Our project "More biking in small and medium sized towns of Central and Eastern Europe by 2020" (mobile2020) has ended. Read about our approach and achievements in our brochures "gaining momentum" and "keeping balance" or dive deeper into utility cycling with the mobile2020 handbook. 

Using your bicycle every day to get to work or for shopping is common in many cities in Germany, the Netherlands, or other Western European countries. In Central and Eastern Europe, bicycles are still reserved mainly for leisure on the weekend but are not considered a common mode of transportation.

Since the 1990s improving the conditions for individual car traffic has been the priority of transport policies and the lack of infrastructure, with separate and sufficient bicycle lanes, and services make people prefer to use their cars for daily commuting.

With mobile2020 we stimulated the rethinking of planning processes in small and medium sized towns in 11 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. We  transfered suitable good experiences from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and other countries and made them applicable in our target countries.

mobile2020

• initiated national working groups of cycling professionals to keep up the discussion on a high level and to think about long term objectives,
• seeked to broadly inform towns and cities in Central and Eastern Europe systematically about what they can do to increase the share of cycling in the future,
• empowered municipal planners and decision-makers to make the right investments, improve their planning procedures and to trigger a change in their citizens’ mobility behavior,
• carried out a number of workshops seminars and study visits to spread the good experiences, knowledge and ideas that will improve the conditions for cycling in Central and Eastern Europe in the future.
• organized a number of public events and competitions where municipalities in the region could demonstrate their achievements in favour of cycling and where every cycling enthusiast could join in. 

The project ran from 05/2011 until 04/2014