Cycle4Climate Partner Meeting at Riga Cycling Cultures Conference (22–24 Sept 2025) 

We are happy to be part of Interreg Central Baltic project Cycle4Climate that together with four cities and universities from Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia promotes cycling through various urban interventions. Last week we met with our partners in Riga, where Age, Elise and Veronika attended Riga cycling conference Cycling Cultures.  

1^st day – Riga Cycling Cultures Conference 

The first day of the conference took place at Riga Technical University, bringing together experts, municipality specialists, and interested parties. Ola Gustafsson from urban planning consultancy Think Softer, gave an excellent keynote sharing practices and insights into why we need human-scale cities and what impact developing better cycling opportunities has on a community, citizens and the urban environment. The conference’s coverage on Latvian national evening news underscores the significance of the topic within Riga’s public discourse. 

Our lab member Veronika Mooses, in collaboration with Karl Samuelsson from the University of Gävle, presented preliminary findings from the Cycle4Climate travel survey. The web-based survey was conducted in late spring 2025 and it focused on work commuting among employees in Gävle and Espoo, as well as everyday travel behaviour of residents in Pärnu and Riga. 

The results indicate that in Gävle, the majority of respondents commute to work by car, although the proportion of cyclists is also notably high. In Espoo, a significant share of individuals work remotely at least three days per week, alongside a relatively high rate of cycling. In both Pärnu and Riga, multimodal travel for everyday activities is common, yet the share of cyclists remains comparatively low. 

The primary reasons for using a car in everyday activities are associated with time efficiency and the need to transport goods or passengers. The main motivators for cycling are personal benefits, such as improving health and enjoyment from cycling. Notably, a third key motivator – identified in Gävle, Espoo, and Riga – is the recognition that cycling often represents the fastest and easiest mode of transportation. 

Following presentation sessions rich with diverse findings and ideas, Ola Gustafsson facilitated a workshop focused on developing cycling promotion strategies tailored to children, families with children, and the elderly. The day concluded with a design sprint aimed at generating ideas for the third interventions in Cycle4Climate partner cities. 

2^nd day – Exploring Riga by Bike and Engaging with Students in Ziepniekkalns 

On the following day, we explored several Riga’s neighbourhoods during a 3-hour, 30-kilometre cycling tour led by Oto Ozols and Leo Bērziņš, with a particular focus on our designated study areas. As the largest of all Cycle4Climate partner cities, Riga showcased significant progress in cycling infrastructure, and it was interesting to learn about the municipality’s future development plans. The day concluded with an engaging workshop at Ziepniekkalns High School, where we collaborated with local students to explore opportunities for making cycling a more mainstream mode of transport among youth going to school in Ziepniekkalns. 

3^rd Day – Consortium Meeting and Wrap-Up 

The event in Riga concluded with a presentation of master’s thesis findings on urban interventions by Inka Kalliokoski from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. This was followed by a discussion among project partners on key takeaways from the conference and the planning of next steps, including upcoming urban interventions and the project’s forthcoming study visit. 

The three days in Riga strengthened our collaboration, gave us valuable insights from the local context, and inspired us as we continue with the Cycle4Climate project. What is most important, having such a warm and dedicated team and partners is what fuels everything we do moving forward with the project. 

Key Takeaways from the Event and Presentations 

• Promoting cycling requires an eye-level perspective. How we plan and design our cities directly influences people’s travel behaviour. 

• Spaces designed for “slow” travel and “fast” travel differ significantly according to Ola Gustafsson. Urban environments that support slow mobility should encourage interaction (“see, stop, talk”), embrace diversity through inclusive design (such as the 8–80 principle), and provide access to green areas. Positioning bike lanes on the inner side of parked cars creates a buffer from moving traffic, enhancing safety for cyclists. 

• Research from Denmark highlights that the primary reason so many people cycle in Copenhagen is because it’s perceived as “fast, easy, and convenient.” Encouragingly, the Cycle4Climate travel survey found the same motivator to be among the top three in Gävle, Espoo, and Riga. 

• Cycling uptake also depends heavily on visibility. As Ola Gustafsson noted in his presentation, roughly 20% of people will cycle regardless of conditions, another 20% will not cycle under any circumstances, and the remaining 60% are influenced by the visible presence of cyclists around them. Our survey included a question about seeing other cyclists on the street, and it will be interesting to observe how this visibility factor evolves over time, especially when all the interventions have been finalised.  

• Facilitating easy and appealing transitions between transport modes is key to advancing intermodality (using multiple modes for a single trip) and multimodality (using different modes for separate trips). Inter- and multimodality offer alternatives to car-based travel, especially for longer journeys. While our survey indicates that intermodal travel is still in its early stages across partner cities, multimodal travel for weekly activities is already fairly common in Pärnu and Riga. Notably, the measurement of multimodal travel remains rare in current survey methodologies, pointing to a gap in academic research on travel behaviour. 

• Travel habits might be passed down from parents to children. Introducing children to cycling at an early age not only supports their physical health and concentration but also increases the likelihood that they will continue cycling in adulthood. However, challenging the “positive image” associated with car use –particularly during adolescence, when obtaining a driver’s license is seen as a milestone – remains difficult. During workshop with high school students, students suggested that improving the safety of cycling routes and enhancing the visibility of cyclists in Ziepniekkalns, for example, through the development of a bike pump track, could help make cycling more appealing for teenagers and children.  

This blog is written by The Mobility Lab of the University of Tartu, which is an interdisciplinary research group that studies human mobility and its associations with society and the environment using mobile (big) data.