The final cycle tourism session at this year’s Velo-city was an interactive workshop on developing cycle tourism routes. The participants were given the opportunity to stretch their legs and express their view of how appropriate various examples of infrastructure were for different target groups by moving to the four corners of the room.     

Ádám Bodor, Aleksander Buczynski and Ed Lancaster from the ECF’s EuroVelo team ran the workshop and began by introducing the European Certification Standard (ECS) which is used to assess the quality of cycle routes. This is both to identify areas for improvement but also to communicate the current condition to the public. The ECS contains criteria for infrastructure, services and promotion related to the needs of the three main target groups:

1. Regular Cycle Tourists
2. Occasional Cycle Tourists
3. Demanding Cycle Tourists (families with children, tandems etc.)
    

It was at this point that the audience were asked to leave their seats and were shown a series of photographs of different examples of cycle routes. They had to indicate which of the ECS criteria each one met by moving around the room.

Ádám Bodor then explained the process of undertaking the route survey, using a dedicated app specifically developed for the ECS, and the training programmes that are run by the ECF every year for people interested in becoming route inspectors. There was still time for discussions with the audience, particularly about the applicability of the ECS in non-European contexts and how the target groups of a particular route can change over time as it becomes more developed.