In Tunisia, the municipalities of Kairouan and Mahdia are looking for solutions to facilitate the deployment of bicycles in public spaces. The promotion of this mode of transport will contribute to the fight against air pollution caused by thermal vehicles at a time when the price of fuel is eating into the budget of Tunisian households.
According to climate specialists, the use of bicycles reduces traffic jams, the distance to work and the carbon footprint. It is in this context that the Tunisian authorities are launching a call for projects with a view to installing new bicycle stations in the municipalities of Mahdia, located 200 km south of the capital Tunis, and Kairouan, with a population of 570,000 in the centre of the country.
This green mobility initiative concerns local civil society associations likely to devise solutions for renting, repairing or organising outings and tourist visits by bicycle. The successful applicant will also be asked to create a 3-metre wide cycle track on spaces occupied by cars (lanes or parking) in these two cities.
The call for projects, which closes on 10 October 2022, is part of the “Autrement” partnership between the French city of Strasbourg and those of Kairouan and Mahdia in Tunisia. It is supported by the European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA), the Cooperation for the Development and Improvement of Urban and Peri-urban Transport (CODATU) and the Centre for Studies and Expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility and Planning (CEREMA) based in France.
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Following the example of Tunisia, other African countries are also turning to bicycles in order to pedal their ecological transition. This is the case in Morocco, where the local subsidiary of the French company Webhelp, which specialises in customer management, announced in early 2022 its support for the installation of new bicycle stations by the start-up Medina Bike Marrakech. The project, which will target several Moroccan cities, aims to deploy a self-service bicycle system (SSB) across the North African kingdom.
For more information on the call for projects, click here.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi
