Northrhine-Westfalia invests €12.8 M for 118 pedestrian and cycling projects

This year, cities, counties and municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia are benefitting from EUR 12.8 million from provincial resources to improve conditions for walking and cycling in their areas. 118 projects are funded in the frame of the “Action Plan Local Mobility” (Aktionsplan Nahmobilität). The promotion of cycling and walking includes not only pedestrian and walking paths or bicycling parking facilities, but invests as well in the digitalisation of local mobility, navigation and signposting, public awareness raising work and other measures to support sustainable transport, such as charging stations for pedelecs.

Public awareness raising measures to promote cycling is the single most funded action in 2018. Total investments, including those from local resources come close to EUR 20 million with another EUR 3 million from the action plan’s side dedicated to financing operational costs and maintenance. The provincial budget for the Action Plan Local Mobility increased by EUR 1 million compared to last year.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of Transport Hendrik Wüst stated that “well working local mobility increases the quality of life in our cities and municipalities. Already today, more than one third of all trips are done by walking or cycling in Germany. We aim to increase this share and if we improve our pedestrian and cycling paths, more car trips can be avoided. This contributes to easing the load on the streets and on the environment.”

Projects on cycling highways are funded by authority's own resources, since they need to be adopted by the regional councils first. Details on this programme will be announced in the middle of 2018. In addition to communal projects, the Province of North Rhine-Westphia is investing another EUR 12.4 million in walking and cycling paths alongside provincial roads, which is an increase of EUR 5 million compared to last year’s investments.

A a list of the new 118 projects of the Action Plan Local Mobility funded in 2018 can be found here. 

Story first published by “Fahrradportal” on 26th of March 2018