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By pursuing a network of best practice bicycle infrastructure, Almetyevsk has emerged as a first mover in Russia. With streets currently dominated by the automobile, the City aims to travel back to the future, accommodating the bicycle as a legitimate form of transportation. We believe that creating a vision of the future in which the bicycle is a common, safe and accessible way of travelling through the city is a respectable goal. For the City of Almetyevsk, we envision a place where the young and old, rich and poor can cycle alongside one another on a safe and connected network of best practice bicycle infrastructure. In order to follow through with this vision, we must set quantitative goals and be held accountable to them as hard and soft infrastructure begins to roll out. For that we propose the following, measurable goals:
• There will be 50 kilometres of bicycle network in the town.
• Almetyevsk's bicycle modal share will be 10% within the next five years.
• 20% of school children will be cycling to school within five years.
• Cycling will be just as popular among women as men.
• There will be a decrease in the annual number of pedestrian and cyclists injuries.
Before to the invention of the diamond-frame "safety bicycle" in the mid 1890s, bicycles were difficult to come by and unreliable machines. With the introduction of a new practical design combined with advances in mechanical production, the bicycle quickly took off as a "modern" form of sport, recreation, and most importantly, transportation. The bicycle offered riders independence and access to their rapidly growing cities. In Tsarist Russia, where bicycles were priced as low as 100 rubles, the middle class quickly came to adopt the bicycle as a preferred mode of transportation. By 1892, more than six thousand bicycles had been sold in Russia [1]. A couple of years later and Russian cities were home to more than 20 bicycle clubs, with thousands of members.
By the late 1920s, the first large scale automotive plant was introduced in Nizhny Novgorod, ushering in a long relationship between the nation and the private automobile. And though it wasn't until the 1970s that the automobile revolution really took hold in the USSR, the roads of the Soviet era were built with car ownership in mind [2]. In what may be the Soviet Union's biggest contribution to traffic planning in the 20th century, pedestrians were forced underground at large intersections in the name of automobile efficiency on the surface.
In many parts of Russia today, the car is king. This is especially true in Moscow, where cycling and even walking are seen as secondary forms of transportation, considered only after the car has been given range over the city streets. Despite never-ending congestion and poor air quality, an obsession with the private automobile in Moscow remains strong.
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