Meeting of the Novi Sad cycling initiative with representatives of the city

Today, in a one-hour meeting with representatives of the City of Novi Sad, we discussed the improvement of bicycle traffic and infrastructure in the City Hall. The meeting was attended in front of the City of Novi Sad by Mayor Milan Đurić, members of the city council: for environmental protection Mira Radenović, for budget and finance Adriana Mesarović and for traffic and roads Aleksandar Bulajić, and there were very important topics on the table.

We proposed to the mayor and members of the city council the candidacy of the City of Novi Sad for the most prestigious world conference in terms of bicycle traffic and urban mobility – the Velo City conference, and after a short presentation of this conference, the mayor Milan Đurić expressed great interest in the conference itself. The Velo City conference brings together numerous world experts in the field of cycling and urban mobility, and the host cities have multiple benefits. In this regard, we believe that Novi Sad, as the cycling capital in the region, is ripe to host such a prestigious conference.

We also discussed the improvement of the NSbike bicycle rental system and put forward proposals, which include increasing the number of stops throughout the city as well as the number of bicycles in the system, creating a mobile application for rental and online payment, as well as the possibility of leaving bicycles outside the stations in designated and convenient places. . The goal of our proposals is to make it easier and more accessible for citizens to use the NSbike system, as well as to increase the number of users, which directly affects the number of cyclists on the streets. All with the aim of making it easier for citizens to rent bicycles.

We also presented the project “Mapping problems and damage to the cycling infrastructure with suggestions for improvement”, which we carried out at the beginning of the year, in the framework of which we recorded more than 370 damages to the cycling infrastructure in the field, identified about 140 kilometers of areas for the movement of cyclists, which include parts of the pedestrian zone, bicycle paths and lanes, and lanes for two-way movement of cyclists in one-way streets.

We also talked about innovative solutions for parking bicycles in our city, where we mentioned the installation of multi-storey parking lots for bicycles. Although these works were announced last year, they were postponed due to the preparation of the study, so we sincerely hope that Novi Sad will get its first multi-storey parking lots next year.

Statistics were also an unavoidable topic of the meeting. We are optimistic when it comes to the percentage of participation of cyclists in traffic. We stated that the revision of the SMART plan is in progress and that we expect the study to show that Novi Sad has about 12% of cyclists. On the other hand, the mayor expressed his very optimistic attitude and said that he believes that Novi Sad has even 15% cyclists.

We support the efforts of the City of Novi Sad in improving bicycle traffic and infrastructure, and we hope that the City will take all necessary measures and make additional efforts to increase the number of cyclists in the city, which will create a more pleasant environment for all its residents.

Photo author: Vladimir Zubac