Winning municipalities 2023 were honored in Cologne. Rheine and the district of Steinfurt are in the lead and again occupy 1st place nationwide
RheineOn Tuesday evening, this year’s winning municipalities of the Climate Alliance’s CITY CYCLING campaign were honored in Cologne’s historic town hall. The city of Rheine and the district of Steinfurt collected a whole host of certificates and trophies. Both were awarded first place in their respective size categories. In addition, the local parliament from Rheine was also awarded second place. The trophies and certificates were presented by the Cologne Alderman for Mobility Ascan Egerer and the North Rhine-Westphalian State Secretary for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport Viktor Haase. This year’s record results once again gave cause for celebration: more than 1.1 million participants from 2,836 municipalities covered a total of 227 million kilometers by bike.
The keynote speakers emphasized the importance of the bicycle as an important means of transport for sustainable mobility and gave the CITY CYCLING campaign, as a regular impetus for a social rethink, an excellent testimonial. State Secretary Haase sees this year’s number of participants as a clear signal, which also sends a message to politicians and administrators: “For the first time, more than 1 million people have taken part in CITY CYCLING. This shows once again that citizens are ready to make the switch. For this to succeed, however, they need cycle paths that allow them to reach their destination comfortably and safely. The expansion of cycling infrastructure is therefore a key component of the mobility transition for us.”
Mayor Dr. Peter Lüttmann, as a participant in a panel discussion that preceded the award ceremony, is also pleased that the CITY CYCLING campaign has been firmly anchored in the calendar for years and that the number of participants is increasing every year. “The great result with over 4,000 active participants shows that Rheine is a cycling city and that we are working at all levels to create good framework conditions, comfortable and safe cycle paths and a dense tourist cycling network that allows us to cover as many routes as possible within our city by bike.”
In order to encourage people to switch to cycling in the long term, the expansion of the necessary cycling infrastructure in Rheine must now continue apace. The two organizers of CITY CYCLING in Rheine, Michael Wolters and Engelbert Nagelschmidt, who accompanied the mayor to the award ceremony, are convinced of this: “People like cycling, but only if they feel safe and can get to their destination quickly and flexibly – then cycling is really fun – and that is ultimately the secret of successful cycling promotion.”
Mobility manager Michael Wolters in particular sees another advantage in addition to the fun of cycling that the CITY CYCLING campaign conveys: “CITY CYCLING can support us in transport planning and provide valuable assistance. We receive anonymized data via the CITY CYCLING app and we can see very clearly which routes cyclists prefer to take, where there are weak points or where cyclists have to wait a long time. In future, we want to incorporate this obviously useful data and information into transport planning in order to identify and document the everyday journeys of citizens and then use this information to develop the cycling infrastructure.”
City Cycling is an international campaign of the Climate Alliance and is supported by the partners Ortlieb, ABUS, stadthelm.de, TERN, WERTGARANTIE, Busch + Müller, Schwalbe, WSM and Paul Lange & Co.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the campaign is supported by the ADFC North Rhine-Westphalia, the AGFS North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport and the Zukunftsnetz Mobilität NRW.