European Cyclists’ Federation: “Putting the money where the mouth is”
A BABLE Podcast Write-up
No better time to catch up on Smart in the City — the BABLE Podcast than on World Bicycle Day! Especially if you missed our sixth episode and our conversation with Jill Warren, CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation on biking and active mobility.
We saw in the pandemic, you know, there was a lot of talk about all these cycle paths and everything, but it was the cities that already had plans in place and could accelerate them who could profit most from that development, and do things the most quickly. So really strategies and plans, I think, are key. — Jill Warren
In this episode, host Tamlyn Shimizu sat down with Jill Warren, CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), and Shannon Macika, Smart Cities Consultant at BABLE, to discuss biking, active mobility, public health and urban planning, as well as ECF’s goals and challenges as an umbrella federation for civil society cyclists’ organisations in Europe, which promotes cycling as a sustainable and healthy means of transport and leisure.
More and Better Cycling for All: about ECF
The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) is an umbrella organisation for around 70 cycling advocacy associations in over 40 countries. Founded in 1983, this Brussels-based non-profit association is dedicated to achieving more and better cycling for both transportation and leisure.
As further explained by Jill Warren, its activities and outputs include ‘evidence-based advocacy at the European level and sometimes at the global level’, as well as ‘research and thought leadership projects to underpin [ECF’s] advocacy’. She then mentioned as examples:
- ‘The Benefits of Cycling’ report published in 2018
- The ‘Cyclists love Trains’ report produced in connection with the European Year of Rail (2021) to rate the bike-friendliness of cities
- ‘The state of national cycling strategies in Europe’ report published beginning of this year
ECF also coordinate the EuroVelo long-distance cycle root network, which spans 90,000 kilometres and has 17 roots in 42 countries.
Zoom on the Velo-city Conference
The Velo-city conference is the annual flagship event of the European Cyclists’ Federation. These conferences bring together those involved in the policy, promotion and provision of cycling facilities and programs.
This year, the Velo-city conference will take place from June 14th to 17th in Ljubljana, Slovenia — Jill Warren
As Jill puts it, Velo-city 2022 ‘Cycling the Change’ will ‘brings together about 1400-1500 cycling enthusiasts in the whole cycling planning ecosystem. Whether that’s city planners, politicians, service providers, advocates, it really spans the whole spectrum of everybody interested in making our cities better for cycling’.
Active Mobility: Making Space and Making it Safe
Do you feel safe enough to hop on your bike every day and go to work, to school or anywhere else? According to Jill, the number one response when asking people why they don’t cycle more is that they don’t feel safe enough doing it.
I think a good question to ask is: would I feel comfortable allowing my 10 or 12-year-old child to cycle by himself or herself in my city, to go to regular places they need to go like school or football practice? If the answer to that is ‘no’, then there’s a lot of work to do in your city. — Jill Warren
So, what needs to happen for people to feel safer?
No change starts out of nowhere, and every restructuring requires planning ahead. According to our guests, plans and strategies are the best place to start. Questions such as ‘How do you want to make your city livable? And then how are you gonna do that? What’s it going to cost you? How are you going to prioritize what you need to prioritize to get there?’ must be on the table when undertaking such projects.
Furthermore, as Shannon pointed out, these plans and strategies need to bring together not only mobility departments but also stakeholders across different sectors.
We see some cities with health policy approaches. It’s also how you position [active mobility] to be what’s the most important, pressing issue in your city. So being able to target other comorbidities by placing active mobility as a priority, and showing how it can benefit everyone. — Shannon Macika
Ups and Downs: Best Practices and Poorly Executed Implementations
You have your cities that everybody would name like Copenhagen or Amsterdam that have long been doing this very well. […] On the other hand, I really like to look at university towns because they, by definition are built for a lot of people who don’t have cars, who walk from place to place on campus. And so some of my personal favourite cities in Europe are university cities that are just built for active travel. — Jill Warren
In Jill’s opinion, two cities worth mentioning in terms of best practices would be the cities of Freiburg and Münster, both famous German university towns. Further into the episode, the city of Brussels, Belgium was given also by Jill as an example of actions citizens can take to make space for active mobility in their neighbourhood: ‘you had a very choked up intersection in the centre of town, and some years ago the residents just started dragging picnic tables out there and kind of blocking it, and basically showing what they’d rather have there.’ Long story short, the whole area was then turned into a pedestrian area.
When you can show people a different way and they see how it benefits them and how nice it is, that’s probably the best way to start to change hearts and minds. — Jill Warren
On the other hand, sometimes projects that had the best intentions at heart go wrong. The reasons may be diverse, our guests insisted on three deadends to watch out for.
- Avoid ‘halfhearted solutions’, for example drawing a so-called death strip on the side of the road instead of building a protected bike lane that is truly separated from the cars.
- Don’t let your pilots or test solutions die. Sometimes temporary infrastructures are put in place to test out a mobility solution, and sometimes it goes really well and receives a lot of citizen approbation. But then no other action is taken, or even worse, we go back to what was there before.
- Communicating is as important as implementing. An example that Shannon gave was a city that tried out a “floating parking system”, where during the less busy times of the day, cars could be parked in what would normally be a lane of traffic and thereby protecting a cycling lane. But without a proper communication strategy, it ended up behind very confusing for people who thought it was still somewhere they could drive.
The main challenge of ECF: ‘Putting Money Where the Mouth is’
Although the urban mobility framework that came out of the European Commission last December stated for the first time that local and national governments should place a priority on active mobility and shared transport, the European Cyclists’ Federation will not go out of a job anytime soon.
We still have a ways to go in terms of convincing some of the decision-makers that cycling is a fully-fledged mode of transport and should be supported and prioritized as such. — Jill Warren
The big question mark also stays the same: what about the funding? Will European funds be made available to accelerate this transition toward active mobility?
Not only will this be ECF’s job to “make them stick to their word and, and put the money where the mouth is”, but this also opens a whole new horizon of possibilities regarding international cooperation and policies.
It’s also exciting because these funding schemes, not only is it gonna be countries taking their national funds or regional funds and working within their own locations and geographies, but now also collaborating to figure out how cycling doesn’t end at borders, how active mobility doesn’t end at borders. So how do we better cooperate and how do we use this money strategically to benefit? — Shannon Macika
Want to learn more about active mobility and other Smart City topics?
Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for more insights — some more factual and some more fun — including:
- How many bikes do Jill and Shannon own? What are Jill and Shannon’s favourite and least favourite bikes?
- What are the main challenges behind increasing active mobility in cities?
- How do we balance already existing car-centred infrastructure with active mobility projects?
- Is active mobility also including people with reduced mobility?
- How can city representatives work with ECF?
- How did Jill and Shannon respond to our ending question ‘To you, what is a Smart City’?
And if you are reading (or listening) as a representative of a city or network, we’d love to have you join us on a future episode. Reach out to our host Tamlyn Shimizu with your interest.
And for even more insights, join our Smart City community
Make sure to also take a look at our other Podcast Write-Ups, and always feel free to reach out to us for any inquiry.
