How to Promote Cycling Culture in Your Town

Cycling culture is good to create a low carbon society. A town whose population bike to work or to school will get a lot of benefits from this lifestyle. By riding bicycles we reduce our dependency on gasoline which is mostly imported from other countries. The money that we save can be used to pay goods and services locally produced or offered from other town dwellers. In other words, cycling is good for our local economy because significant percentage of our monthly earnings which was previously fly away to oil producing countries can now stay in our wallets for supporting local economy. Because we don't emit CO2 gases while we ride bicycles, the atmosphere of our city will be cleaner and healthier.

Ride your own bicycle first
Given the positive benefits of cycling as a culture of a town and if necessary as a culture of a nation (just like the Dutch, and the Danish), the promotion of cycling culture in my and your town can be a rewarding task to do. Most of the towns and cities, except the ones in the Netherlands and recently Cuba, in the world now do not have cycling culture. If you are a regular cyclist, you need to keep on riding your bicycle where ever you go to attract attention from the people and at the same time raise their interest to ride bicycle. If you promote cycling but you don't ride bicycle, people will not do as what you ask them to do.

Meet people on the street who also ride their bikes
There is a big chance for you to meet teenagers or adults who also ride bicycles. This is a good opportunity for you to interact or socialize with them. With them you can share ideas about how important it is to promote cycling culture in your town. They may suggest some ideas which might be useful on increasing the number of cyclists in your town.

Try to form a cycling community
From regular meetings and discussions among you and other bikers, you can strengthen cooperation with them through the establishment of a cycling community. You need a solid organization or club to press on your campaigns to the public and government about the benefits of cycling from the economic, health and environmental point of view. Promoting cycling as a sustainable mode of transport cannot be done alone by yourself. You need to work together with other concerned citizens who are also cycling enthusiasts. By working together more works can be realized with much better results.

Conduct regular meetings and events related to the encouragement of cycling lifestyle
One of the most important activities that your cycling club or organization must do in order to promote cycling culture in the society is by promoting cycling lifestyle itself directly to the citizens or town dwellers. This can be done through a number of events. For instance, you can organize members of your cycling club to ride their bicycles around your town in the mornings or in the afternoons. When people in your town see that you and your friends pass in front of their houses, they might be interested in joining your club. Behind the T-shirt that you wear, perhaps you could print the address website of your cycling club so that people who read it can open their computers and visit your website. So, the name of your cycling club website should be an easy one to be remembered. If possible, the cycling club should have an office where you and other cyclists can meet and outline strategies to encourage cycling as a good lifestyle in your town. The office can be a room next to a bike store or a garage of your home. Having a close cooperation with some bicycle manufacturers can be good to get supports from them. I believe that the bicycle manufacturers will be happy to support your campaign project in raising the percentage of citizens who choose cycling as their means of transport.

Share your ideas to the government

When the cycling club has been up and running with various positive events to promote and encourage cycling lifestyle among the citizens, the next step that you need to do is approaching your government. You and the staff of the cycling club need to meet a person in charge of the transportation affairs to present your concept of cycling and its benefits to the whole town dwellers or citizens. In order for the cycling culture to be realized you need moral and material supports from the local government and the mayor. If they agree, they will allocate some percentage of the annual budget of your city or town for building cycling infrastructure. Secured bicycle park, cycling lanes and training will be financed by the budget. So, this is important for tax payers like you and other citizens who are cyclists to formally request the budget from municipality authorities. It takes time to convince the local government to allocate public money for promoting cycling.

Promote cycling culture to the whole town population through mass media

To accelerate the process of promoting cycling in your town, you can use radio, newspaper and even television. Cyclists who can ride can write articles regularly on the local newspapers and magazines about the importance of cycling lifestyle. I believe that if properly explained to the public via mass media, people in your town or city will consider riding bicycle as their transport means the next day they go to campus or work.