Cycle Day
The Cycle Day initiative was a campaign launched to promote cycling and open street concept. The underlying effort is to raise public awareness for non-motorized transport (NMT) as a sustainable means of transportation and pedestrianisation. The objective is to make the public adapt to cycling for short distance commutes, shopping runs or leisure and thereby reduce pollution and traffic congestion while adopting a healthier lifestyle.
The Cycle Day events is a community led initiative and anchored by Directorate of Urban land Transport (DULT) with support from Namma Nimma Cycle foundation.
Cycle day is community based intervention for increasing awareness about cycling. The first cycle day organized at cubbon park , provided a model that could be replicated in other local communities in Bangalore.
A number of community rides were organised, across the entire city.
To make it more accessible to everyone, it was also desirable to provide free bike hire. We took the responsibility of providing bikes for everyone for free.
Goal
Cycle Day is a car-free event where few kilometers of roads are blocked to motor traffic to create a safe and festive zone for people to just come out and try cycling as well as engage in sport, fitness, and community building activities.
- To re-boot their relationship with the streets to ensure that all users, particularly pedestrians and cyclists, have an equal claim to road space and the right to use streets safely.
- At the same time the campaign aims to provide our government partners with the public support and impetus needed to create an enabling environment for cyclists through the planning and development of better roads, cycle tracks and lanes, cycle rental schemes, city-wide cycle parking stands and other infrastructure.
By putting cyclists and pedestrians first, the campaign seeks to change the prevailing mindset that roads are meant primarily for cars. There was overall increase in the frequency of cycling in the intervention area as noted by increase in the cycle sales.
However, without safe cycling infrastructure, the effectiveness of a community based intervention like cycle day in increasing cycling population and physical activity is limited. This was one of the expectations of the cyclists who were enthused with the idea of cycle day. The city administration and urban planning agencies , failed to catch the pulse of the people and create the necessary infrastructure for the cyclists.