The first Romanian National Cycling Conference which took place on November 1, was an exclusively online experience, as a platform to facilitate the know-how exchange at local, regional and national levels, for all interested parties and stakeholders dealing with cycling. The event was organized in terms of the Danube Cycle Plans project supported by the Danube Transnational Programme.

The conference agenda included a series of presentations on topics related to: the activities of the new National Velo Coordination Center (founded this year), legislative aspects (the already adopted normative acts and the future ones), methods of using statistical data for estimating the cycling tourism level in Romania, how to develop cycle tourism and bicycle infrastructure at the level of regional and local administrations, urban mobility, education for cyclists, tools for the good development of cycling infrastructure in Romania and the extension of the "Cyclists Welcome" certificate in Romania (as a solution for improving cycling tourism quality level of services).

The event also benefited from two interventions by the mentors appointed for Romania within the Danube Cycle Plan project (Martin Eder from the Austrian Ministry for Climate Action and Peter Klučka from the Ministry of Transport and Construction of the Slovak Republic), who presented various examples of the benefits of cycling for regions and cycling promotion in Austria, respectively the activities for promoting cycling in Slovakia.

The event was attended by just over 60 participants, who were representatives of the ministries that have responsibilities in cycling (including the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration, the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Tourism), the external expert of INCDT (Bike in Time), the Romanian Cyclists´ Federation, representatives of county councils, universities, various associations and NGOs that carry out activities related to cycling and cycling tourism in Romania and bicycle users.

The conference was organized with the desire to promote cycle tourism and the use of bicycles as an alternative means of transport, so that all interested parties can present their cycling approaches, projects and activities from the last period of time. The event was also a very good opportunity for INCDT to measure the level of development and interest at the national level in terms of cycling and cycling tourism.

At the same time, the Conference was the proper event to present to the audience all the results and deliverables obtained within the Danube Cycle Plans project, respectively:

• The Status Quo Questionnaire for Romania;
• The Romanian National Cycling Network;
• The first National Cycling Plan for Romania;
• The first national cycling policies audit for Romania – Bypad;
• The Catalogue of Cycling Friendly Infrastructure Standards;
• The assessment of cycling infrastructure and investment necessities in Romania.

All these deliverables have already been handed to the interested parties and decision-makers, so they can start developing the specific, necessary and appropriate infrastructure for cycling and cycling tourism in Romania.

Romania was one of the six countries, where National Cycling Conferences were initiated as an annual platform for the exchange of experiences. By this, the Danube Cycle Plans project aims at the promotion of cycling as an integral part of an environmentally-friendly transport system which contributes to the EUSDR objective to improve inter-modality and the DTP objective to support environmentally-friendly and safe transport systems.

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• Programme of the conference

Photo: INCDT