Velo-city Conference will gather 165 Speakers from 34 countries exploring the fusion of Health, Infrastructure, Technology, Governance and Data discourses through the lens of cycling inclusion in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Velo-city storyline can be summed up as: Learn to Live in order to achieve Happiness and Quality of Life.  For that we need to Integrate Life and Transport generating a Lively Economy. The city of the future is a city with Access to Life.  Click here to access Velo-city Conference new website and click here to access the conference program. 

The Conference will have four guiding sub-themes

1.   Learn to Live 

2.   Happiness and Quality of Life 

3.   Integrating Life and Transport

4.   Lively Economy  

As Rubens Teixeira, Secretary of Conservation stated “’Velo-city is unique in many ways. The conference attracts not only one type of transport experts but also everyone involved in transport, health, urban policies and promotion of urban mobility. This mix of people, professions, skills and expertise is a very valuable component for the success of the event’’. 

The conference brings up themes such as the sharing of public space and live in diversity, the physical and environmental health and the pursuit of healthier cities. The intermodality, technology and the future of mobility will also play a fundamental role in the conference program with a special focus on access and social inclusion. Velo-city will focus on integration of infrastructure, public transport, global technology, economy and society with a people centered approach.

Day 1 will focus on biking with a special emphasis on education for children, the cycling benefits for environmental , urban and mental health and cycling within urban planning . As a bold highlight, cycling and tourism will also be protagonists of this day 1. Day 2 will cover the cycle highways, the role of gender in cycling inclusion and vice versa, the human behaviors that influence biking and the duality transport versus hybrid versus happiness. Day 3 will dive in the inclusive infrastructure, the concrete Latin America biking profile, the Big Data&Intelligent Transport Systems, bike economics and the road safety in metropolitan areas.  As a major conference peak, Day 4 will bring together all major Biking Governance topics with global players from international organizations, and key aspects such as fundraising, infrastructure, local communities, e-bikes, partnerships and collaboration. Last but no least ECF’s motto will continue being a must: how to get more people to cycle more often!

A complete and comprehensive program in a city full of biking history.  With its complex geography and strong social and urban pressures, Rio de Janeiro with its 6.5 million population, is an interesting case-study for cycling and sustainable mobility. Since 2012, Rio has made a conscious effort on sustainable transportation and biking with the construction of bicycle lanes (such as the downtown Ciclo Rotas Project), a bicycle sharing scheme (Bike Rio, in partnership with Bank Itau), and a shared vision alongside civil society to promote bicycle use in Rio over the next 10 years (Vision 2025).

This clearly points out the relationship between the incentive to use the bicycle as a mode of transport and the environmental debate. Rio’s cycle network celebrates its 25th anniversary and the city, home of the next Velo-city 2018, can claim to have one of the largest cycle networks in the country with 418 km of cycle lanes, cycle tracks and shared use paths (official data from 2016).

Just as the early construction of cycle lines in Rio was linked to the UN Conference on Environment and Development, the "Rio Capital Bike Program" is closely related to the Municipal Air Pollution Program. The Municipal Policy on Climate Change foresees that the planning of the transportation and urban mobility sector of the city incorporate measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. These include, among other measures: providing different means of transport, discouraging the use of private motorized vehicles, stimulating active means of transport and promoting the intermodality between different means of transport. 

A comprehensive program, in a unique city with top worldwide biking key players. Do not miss the opportunity to share and network with colleagues round the world around the current mainstream global biking hot topics. Get prepared for the early bird registrations in April 2018!

We wish you a Happy Christmas and the best 2018 year with Velo-city Conference in Rio de Janeiro!

For more information contact velo-city@ecf.com