Workshops ThinkBike Workshop ThinkBike Workshops address all areas that can help your community become more cycle-friendly. A team of two or three Dutch experts visits your city, where they get together with local decision-makers and planners for two or three days. The workshops are intensive, interactive, and hands-on. The aim is to build a cycling network that, as in the Netherlands, is safe and suitable for people of all ages, abilities, and for different types of bicycles. As a result, cycling as a mode of transport becomes accessible to everyone. The format is as follows: after a public plenary introduction of the Dutch approach to transportation, a site or multiple sites in the host city are identified by the local experts to be the focus challenge of the workshop. The group is divided into teams (each with both Dutch and local experts representing various interests) that will work in parallel to develop solutions for the presented challenge. Teams will visit the sites by bicycle and explore solutions that span practice and theory. These solutions are presented with drawings, photographs, designs, and a marketing strategy in a lively public session at the end of the final day, in the presence of key stakeholders, including elected officials, politicians, press and anyone interested in the future of sustainable transportation in the city. An integrated cycling policy is based on effective hardware, software and orgware. However, building hardware (infrastructure) is only one part of a comprehensive, sustainable strategy: Cycling also needs to be encouraged through software (e.g. campaigning and traffic education). Meanwhile, orgware (capacity building of institutions) is needed to strengthen the strategy on a broader, sustainable basis. Cycling Fellow Program The Cycling Fellow program is organized to make your city more cycle-friendly. Cities that would like to qualify for this program are connected with a qualified Dutch Cycling Fellow by the DCE. The program entails three visits: A two-day visit of one (or two) Dutch bike experts to a qualifying city. During that time, they are shown around by city representatives to experience the local bike culture and are made aware of the city’s mobility policies that are in place and the city’s ambitions; Next, a delegation of the city will visit the Netherlands for several days. Participants will see two different Dutch cities to learn about the Dutch biking culture and the various facilities. Background information will be provided on how the Dutch bike culture developed over the years; Concluding, the Dutch fellow(s) will revisit the city. This time the mutual lessons learned from both earlier visits will be combined with an emphasis to make the qualifying city more bike-friendly. Both city representatives and the cycling fellows will see how successful Dutch bike policies can be translated into the fellow city under the watchful eye of the Dutch bike expert.