National EuroVelo Coordination Centres meet in Vienna
On Saturday 15th October representatives of the National EuroVelo Coordination Centres and Coordinators’ (NECC/Cs) met in Vienna to present best practices, exchange experiences and agree how to continue the successful development of EuroVelo across the continent.
The content of the 2016 edition of this annual meeting emphasised the great strides that have been made in building up the NECC/Cs in recent years.
Image and video hosting by TinyPicProgress brings both new challenges and new opportunities of course. For example, the Italian National EuroVelo Coordinator, Federazione Italiana Amici Della Bicicletta (FIAB), presented a proposal to establish a European network of cycling friendly services schemes to combine – or at least connect – the numerous national schemes that have been developed across Europe.
The ECF meanwhile presented proposals for introducing adverting on the updated EuroVelo Overview Map (currently in preparation) and the EuroVelo.com web portal to respond to repeated requests from potential advertisers and to help cover the costs of the central coordination of the network.
Jesper Pørksen from the newest NECC – Danish Cycle Tourism (Dansk Cykelturisme) – presented how they had created a fully functioning Coordination Centre in Denmark in just a few months, while the host NEC – Radlobby Österreich – explained how they too are bringing together the relevant organisations in Austria to develop the network there.
There was also a presentation from the Dutch non-profit organisation Europafietsers, whose mission is to inspire people of all ages to undertake cycling holidays in Europe. They have offered to help the NECC/Cs by providing feedback on their experiences travelling the EuroVelo routes. This led to a wider discussion on how the NECC/Cs use the information – both positive and negative – provided by users to make improvements.
The meeting closed with an inspiring speech from ECF President Manfred Neun who predicts even greater things for EuroVelo in the future.
Following the meeting the participants were given a guided tour of cycling infrastructure in Vienna, including signed sections of both EuroVelo 6 – Atlantic-Black Sea and EuroVelo 9 – Baltic-Adriatic.
Republished from EuroVelo.org