The Austrian participants in the Leadership Programme, Radlobby, have used the programme to help further their organisation and the promotion of cycling in many ways. From identifying and targeting new funding streams, to interacting and working with national government agencies, they have had a very successful year!

They introduced a campaign to ‘Vote for Bike’ in the Vienna municipal and district elections in October 2015, as district councils are able to influence infrastructural decisions – giving them power to create better cycling infrastructure. This campaign questioned candidates on their support for cycling, and gained over 1000 contributions online from the cycling commuters. The leading candidates had a response rate of over 50%, and nearly 100% from the leading parties. This has allowed Radlobby to develop commitments from different political parties regarding their support for cycling infrastructure, which is a great tool for advocacy!

They have managed to increase the size of the Radlobby member’s network, giving cycling advocacy a stronger voice in Austria. The most important tool for this was the design and launch of a new website, oriented along political levels, rather than organisations. Coupled with their brand new corporate logo, Radlobby and their members network are now a highly visible, accessible and functional network. At the same time, the organisational hierarchy of the network was reshaped, to work on a regional level, giving Radlobby groups far greater visibility. For example, the Vienna region newsletter now reaches an audience of 3500 contacts, thanks to the cooperation between Radlobby Wien, Argus and IGF.

Radlobby also successfully worked with national authorities on a variety of cycling matters. Firstly, the Ministry of Transport established a subcommittee evaluating the national road traffic regulations. A big part of this regards bicycles, and so Radlobby were able to offer their expertise in order to helping promote cycling at a young age, as one of themes of the evaluation was youth and traffic. Similarly, Radlobby also had input regarding the legal regulations regarding the usage of cargo bikes. Radlobby also participated in National Committee on Design, offering suggestions for how to create designs to promote cycling as a daily mode of transport that is viable for all ages.

Radlobby also undertook work from their permanent seat in the National working group on Bicycle Traffic on the regional level. Undertaking all of the above required real expertise in a variety of areas, which shows that Radlobby have really become the go to organisation for all kinds of cycling knowledge!

They also managed to work on promoting cycling for all age groups: each year Radlobby produce a brochure focused on a specific topic – this year, the focus was on young cyclists and so the brochure focused on how best to introduce children to cycling. Similarly, a new branch was established, to focus on cycle tourism. With the success of the EuroVelo routes, Radlobby inspected and assessed over 1400km of cycle paths, and undertook the first ever national bike tourism survey in Austria, which was presented at the ITB in Berlin.