Detailed description (English): The European Cycling Challenge is a successful follow up of the CIVITAS Mimosa European Project: 63 European cities from 20 different countries joined the past editions of the Challenge, with more than 47,000 cyclists involved and more than 4 Million km cycled so far.
The participating cyclists, each tracking their own bike trips to work, school, shops, etc with a free GPS-based smartphone app, contribute to the total number of km cycled by their city-team. The different on-line leaderboards, both on a European level (among cities) and locally (among participants and companies/schools), are updated in real time and are a fun way to measure oneself against one’s fellow citizens, colleagues and friends as well as against the participating cities.
This fun way of real time monitoring gave birth to an even more entertaining way of mutually involving citizens through word of mouth and social networks.
The benefits for the cities involved are various:
- behavior change: the Challenge is a useful tool to help reduce urban car traffic, getting people to play with cycling and raising their willingness to use the bicycle instead of polluting vehicles,
- cyclists’ motivation: cities are able to play with their citizens, creating a social and smart community of cyclists,
- daily physical activity: the Challenge makes commuting an opportunity of daily physical activity and well-being,
- active urban planning: the Challenge has an extremely important technical value in verifying existing cycle networks and in planning future ones, by providing to cities crowdsourced GPS data, which allow to identify the most common routes used by cyclists for getting around.
- self-promotion: the Challenge has had a spin-off effect so far, by promoting each city locally and internationally by press and social medias, by awarding ceremonies with European Commission’s delegate, participation to international conferences and scientific papers issued.
The CIVITAS Award for public participation assigned by the European Commission in 2013 and the increasing number of participating cities through the years have underlined the strategic role the Challenge plays in promoting the use of bicycles as a mode of urban transport.
Target group(s): All citizens, living of travelling to/from participating cities, which use bicycle for their daily trips instead of other polluting vehicle.
Objectives: There are three main objectives:
- reducing car trips;
- encouraging people to change their lifestyle in favor of a more active mobility;
- collecting real GPS data about cycling in our cities that are useful to urban planning.
Expected Outcomes: In the first four editions (2012-2015) 63 European cities from 20 different countries joined the Challenge, with more than 47,000 cyclists involved and more than 4 Million km cycled so far.
The City of Bologna and the SRM, the Local Mobility Authority – as organizers of the Challenge - are confident that the 2016 edition will confirm the results obtained so far in terms of participation and visibility, offering the participating cities an opportunity to dialog with their own citizens on the issues of sustainability and the use of bicycles as a mode of urban transport.
Partner: City of Bologna
SRM Reti e Mobilità - Local Mobility Authority of Bologna