The year 2017 represents a breakthrough for cycling in Belarus and a great success for ECF's member Minsk Cycling Community (MCC)! As a result of great dedication to advocacy for cycling in the previous year, the country adopted the National concept of cycling development on January 11, 2018 . Additionally, many other things the Minsk Cycling Community(MCC) has been striving to achieve in the last several years finally came to fruition. MCC aims to use this great opportunity to enforce their activities on the national and municipal levels.

In 2017 the country began developing standards for bicycle infrastructure, the Traffic Code began to be revised and a project to create bicycle lanes on the roadway has been launched. A proposal of MCC has been taken into account and they are now waiting for the final editions of these documents.

National concept of cycling development is adopted

On January 11, 2018 the country officially adopted the National concept of cycling development. The Minsk Cycling Community was included in the working group on its development and their many proposals were taken into account. To support local authorities MCC developed proposals for regional executive committees to help create regional plans for the implementation of the national cycling concept.

Belorussian local authorities have great interest in the development of cycling in Minsk. In 2017 the Council for Сycling was established there, and the  Minsk Cycling Community has been given a secretary function. As a result, in 2017 the MCC developed a strategic development plan for Minsk until 2020 and is now lobbying for its implementation. Minsk cycling concept was developed and approved already in 2011, and today Minsk has about 1% cycling modal share.

Following the example of Minsk similar councils or at least working groups are being created in other cities - Grodno, Brest, Mogilev, Orsha, Soligorsk,...and specialists from the Minsk Cycling Community are invited there as consultants. Experts of the Minsk Cycling Community also help initiatives from other cities to develop cycling. The training events with these specialists already took place in Orsha, Grodno, Vileika and Soligorsk. For the purpose of exchanging experience and good practices, a national cycling informal network was created in 2017. Today it unites about 50 representatives from around 20 different cities.

To make the expert work more sustainable in 2017, a website about cycling infrastructure was created: rovar.info. On that website, concrete examples on how to create bicycle infrastructure in cities and city specific information is available to those who want to promote and grow cycling. Another important attainment is uniting the activists. In 2017 in Minsk, a bicycle forum "PraRovar" was held. It gathered more than 200 activists and specialists from more than 30 cities and 5 countries. The next Forum will be held in Autumn 2018 in Brest city (Belarus). Minsk Cycling Community and ZaveloBrest would like to invite you to participate in this exciting event.

The activator of this success is the project "Urban cycling in Belarus", which is financed by the European Union and implemented by the Minsk Cycling Community in cooperation with the Center for Environmental Solutions.

Leadership Programme

The Minsk Cycling Community successfuly joined the ECF's Leadership Programme in 2017, and because of that, they have been able to develop great capacities which resulted in this advocacy success story. We would like to congratulate them and are happy to support their future work in cycling advocacy and development.