David Niddrie
5:30 pm traffic on Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC
At Velo-city Global 2012, the focus landed on cities in motion for day 2.
The spotlight honed in on Vancouver, the conference host city, for much of the morning. Presentations looked at the city's current goals of creating a healthy, accessible and prosperous city with cycling at the forefront.
The mayor of Adelaide, Australia, Stephen Yarwood, declared that his city has set its sights on become the cycling capital of the southern hemisphere. Through traffic calming measures the city is aiming to create safe streets where residents and visitors can feel at ease on foot and bicycle.
While some cities are still trying to get a foothold on increasing cycling participation to single-digit percentages, Copenhagen wants half of all trips to be taken by bicycle. The challenge now is introducing cycling to people living in outlying communities where a car is still the preferred transportation choice. The recently launched Cycle Super Highways are creating routes far beyond the city center and are already increasing cycling in these areas by 50%.
Vienna, Austria, host of Velo-city 2013, has declared next year to be the year of cycling. The city is on track to increase cycling share from 5% to 10% by 2015.
By providing bicycles for delegates, the influx of Public Bike System Company BIXI bikes have many Vancouverites counting the days until their city joins the bike share revolution.
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ABOUT VELO-CITY GLOBAL 2012
Velo-city Global is the world's premier international cycling planning conference. The four-day event offers delegates from around the world a chance to share best practices for creating and sustaining cycling-friendly cities where bicycles are valued as part of daily transport and recreation.
The Velo-city Global conference unites politicians, engineers, planners, architects, social marketers, academics, researchers, environmentalists, advocates, educators and industry representatives. Delegates join forces and foster international collaborations. The event also draws experts from related areas, such as health, economics and the environment.
Velo-city Global 2012 is expected to host over 1,000 delegates from around the world. The conference is being held June 26-29 at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Center Hotel, accessible by the new Hornby Street separated bike lanes.
