Safer Cycling Advocate Program

Project activities At the center of the program is the SCAP Guide that describes best practices gathered from The Netherlands and Denmark, two countries with a strong cycling culture. The guide helps to equip advocates, organizations, and transport planners from countries such as Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia, to implement steps towards safer and more sustainable active mobility. It covers policy, infrastructure, road user culture etc. to promote systemic change that enables a safe environment that encourages people to cycle. The guide can be found here: https://safercycling.roadsafetyngos.org/best-practice-guide/. This guide was developed in 2019, and launched in February 2020. SCAP has two main components: i) training on safer cycling best practices, and ii) development of a collaboration scheme to introduce a fleet of cargo bikes in a selected city. SCAP Training: Equips NGOs and campaigners to advocate with their local and national governments, as well as the general public, for cycling policy, infrastructure, education, legal framework, enforcement, and behaviors that can help to build a safer cycling culture. It includes a three-day training program, during which participants design an advocacy campaign action plan that they implement after the training. The project is a best practice guide, available in Bosnian, Croatian, English, Italian, Portuguese, Slovenian, and Spanish, and offers a communication toolkit to enable cycling advocates to run awareness campaigns. The guide is also publicly available to anyone wishing to promote cycling in their local communities. So far, 115 cycling advocates in Bosnia, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Slovenia, and Spain have undergone the SCAP training program and the results have been promising. These trainings took place in October 2020, May 2021, and September 2021. Cargo bikes collaboration scheme: Through this program we work to introduce a small fleet of cargo bikes to the cities alongside consensus building activities with the local municipalities with the aim to create knowledge exchange and awareness of the benefits of using cargo bikes for short trips. Firstly we created a working group with members of the municipal staff in each city and with local cyclist organizations, to facilitate and ensure that the exchange takes into account the national legislation and the local socio-cultural context. Our role included providing the working groups with a platform for monthly video-conference calls, documents storage interaction, and coordination. We provided a two-day workshop in each of the cities, which were designed to maximize interactivity and a hands-on approach, that include technical visits, equipment testing and citizens’ participation. Through these workshops we secured that the local authorities could conduct the maintenance, storage, and practical location of the cargo bikes. Once this was completed we developed a cooperation scheme in each of the cities to give citizens the opportunity to test life with a cargo bike themselves before buying one. This cooperation scheme has adopted a different approach depending on the city. We have been working with the municipalities since August 2021, and continue our collaboration in the six cities.