ชมรมจักรยานเพื่อสุขภาพแห่งประเทศไทย ชมรมจักรยานเพื่อสุขภาพแห่งประเทศไทย
Experts, monitoring team and TCC Committee Member & staff at the meeting
Thailand Cycling Club’s Project to Build Capacity of 15 Walking and Cycling Friendly Cities organized a meeting of experts and project monitoring team after they visited all the 15 pilot cities in the project during November and December 2016. The meeting took place at a resort hotel north of Bangkok on February 14-15, 2017. These cities are run by municipality of different sizes from sub-district (4) to town (6) and city (5) level, located in all regions of Thailand (North 4, Northeast 5, Central 2 and South 4). The experts came from universities in the same region as the cities. The monitoring team also included Secretary General of the Federation of Pedestrians and Bicycle Users in the Upper Southern Region and Mr. Chumroon Tangpaisalkit, TCC Vice President and Acting Director of Thailand Walking and Cycling Institute.
Mr. Chumroon Tangpaisalkit, TCC Vice President and Acting Director of Thailand Walking and Cycling Institute
Participants in the meeting discussed what they had observed and learned during the monitoring visit, focusing strength, weakness, opportunity and threat of each municipality. They also proposed what these municipalities should do to improve their walking and cycling promotion work, making it more effective. Mainly, all of them had some forms of weakness in term of their information work and personnel, and some of what they believe to be strength or opportunity is actually weakness or threat. For instance, having a cycling club in local area was in most case not an opportunity as they believed, but in fact an obstacle, because their member cyclists have interests and needs much different from those who used bicycle as their mode of transport for short-distance travel in daily life.
Finally, the meeting came up with a number of recommendations; some are specific for certain municipalities and some are general recommendations that apply to them all. The general ones included, for example, the first thing each municipality should do is to complete collection and analysis of data related to walking and cycling of people in the target area and use it to develop an appropriate action plan. Each municipality should start working in a small area where local people are interested to involve in the project. It would be best if a project and activities to promote walking/cycling is proposed by the target group people themselves. A proposed project should be presented in a way that it would benefit all groups of people in the area, not just pedestrians or bicycle users, to obtain wider supports. The experts also agreed that it may be a good idea for municipality to start with a project to promote students, teachers and school personnel to walk to school.
Reported by Gawin Chutima
Committee Member, Thailand Cycling Club
Board Member & Treasurer, Thailand Walking and Cycling Institute
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