The target audience of this first Academy are mainly governmental organizations and industry associated with Cycle Highway. This first Academy will be limited to partners and co-partners of the CHIPS-project. Next Cycle Highway Academies will be organized at the end of 2017 and during 2018.
Besides a training session the Cycle Highway Academy is a place where cycle highway experts from industry meet and discuss innovations, new cycle highway tools and share best practices. The tools in the Cycle Highway Academy are low-entry tools which are easy-to-use and to adopt in several European settings. The Academy is a mix between theory, practice and showing concrete implementations and best practices. The main objectives of the CHAs are given in the CHIPS Lifecycle which will be addressed individually in separate CHAs.
CONTENT of the first ACADEMY will focus on the planning part of the CHIPS Lifecycle:
- CHIPS-project – short Intro – WHO’s WHO
- Cycle Highway Academy info & overview
- Cycle Highway Definition + Cycle Highway Assessment Tool
- Stakeholder Analysis Cycle Highways
- Virtual Planning Tools
- Sneak preview into next CHAs
By means of studies, investments and experiments the CHIPS project aims to create new insights in cycling highways and to stimulate people to cycle. During the CHAs these insights will be covered together with a training in assessment tools to plan/design/build/promote/… cycling highways. It is intended to keep the sessions open and interactive to share experiences and to learn from each specific situation, as different topological regions will require different needs.
Within this CHA the objective is to get to know the CHIPS project and the definitions of a Cycle Highway. In order to generate a basic understanding of the needs and the quality of a cycling highway the assessment tool will be elaborated upon. This tool helps in analysing the cycling highway.
Next to that a stakeholder analysis will be performed which elaborates upon the local needs of different stakeholders (topological regions). The focus and ideas around a cycling highway will variate and it is important to analyse these differences. Policies and planning will be discussed and assessed within this part of the academy.
The third main topic on the agenda will be the virtual planning tools (VPT). The VPTs can be used by authorities to model implementation options regarding Cycle Highways in order to identify and solve common issues in Cycle Highways. Tools as the Potential Analysis, the Strategic Environment Assessment and the Participation Tool will be elaborated upon during the academy.
Finally a feedback round will be hosted to make the next CHA an even bigger success and a sneak preview in the upcoming CHA will be presented.