Cycling for Everyone
Cycling for Everyone
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DCE visits Grand Rapids, Michigan

5 April 2024

Grand Rapids (GR), a lively city in West Michigan, is putting a lot of effort into becoming bike friendly. Dutch Cycling Embassy was invited for a two-day visit full of cycling related events. Kristin Bennett (active transportation planner for the City of GR), Arielle Leipham (Friends of Slow Streets), and Jared Label (nexi.media) welcomed Margot Daris (DCE) to GR on March 14th – 15th 2024.

 

To share the cycling goals of GR with everyone, we hosted a public event at Grand Valley State University. Lots of interested people showed up and it was encouraging to discuss cycling challenges and opportunities with the group. Topics of interest were the timeline of implementing cycling policy, equity, next steps, and lessons learned from the Netherlands.  

 

Next to the public meeting, we organised a closed session with around 40 persons representing the city, Walker Engineering, Meijer, DGRI, and Chamber of Commerce. This session allowed us to go more in depth about the positive effects of cycling on safety, equity, accessibility, environment, and health.  

 

We were honored to receive an invite from local radio host and public figure Shelley Irwin to talk about our activities during her show. Thank you for having us and allowing us to share the cycling message with all your listeners!  

 

City of GR, nexi.media, Friends of Slow Streets, and Dutch Cycling Embassy are keen on pursuing this collaboration to make GR a cycle-friendly community. Over the next period, we will stay in close contact to discuss next steps, including a ThinkBike Workshop to work on local case studies and a potential visit with city officials to the Netherlands. If you are interested to learn more, feel free to reach out to the Dutch Cycling Embassy.  

 

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