A workshop for introducing bike-sharing in Miskolc, a city of 200K in East-Hungary was organized by Inform Média, a local newspaper and Kerékpáros Miskolc Egyesület, a local partner organization of Hungarian Cyclists' Club. Beside a presentation and some discussion a crowdsourcing approach was applied to gain useful information about the demand of local citizens for a bike-sharing service in their neighbourhood. This ongoing best practice of communication in order to establish a BSS project founded upon a wide knowledge base of all relevant stakeholders is organized by Zoltán Kunhalmi, a great voluntary champion of cycling!
On the Eurpean Mobility Week cycling was a hot topic in Budapest, too. A Cycling Conference, featuring more than 80 participants (planners, consultants, NGO's, local municipalities and governmental bodies) was organized by the Közlekedésfejlesztési Koordinációs Központ (KKK).
I had the chance to prepare a presentation about TRENECON COWI's best practice project, the "Complex cycling-friendly development of downtown Kaposvár". The presentation was held by János Tóth, the vice-mayor of this city of 70.000, a nice mid-sized town in south-west Hungary. Our plan was implemented from a mere 200.000 EUR covering the whole inner city with innovative cycling-friendly solutions. Nonconventional measures like speed reduction, bike boxes, contaflow cycling, advisory cycle lanes and sharrows weren't welcome by all of the audience in the beginning. No doubts remained however after the end of the presentation when the vice-mayor announced that there hasn't benn a single recorded traffic accident concerning cyclists since the implemantation of the project in Kaposvár! Another topic of mine was a joint venture presentation with the great champions of urban cycling Virág Bencze-Kovács and László Vértesy representing our client BKK. The presentation was about the planning process of the bike sharing system Bubi that is going to be opened next spring. The presentation was identical with that English version we had held on the Velo-city conference in Vienna, back in June. Full list of presentations Review of HCC The Czech National Cycling Conference was held for the 14th time in Pardubice, a traditional cycling city in the Czech Republic. Some 250 participants from municipalities, NGO´s and other stakeholders formed a crowd of a "mini-Velocity".
The event took place on the University of Pardubice. CIVITAS and Homeport had their own stands next to the entance. Organizers even adopted the idea of "speed dating" which were held only in Czech language. In the international block of invited speakers (along Gerhard Ablasser and Ton Daggers I talked about the paradoxes, tools and methods in CEE regarding integrated transport planning. The first implemented urban bike-sharing scheme in Hungary was launched in Esztergom this week. The vendor/operator is a Hungarian company Neuzer testing his own hardware with 6 terminals/50 bicycles/80 docking stations on-site. A later expansion to 10 terminals/100 bicycles is planned as a second phase of the project. The company has been strongly supported by EU-funds in the past years to develop its business. The owner of Neuzer explained in an interview before that they are going to market their product in smaller cities in Hungary and all around Europe as well. A
An award announced by InnDea for young innovators was juried today in the city hall. Isabel from MOVUS was invited and I accompanied her and joined as an eligible member of the jury! We had an exciting discussion on the 8 projects which were nominated in the category of 'environment'. The Spanish colleagues - two of them are directors of companies on the field of energy/electonics - were so kind that the either spoke in English or they briefly translated everything they talked about. In the coffeebrake we had the chance to promote the pedelec to David and Antonio. They both came back with a huge smile on their faces after a short round in the park. This morning we had a short talk with an external consultant about the international strategy of MOVUS. The company is going to expand towards new markets having its Spanish opportunities been shrinked in the crisis.
As a promotional activity regarding my placement a bike trip and another visit to Bioparc which is a kind of Safari in Valencia are to be organized. These will be promotional events of MOVUS for all Pioneers in VLC. A Pioneer's task is to support support Juan, the marketing/PR manager by setting up and sending out a promo mail to all PIP's in VLC. Another Pioneer's activity of mine istThe DOROTHY project. It is an international project regarding innovative urban logistics. I'll be able to help in networking. In the lunch break (2.30 PM) I had the chance to drive a Peugeot Ion (see on the left side of the photo below), the flagship of the electric car sharing fleet of MOVUS. What a good feeling to drive without any noise! The vehicle weighs 1200 kgs though, 600 kgs the battery only...The car on the right side is a Think City car - there are 5 like this in the fleet of MOVUS Back in the office I had a short discussion i with Pablo and Gabriel. They are going to "attack" new markets with the bike-sharing business of MOVUS. First day at the company MOVUS, the operator of the bike-sharing and car sharing systems in the suburbs of Valencia!!
My host, Isabel is going to be a Pioneer for the Clean Air Group (LMCS) in Budapest from next week on. The first meeting was about the DOROTHY project on the Technical University with Isabel, Mauro (her boss) and their partners from the faculty of civil engineering. MOVUS is located in Paterna where I started office work in the afternoon to end up the day in a late networking business lunch in a nerby village called Pinedo. My first impression: Everybody is so talkative and open, not only towards me but among each other as well. |