Campaign set to raise money for bikes and bike infrastructure in Ukraine city

Life-sized City host and urban planner Mikael Colville-Andersen is part of a new team fundraising for a bicycle planning project in the Ukraine city of Lviv.

The city has an additional 200,000 people, refugees from other parts of Ukraine, who have been internally displaced due to the Russian invasion.

Lviv’s transport department reached out to Colville-Anderson to help create 20 kilometres of temporary bike lanes as well as good quality used bikes to get people moving efficiently following the influx of residents.

“It was a no-brainer,” Colville-Anderson says. “They need bikes and know-how so they can spur a biking culture fast. We have both in Denmark. So, of course, I had to help.”

Colville-Andersen put together a small team of volunteers and formed bikes4ukraine. Its aim? To get the citizens of Copenhagen to donate their unwanted bikes.

“Bikes4Ukraine is an active response to a direct appeal from the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine. They need bikes to beat the traffic gridlock created by refugees of Putin’s war,” according to Bikes4Ukraine.org.

Colville-Andersen has formed bikes4ukraine, which is a crowdfunding and awareness campaign. He hopes to raise more for the bicycle infrastructure in addition to sending pre-owned bikes from Copenhagen to Lviv.

“Ukraine also needs bikes so people can get around,” says Colville-Anderson in a video promoting the project. “To the supermarket, to the doctor, to the school, all of the things that we know a bicycle can be used for.”

The plan calls for Bikes4ukraine to organise the collection of 2,000 unwanted bikes from city centre locations in Copenhagen on June 12. Following a health check, they will be sent to Lviv.

Following this first phase, ingenious pop-up cycle lanes will be designed and installed across a vast, 20-kilometre cycling sweet spot.

As part of the fundraising effort, Bikes4Ukraine has put up a campaign on GoFundme.