The new urban and suburban bike plan approved in the city of Ravenna

The City Council of Ravenna recently approved an ambitious Plan to boost cycling mobility, paying particular attention to urban and suburban cycle paths of regional and national interest. The Plan is fully compliant with the SUMP previously adopted by the City Council and the indications already included about cycling mobility.

One of the main objectives of the Plan is the enhancement of the already existing cycle tracks. More than that, the Plan aims also to encourage home-to-school and home-to-work journeys, as well as to promote tourism by bike towards nearby towns and villages.

The Plan provides a description of the general framework of mobility in Ravenna and identifies the possibilities to further extend the network, analysing the main poles of attraction for tourists, especially historical and natural sites. The document focuses on the entire network of cycle paths, including overlaps with regional and national existing networks.

The Plan also encourages the collaboration between bordering municipalities to increase tourism-related trips, by the signing of agreements or memoranda of understanding in order to create a network of cycle paths that can be used all year round.

The participatory process involved residents and local associations, in order to receive helpful suggestions about the implementation of such supramunicipal cycle path network. Overall, twenty proposals for potential routes have been received from local associations and were georeferenced, returned on a cartographic basis, surveyed and verified through on-terrain visits.

In the municipal area, cycling routes for 203 kilometers have been identified, of which only 12 kilometers still to be implemented to make the network fully viable. This network overlaps with the 85 km of development of the Adriatic Cycleway that will allow to connect, at local level, the territories of Comacchio, Ravenna and Cervia in the Emilia Romagna region.

Source: Story first published in September by Ravenna Today