Our Canadian team has moved into a new office space in Ottawa’s West Centretown neighbourhood just in time to host Dutch colleague Lennart Nout for a productive week of projects and meetings. Once a neighbourhood general store, this heritage building is now a dynamic shared space for entrepreneurs and community events. Conveniently located between Chinatown and Little Italy, the centrally located office space provides ample room to park all types of bicycles and features a front stoop!
 
Since beginning our work in North America in 2012 and launching Mobycon’s North American consultancy in 2015, our team has had the privilege of working with clients and partners across Canada. We have been pleased to work clients in places like Ottawa, Calgary, Toronto and Canmore on policies, plans and designs that deliver future-oriented sustainable mobility solutions. This move is a display of our commitment to them and future partners that although we have Dutch roots, we are local and here to stay.
 
The new office provides much needed space to grow our Canadian team and to host clients and visitors for events or a cup of coffee. Details to come soon about training sessions hosted at our new space at 204 Lebreton Street North.
 
If you’re planning to be in the neighbourhood, feel free to get in touch with Elizabeth Allingham or Justin Goulding for a coffee op de stoep.

The City of Ottawa is undertaking a new Official Plan, and with it an update to its Transportation Master Plan. These updates will look to adapt and expand upon existing mobility strategies to meet anticipated demand as the city continues to grow and change. As long-standing partners, the City engaged Mobycon to perform a background study focused on best practices within context sensitive multimodal network planning, identifying key principles and guidelines that will serve as references for the TMP update.

To learn more contact Justin Goulding

As we continue to build our presence in the North American market, it is crucial to the success of our business development to ensure we have an understanding of the varying perspectives that make up Canada and the USA. It was this mindset that inspired Lennart Nout, Manager of International Strategy, and Mary Elbech, US Lead and Integrated Mobility Consultant, to coordinate a tour of some of America’s West Coast cities. While the principles of good, safe street design are fairly straightforward, how they are applied to a given community can really vary, and by visiting, learning from and bringing our expertise to places like Portland, Eugene and San Diego, we can gain a better appreciation for the challenges they are facing. It also provides an opportunity to bring our Dutch-inspired thinking to these places to help inspire better design.

Interested in organizing a workshop or training session focused on traffic calming, protected intersections or content catered to your capacity building needs? Contact Mary Elbech

Many cities have recognized that the old approach to street design is not serving the most vulnerable of our citizens. There’s a general consensus that on busy thoroughfares with high levels of motorized traffic, building safe, human-scale and protected infrastructure is best. Nowadays most planners and engineers know what a well-designed cycle track looks like. However, as Manager of International Strategy Lennart Nout explains, there is still a knowledge gap when it comes to addressing when those streets intersect.

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Lennart Nout and Jason Colbeck will travel to Manchester December 3^rd to run our final UK Building for Bikes workshop in 2019 at Walking and Cycling Innovations. This workshop is an excellent way to break through the mystery of safe intersection design with hands-on, practical learning. Can’t make this session? Contact Jason Colbeck about setting up a session in your area.

Something is happening in Germany. The ADFC – Germany’s national bicycle club – established the #MehrPlatzFuersRad (More space for the bicycle) advocacy campaign. Social initiatives in fifteen cities throughout the country have and continue to push for bottom up Radentscheide (radical decisions). These changes follow the successful adoption of a Mobilitätsgesetz (Mobility Act) in Berlin, enabling formal decisions at the local level to support and improve cycling in their municipalities.
 
Since joining Mobycon in May, strategic advisor Bernhard Ensink has been learning about these forward movements in Germany and observing how far the country has come and where improvements still need to be made. He asks the question: Is Germany becoming a Fahrradland – Cycling Country? Read on to hear a few of his impressions from the last six months participating in events and meeting people throughout Germany.
 
Contact Bernhard to learn more about our work in Germany or talk about your German project.

Parking. It is a huge problem in many cities. Whether you have too much of it, or too little, everyone seems to have an opinion on it. It’s too expensive, it’s too hard to find a spot or the excessive parking craters have ruined your urban landscape. The Netherlands is not a stranger to these discussions, but at our train stations, a parking problem of a very different kind is on the minds of policy makers. The largest train stations in the Netherlands are struggling to provide enough parking for bicycles. While most central stations have thousands of spots — and are in the process of building thousands more — the demand seems to be insatiable.
 
So how can the Dutch address this growing need, and is there a solution that can provide inspiration for other cities as their own cycling numbers grow? Lennart Nout has been working with partners in Amsterdam on a pilot using a pool-to-pool model to relieve the stress on parking facilities. 

To learn about this innovative project contact Lennart Nout or read on to learn more.