madrid, which includes different working programes. One of them is Bike Parking Network.
You can see this network in the "Bike Map". It includes 1.167 racks ("U" inverted model)
They are always on the sidewalks... with ver few exceptions like this (next to the motorbike racks, on the road):
In the recently presented SUMP of Madrid (now in public information period) is planned to continue the development of the network, in cooperation and dialogue with users associations participating in the Monitoring Commission of the Master Plan for Cycling Mobility. So, I think is very usefull all the information and recomendations of the course.
One of the challenges will be to get the racks out of the sidewalks when needed. But also including the mandatory of providing bicycle parking in new housing (we are trying) and so many others.
Hi Ignacio,
It's nice to have you join us with some interesting information about Madrid - even at the last minute. The course is actually officially closed but there were a few last-minute comments both from you and others that I wanted to address before the course closes completely.
It sounds like there is some positive movement in Madrid and the inclusion cycling and cycle parking in your SUMP is very encouraging. I completely agree with you about getting the cycle parking off the sidewalks. You definitely don't want it to block pedestrians. But in your photo (above), the racks are indeed in street space (at least in this one example) so there are some positive examples.
Just out of curiosity, is your cycle map also available as an app? I can imagine it would be useful information to have on the road. Also (and maybe this sounds old-fashioned) do you print maps as well? I know it's harder to keep them up-to-date and there are printing costs involved but I find there are several good reasons to do it:
1. you can place them in public space so that people see them who otherwise wouldn't
2. some people still like to have a paper map to look at when they're travelling
3. they're great for showing and handing out at events. Lots of people love maps. It's something for people to take away and they feel like they're getting a gift
4. You can also include other useful information on the map (safety tips, destinations, resources, etc.)
Just a couple of thoughts.
Bonnie
Thanks Bonnie,
Unfortunately, the official app is still not available... but it will be soon (I wish). The information with the cycle parking has been included in the Open Data web in order to facilitate anyone to develop an alternative app. Here you are the link to the cycle parking data.
Fortunately, ICT´s have come to solve "old-fashioned" problems!!
Our problem with the print map is the space available and the ability to offer clear information. The map exists (you can download it from this link) and includes tips and resources (translated into English too!), but the main information is related to cycle paths, not parking.
I think you are right and many people prefer a paper map, but the size of this would be very large to be clear. Maybe in smaller cities is easier. I don´t know experiences in other "big cities".
Best