Happy Inaugural World Bicycle Day 2018!!
I hope you, your bike and your riding mates had a great day yesterday.
I had an awesome time riding Leki ALL DAY!
Leki and I cruised around our local neighbourhood, caught up with friends, locals and other riders. In fact, I rode so much that I ended up loosing my voice and was quite tender the next day. Success!
Ride more, be happy, get fit, enjoy the outdoors and build positive community!
World Bicycle Day 2018
According to the UN, the aim of World Bicycle Day (WBD) is to :
- devote particular attention to the bicycle in cross-cutting development strategies and to include the bicycle in international, regional, national and subnational development policies and programmes;
- encourage improvements in road safety and integrate it into sustainable mobility and transport infrastructure planning and design, in particular through policies and measures to actively protect and promote pedestrian safety and cycling mobility, with a view to broader health outcomes, particularly the prevention of injuries and non-communicable diseases;
- encourage stakeholders to emphasize and advance the use of the bicycle as a means of fostering sustainable development, strengthening education, including physical education, for children and young people, promoting health, preventing disease, promoting tolerance, mutual understanding and respect and facilitating social inclusion and a culture of peace;
- Encourages the adoption of best practices and means to promote the bicycle among all members of society, and in this regard welcomes initiatives to organize bicycle rides at the national and local levels as a means of strengthening physical and mental health and well-being and developing a culture of cycling in society.
Source: UN Photo/Andre Istria
There were many events locally and internationally celebrated World Bicycle Day.
Below are three places – one in Australia (Adelaide, South Australia) and two international (India and Denmark), that caught my eye this year.
RADelaide (Adelaide, South Australia).
I have a particular place in my heart for biking and Adelaide. It is a city that has an unwaviering passion for cycling – as well as being stunningly beautiful and having some of the freindliest locals I’ve met (and all of them were bike crazy!)
The last time I was in Adelaide, was to attended the 2017 Australian Walking and Cycling Conference, where I also presented a session called Creating Memorable Community Bike Projects.
So I was interested to see what Adelaide did for WBD 2018.
The Port Adelaide Bicycle Users Group (PortBUG), celebrated World Bike Day 2018 with a BISA/Bike SA Community Ride from Victoria Park to Elder Park. This event had several hundred bicyclists turned up all ready to celebrate in style as you can see below…
India
India is an important place to include for World Bicycle Day (June 3rd) as it is also the official host for World Environment Day (6th June).
In India, it was the politicians getting involved to celebrate World Bicycle Day.
In New Dehli, Vice President Naidu (below on the bike) said that “cycling is the best and cheapest form of exercise to keep ourselves healthy and people must be encouraged to adopt such environment-friendly mode of transport.”
One of the local newspapers, the Daily Kiran reported that VP Naidu addressed “a gathering of cyclists and environmentalists after inaugurating the Bicycle Rally and NDMC’s Smart Cycle Station for Public Bike Sharing on the occasion.
He said that the campaign to promote the use of bicycle must be taken up on a sustained basis and it should not be confined to a ritualistic exercise on the World Bicycle Day”.
Denmark
Copenhagen and Amsterdam are well known for consistently being the top two cities in the world for cycling. Both capital cities are considered to be the benchmark that other places look to for ways to improve urban cycling planning, infrastructure and participation.
This fun fact-filled video released for World Bicycle Day 2018 by Visit Demark servers not only as an inspiration to aspire towards, but also as a wonderful promotion for the best that urban cycling can offer. Here’s to hoping…(*sigh*)!
However you chose to celebrate it
I hope you had a fun first ever World Bicycle Day!
Viva la Bici! Happy riding all!