Hi, everyone! I'm Mahtab, an urban planner and designer who enjoys working on Active Transportation. That's why I recently started collaborating with Designing a Bicycle User Experience to learn more about ways of improving everyone's cycling experience and help grow and spread this knowledge. I'm glad to join Trey in writing about cycling experience and here is my first blog post on BUX about World Bicycle Day 2021!
It was on 12 April 2018 when United Nations General Assembly first declared June 3rd as the #WorldBicycleDay to
“Acknowledge the uniqueness, longevity, and versatility of the bicycle, which has been in use for two centuries, and that it is a simple, affordable, reliable, clean and environmentally fit sustainable means of transportation, fostering environmental stewardship and health…”.
It is named after Professor Leszek Sibilski’s project to explore the role of bicycle in development. He is a professor of sociology and a dedicated cyclist. He pursued his passion for advocating cycling for years and finally succeeded to bring awareness to Cycling to an international level. Here you can read his story about how he turned his passion into an international day and how he managed to collect support from different countries for this day!
United Nations states that “Bicycle is a symbol of sustainable transportation” and encourages international and local cycling competitions to be organized in the spirit of peace, mutual understanding and, friendship. This day is a day for celebrating cycling as an indication of peace and a sustainable future for all. This explains the idea behind the logo designed for this day, which tries to indicate that cycling belongs to all different people around the globe. It is a means of happiness, union, and embracing diversity.
At Designing a Bicycle User Experience (BUX), we are excited to celebrate this day with everyone. Creating a good cycling experience is a necessity to enable more people to use bicycles. Corona pandemic actually opened a new window for everyone to see the world through. We as human beings need to see each other, talk to each other or sometimes just watch other people live in the city. That’s why we need to move more seriously towards a sustainable future and cycling is definitely a path in that direction. There can be as many cycling experiences as the number of people who cycle! And, it can be in hands of cyclers to improve this experience for everyone by talking about it, sharing the journey, encouraging friends and demanding a better cycling environment from city planners.
#MyCyclingExperience is a hashtag designed to collect these journeys from this open world of social media and try to spread the word to more and more people every day. June 3rd is a day for celebrating, advocating and encouraging cycling, trying to create better cycling experiences and help others enjoy their cycling journeys. To Demand more cycling facilities inside cities, less environmental footprints and to help other people have a pleasant cycling experience.
At BUX, we tried to dedicate to World Bicycle Day by running an online contest about people's cycling experience around the globe. Started one week prior, we encouraged our audience to share their cycling experience with us on their social media profile (Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter) or by directly sending it to worldbicycleday@bicycleux.com. We enjoyed reading and learning about their experiences, their perspectives on cycling and how they may want to create a change in cycling experience for others. And of course, we are happy that we could award most liked posts with a free course access on BUX.
Hashtag #MyCyclingExperience and our email address are still open for everyone to share their experience and view with us. So, if reading this post triggers you to talk about your cycling experience in your hometown, we are ready to hear!
By the way, do you like to provide a child in poverty with a bicycle to ease his/her access to school? Here you can help!
Happy #WorldBicycleDay2021!