Monday, October 4, 2010

Make Cyclists, not war

On September 20th and 21st a team of four Dutch experts on bike policy led by Velo Mondial's partner Balancia held a two-day workshop in Toronto, called ThinkBike, to give a boost to Toronto’s bikeability. There were two teams (Blue and Orange) of 9 people, with 2 Dutch experts in each of them and 7 from the Toronto city staff, TCAT and bicycle advocates. Each team worked on a different design assignment and also worked on a long term strategy for Toronto bikeability. The objectives were: Produce a ready to apply bike improvement design for the area chosen; Display the Dutch philosophy on bike policy and make it applicable to the Toronto bike policy; Give ingredients for a Toronto long term strategy and marketing campaign. In those two days – productive beyond imagination! – they were able to show what they had achieved in a well-filled club “El Mocambo”. The team ThinkBike BLUE, produced a bike friendly network for Downtown west, the other team, ThinkBike ORANGE, made a carefully worked out design for Sherbourne Road. Velo Mondial  sees this ThinkBike Workshop as a mini format that precedes the new and improved version of the 'Amsterdam Bike Slam' that we will offer the world imminently.  If your city wants to execute a slam of any format, contact Karim Maarik at Velo Mondial.