It's time to talk about cycling again! Velo-city 2013 was kicked of today with a speech by ECF president Manfred Neun. Other highlights included the opening session with speeches by the Mayor of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Transport and Environment ministers, the World Health organization in attendance, ECF's 6 billion Euro campaign. Here's our overview of the day.

• Opening words by the ECF president
• The 6 billion Euro campaign
• City of Vienna and Austria
• International Transport Forum
• World Health Organization

Opening words by the ECF president

In the beautiful venue of the Vienna City hall, Manfred Neun, ECF's president, addressed attendees at Velo-city to open this year's edition of the world's largest cycling-related conference.

"ECF's mission is to grow cycling and to make cycling safer. We do that by encouraging international institutions to recognise the value of cycling and to incorporate it into their relevant policies, by making the case for cycling on the European level, by working together with our global and European partners, cities, governments, and business, but also, and most importantly, by bringing our ECF family together at events like this."

"This year, I am especially excited by the prospects for Velo-city here in Vienna. A city with an enormous cultural heritage, Vienna will allow us to use its values to build a cycling culture."

"I would like to thank the Mayor of Vienna for welcoming us, the organisers here in Vienna, as well as the Austrian cycling community for making us feel so welcome in this great city."

The 6 billion Euro campaign

The EU is currently preparing its budget for the next financial period, 2014-2020. How can get cyclists get a piece of the cake? Adam Bodor, ECF's Regional Development Officer, presented the "6 billion Euro" campaign at Velo-city today.

The aim of the campaign is to increase funding for cycling by the EU to 6 billion Euros during the next financial period - a huge number at first sight, but if you consider it is for 6 years and 500 million people, it does not seem that huge anymore.

"We want to raise awareness among cycling NGOs on how to lobby their governments effectively in order to get more EU funds unlocked for cycling,", says Adam Bodor. "To summarize the discussions we had today I would say quantifying the health, environmental and other benefits of cycling in economic terms is essential to win support for pro-cycling policies. A successful advocacy organization bases its arguments on clear (measurable) objectives, proposes adequate actions, estimates the costs and quantifies the economic benefits according to internationally accepted methodologies (like HEAT). Only by following this methodology that we can  convince our politicians that they should invest 6billion Euros from European resources for cycling over the next six years, in order to double the levels of cycling across the continent by 2020."

http://ecf.com/news/how-to-make-your-own-e6-billion-campaign/

City of Vienna and Austria

This week, Vienna is not only Austria's capital, but also the cycling capital of the world - and as hosts to Velo-city, Vienna and Austria were everywhere to be seen during the opening day of Velo-city 2013.

Monika Jones, master of ceremony, put it in a nutshell: "We are at the heart of Vienna, here we are in the city centre, and  the Velo-city conference is part of the city!"

Michael Häupl, Mayor of Vienna, broke the first ground during the opening session together with Deputy Mayor Maria Vassilakou.  Ms Vassiliakou explained how the velo-city conference was part of Vienna strategy to develop cycling. " Our target is to double cycling by 2015. I am proud to have brought all the knowledge of the Velo-city participants to Vienna and I hope that we will make the best use possible."

And as if to prove the importance of Velo-city as the world's largest cycling-related conference, they were joined by high-level guests from the Austrian government. Niki Berlakovich, Federal Minister for the Environment, and Doris Bures, Federal Minister of Transport, both gave speeches underlining Austria's ambition to become a first-class cycling country.

International Transport Forum

One of the highlights of the Velo-city opening was the speech by Philippe Crist of the International Transport Forum. Just some weeks ago, ECF was present at ITF's annual summit, addressing OECD transport ministers about cycling. Now Mr Christ addressed Velo-city guests speaking about challenges ahead in international transport policy - and what role cycling will play.

Enthusiastic about the potential of cycling, Mr Crist stressed how important urban cyclists are to develop cycling. "Cities need a cycling culture", he pointed out repeatedly. "And there is a role for national governments in supporting the development of cycling in cities."

World Health Organization

Cycling is the best medicine, but how to get people to take it? Not only ECF is trying to raise awareness about the health benefits of going by bicycle, the World Health Oragnization (WHO) does, too.

In a workshop chaired by WHO's Francesca Racioppi, experts discussed the health benefits of cycling and the "cycling economy". Those are two closely linked subjects, as cyclists are proven to be healthier on average and thus less a burden for a society whose health expenses are continuously on the rise. She said, “We were very happy to see that there was great interest in this topic. And surprised to learn that it has been used in places we did not know, like in Hungary to justify the Cycling Master Plan.”

“We had the opportunity today to bring together the policy makers and Harry Rutter, making reflections and drawing conclusions on a more complete picture than what would have been possible.”

“We had here together today the top people who are working on this in the field.

Prof Dr Harry Rutter, I learned, invented the HEAT tool during the coffee break of a meeting. Nick Cavill, was inspired to come up with the name Health Economic Assessment Tool,” gushed ECF’s Dr Randy Rzewnicki very enthusiastically.

“The highlight was to see the Science behind it –and to have a holistic view. It’s the combination that makes the case for investments in cycling”, added Dr Christian Schweizer from WHO