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It’s unbelievable, but the biggest success of this pandemic-paralyzed year is that all our big live events took place – the three challenges Bike to Work, Zažít město jinak and the Great Cycling Ride (which this time under the patronage of the UN). There were also educational programs at schools, as well as many activities of the Laboratory of Sustainable Urbanism. And all this thanks to you, the members of our Friends Club, which was strengthened by another hundred supporters during the year. Thanks for that!
Do you want to be one of them. Support AutoMat, become members of our Friends Club and participate with us on the development of the cities in which it is a pleasure to live. Thank you!
Sustainable Urbanism Lab (LAB)
We became co-creators, signatories and guarantors of some topics in the For Prague Sustainable and Neighborly Call, which very loosely follows on from our earlier call City of Dreams. The aim of the call is to stir up discussion and improve the situation in areas such as affordable housing, the state of the environment and transport. The call is currently signed by more than 40 associations and other entities that care about the future shape of Prague. Since October 2020, thanks to this activity, a series of discussions affecting individual topics of the challenge has been taking place at the Center for Architecture and Urban Planning at the IPR. A total of eight discussions, two of which are co-guaranteed by AutoMat, will be held around the middle of 2021.
We co-organized the For Sustainable and Neighborly Prague Festival, which took place between 11-13 of September. 2020 in Štvanice. The festival included, for example, the happening Think Gold. Think Masaryčka, screening of the film Push! on the global housing crisis or lectures on the issue of the development of Prague’s largest transformation areas. 200-300 participants took part in the festival over three days.
We brought a factual perspective to the heated discussion regarding the impassability of Smetana embankment, assessed the traffic impacts of the trial closure in the fall of 2019 and justified why the calming of Smetana embankment does not need to wait for the completion of the City Ring Road.
In January, we were once again in the right in the administrative court proceedings regarding the Karlín cycle lanes. However, the Road Administration Office is looking for new ways to stop setting up cycle lanes, most recently by issuing a temporary measure of a general nature without the possibility of public comments. We were thus forced to sue another PLO. We won the subsequent court again in November, it was the fifth court decision in our favor in this case.
Thanks to the support of the OSIFE foundation, we financially supported the activities of the Brno activist Michal Šindelář. Its local activity under the banner of the AutoMat association and the initiative Brno on Bike consists of advocacy and watchdog activities and consulting and non-financial support of other local cycling activities. Michal thus acts as our liaison not only in Brno, but also cooperates with cycling activist cells across the country. In addition to continuous negotiation, advocacy and the submission of more than ten different comments on the development of transport infrastructure in Brno, we organized a panel discussion Brno, a city where it is good to ride a bike?, as part of the project in Brno on August 24, which was attended by almost 40 interested people.
In cooperation with Arnika and the Club for Old Prague, we have been trying since the beginning of 2020 to overturn and challenge, in our opinion, the illegal zoning decision for the Masaryk Center I project. The proponent did not take into account many essential comments of the concerned authorities. At the same time, we appealed against the fact that our associations were excluded from the zoning process thanks to Penta’s strategy of having individual projects approved in the area of Masaryk station using the so-called salami method. This consists in the fact that the entire original project for the transformation of Masaryk railway station, which was subject to an environmental impact assessment (EIA), was divided by the developer into below-limit buildings. From our point of view, these are erroneously officially considered to be different buildings that are not subject to the original assessment. The whole case was documented by ČT in the program Nedej se! On the issue of Masaryk station, we have therefore communicated for a long time with the City Hall of Prague, which resulted in open letters to the mayor, the concerned councilors (Hlavaček, Hlubuček) and several personal meetings directly at the municipality (with representatives of the mayor’s office, with the head of the Committee for Territorial Development, the Metropolitan Plan, monument preservation and others). The effort to publicize the topic paid off when, in October 2020, the ombudsman’s office announced that it would take a deeper look into the legality of the construction permit process at Masaryk station.
We have prepared and published unique analyzes of cyclist accidents. We have thus corrected BESIP’s manipulative claim about the alleged abnormally high rate of blame for accidents by cyclists in 2020. Through further analysis, we found that in mutual collisions between cyclists and motor vehicles, the ratio of serious consequences was more than 50:1 against cyclists. Our inputs were used in the argumentation for the upcoming amendment to the law obliging drivers to overtake cyclists and with a 1.5-meter lateral distance.
We evaluated Blanka’s operation after 5 years. The effects of Blanka are controversial.
The story continues with Blanka 2, whose history we summarized in the November article. For the completion of the urban ring road, we supervise the fulfillment of the EIA conditions. At the same time, we worked on an alternative solution for deepening Holešovičky (not yet published).
In October, we published a call asking the HMP Municipality to deal with the imminent combination of a pandemic and smog caused mainly by car traffic, and thus the increased health risk of the residents of Prague. The challenge also inspired the Pilsen on bike association, which addressed the local councilors with similar points. However, we are waiting for the real steps of the politicians.
For a long time, we have been engaged in negotiations on the form of cycling measures. Our transport expert is a member of the Prague cycle committee. We approach the establishment of cycle lanes with a cool head (see article).
We recorded the first two parts of our new podcast Městomil. We will continue the series, but under a different name and in a modified format.
As guarantors of the topic of sustainable transport, we contributed two articles to the Eco Challenge 2020, which is organized by Greenpeace.
We have joined the Sensor.Community, a worldwide network of sensors that measure the amount of airborne microparticles (PM2.5 and PM10), temperature, pressure or humidity. The scanned data is open and displayed in real time in the form of a map on the project website. We purchased one sensor at AutoMat and will install it in the center of Prague.
LAB expanded its team with a new member, Zuzana Poláková. Zuzana is an urban planner with experience both in the world of academic research and in the decision-making environment of local self-government. At LAB, Zuzana mainly focuses on urban planning in connection with the development of safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. This year, she also monitored for us the global reactions of states, cities and municipalities to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bike to Work
The jubilee tenth year of the Bike to Work challenge was traditionally held in May 2020 despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. We had to quickly change the rules and reprogram the system to enable recording of all non-motorized journeys, not just those to work. We have also made it possible to write down home exercises so that those who worked at home or lost their jobs are not left in the lurch.
Even in a state of emergency, an amazing 15,813 participants from approximately 2,700 companies and institutions in 48 cities took part in the challenge. Together they drove, walked and ran almost 4 million gentle kilometers.
After many years of debate, we put the performance category on the back burner. The basic goal of the challenge is not maximum performance, but for people to find an interest in cycling or walking and to change their traffic behavior. We therefore placed the regularity category first and, on the contrary, did not reward kilometers driven for performance at all. Each participant could use their kilometers to support one of three charity projects. This year, 646,000 km were ridden for a good cause, which were symbolically divided between Cyklorikša for seniors, the Fokus Praha Life is a Bike project and the Foundation fund Na kole dětem – NF Josef Zimovčák.
Every year we are pleased if the participants want to continue walking or cycling even after the end of the challenge, because that is its main purpose. According to the questionnaire, a full 92% plan to continue this year with the same or slightly less commitment, which we consider a famous result!
We also announced the Cycling Employer of the Year: OLTIS Group, a.s., and the Cycling City of the Year: Otrokovice.
We got serious about traffic data. During May, participants will record tens of thousands of journeys made via applications, which can later be used by cities to analyze the movement of people through the city. It will then enable town halls to identify where cyclists and pedestrians actually move, as well as places where the infrastructure does not meet the purposes of safe and pleasant movement around the city. They used the data from Do práce na kole for analyzes in Brno, Ostrava, Hodonín and Pilsen.
We haven’t forgotten about high school and university students either. Due to the closure of the schools, we moved the May event „Bike to School” to the fall and combined it with the two-week September challenge.
Part of the 2020 challenge was also the traditional AutoMat bike ride, which headed to the final Bike to Work party in Modřany, Prague. It took place under the patronage of the UN and our friendly embassies. Bike rides also took place in Pardubice, Hradec Králové, Zlín and Třinec.
From January 20 to 26, we organized the 2nd annual January Challenge for real tough guys. A total of 2,760 daredevils took part in the event, i.e. 73% more than last year. Of these, 1,175 participants could boast a regularity of over 66.6%, and 870 of them even have a regularity of 100%. That is already a respectable performance! We are happy that a third of all participants were women.
In the fall, we prepared a new two-week September Challenge (from September 14 to 27). 1,346 participants from all over the country took part in the challenge. They covered a total of 164,000 km in two weeks, most of it by bike (approx. 92%) and only 13,000 km by foot or trot. A total of 80% of all 16,470 trips were made by participants on bicycles or scooters. Together, everyone theoretically saved 21 tons of CO2 (if they had made the same journeys by car).
We have prepared a five-part series for beginners and more advanced cyclists How to cycle.
Detailed results of the May 2020 bike to work challenge
Zažít město jinak
Ostatní lokality lákají spíš desítky, maximálně nižší stovky účastníků, kteří se rozprostřou po celé délce zabraných ulic. Přesto jsme do posledního dne kvůli nečitelným vládním krokům nevěděli, zda se akce bude moci uskutečnit. Připravili jsme a rozdistribuovali desatero bezpečného chování během slavností a prosili organizátory a návštěvníky o jeho maximální dodržování.
Vyšlo to a my děkujeme všem organizátorům, které tato nejistota neodradila! Slavnosti jste mohli navštívit v sobotu 19. září v ulicích po celé Praze a v dalších 30 městech. Akce se nesla v komornějším duchu a právě před začínajícím podzimem dokázala zase o trochu více stmelit sousedy.
There was an even bigger question mark hanging over the organization of the 15th year of the country-wide neighborhood festival Zažít město jinak, which we coordinate, than over Bike to Work. In short, neighborly relations cannot be cultivated very much at home. We had long debates with hygiene and the organizers themselves in individual locations, and in the end we decided to cancel only the traditional festivities in Americká and Krymská streets, which are visited by thousands of people.
Other localities attract tens, at most, hundreds of participants, who are spread over the entire length of the occupied streets. Nevertheless, we didn’t know until the last day whether the event would be able to take place due to unreadable government actions. We prepared and distributed ten rules of safe behavior during the festivities and asked the organizers and visitors to observe them as much as possible.
It came out and we thank all the organizers who were not deterred by this uncertainty! You could visit the festivities on Saturday, September 19, in the streets all over Prague and in 30 other cities. The event took place in a more intimate spirit, and just before the beginning of autumn, it was able to bond the neighbors a little more.
Generation U
We got a new colleague Lucia Poubová. We believe that our activities will give pupils and students a real kick. The first success is the urban walks for elementary schools, which have received a great response. Children learn something about transport, something about the history of the place, practice crossing the road and complete other tasks. We had to move the walks online during the fall, but with the reopening of schools, we are returning to classic field work.
Friends club
The AutoMat Friends Club, which consists of our financial supporters, and which was taken over by our new colleague Ondřej Suk this year, has grown by another hundred regular donors. AutoMat is currently supported by 747 of you. A big thank you to all of you!
Failures 2020 or Self-criticism window
Is there anything we didn’t do well this year? Of course! The weakest moments of the season were admitted by the guys and ladies from LAB:
Our communication with some coalition representatives and councilors (namely Petr Hlaváček) was practically blocked.
We were not convinced that we should participate in the territorial study on Masaryčka.
The humanization of the north-south highway, which we had been pushing for a long time, was quietly buried. Our appeals, which we addressed to the municipality together with a number of other associations, have been ignored for years. Instead of preparing the first steps of humanization, which could be implemented immediately, the IPR is leading a completely out-of-the-ordinary debate about how to surround SJM with the densest possible development instead of converting it into an urban avenue and thus make its possible future modifications impossible.