The winning municipalities 2023 were honored in Cologne. Rheine and the district of Steinfurt lead the way and again occupy 1st place nationwide.
RheineOn Tuesday evening, the winning municipalities of the Climate Alliance’s CITY CYCLING campaign were honored in Cologne’s historic City Hall. The city of Rheine and the district of Steinfurt received a host of certificates and trophies. Both were honored with first place in their respective size categories. In addition, the local parliament of Rheine was also honored with second place. The trophies and certificates were presented by Cologne Council Member for Mobility Ascan Egerer and North Rhine-Westphalia State Secretary for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport Viktor Haase. This year’s record results again gave cause for celebration: more than 1.1 million participants from 2,836 municipalities covered a total of 227 million bicycle kilometers.
The keynote speakers emphasized the importance of the bicycle as an important means of transportation for sustainable mobility and gave excellent testimony to the CITY CYCLING campaign, as a regular impetus for social rethinking. State Secretary Haase sees this year’s number of participants as a clear signal that also sends a message to politicians and administrators: “For the first time, more than 1 million people have participated in CITY CYCLING. This shows once again that citizens are ready to make the switch. For this to succeed, however, they need bike lanes that allow them to reach their destinations comfortably and safely. The expansion of bicycle infrastructure is therefore an important part of the mobility transition for us.”
Mayor Dr. Peter Lüttmann, as a participant in a panel discussion that preceded the award ceremony, was also pleased that the CITY CYCLING campaign has been firmly established in the calendar for years and that the number of participants is increasing every year. “The great result with more than 4,000 active participants shows that Rheine is a cycling city and that we are working at all levels to provide good framework conditions, comfortable and safe bike paths and a dense tourist bike network that allows us to cover as many routes in our city by bike as possible.”
In order to encourage people to switch to cycling in the long run, the expansion of the necessary cycling infrastructure in Rheine must continue quickly now. 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 to cycle, 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 bicycle promotion.”
Mobility manager Michael Wolters in particular sees another benefit in addition to the enjoyment of cycling brought about by the CITY CYCLING campaign: “CITY CYCLING can support us in transport planning and provide valuable help. We receive anonymized data via the CITY CYCLING app and 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 the future, we want to increasingly incorporate this obviously useful data and information into transport planning to map and document citizens’ daily trips and then derive developments for cycling infrastructure from this.”
City Cycling is an international campaign organized by Climate Alliance and supported by 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 of Environment, Nature Conservation and Traffic and the Zukunftsnetz Mobilität NRW.