Dublin City Council has asked children from DEIS schools to help design city cycle routes.
The Bicycle Heroes Project will create solutions to the cycling barriers students face on their way to school.
The children are being asked to take part as they are the ones who are most affected and because they are the voices of the future.
The Mobility Outreach Officer for Dublin City Council, Niamh Ni Cholmain, said: “Bicycle Heroes compliments Dublin City Council's School Mobility Programme which has seen the installation of almost 70 School Zones in the past 18 months.
“School Zones demarcate an area of public space around school entrances where the dropping off or collecting of children using cars is discouraged.
“It also ties in with our Safe Routes to School Project which looks beyond the school gate and aims to increase the number of students who walk or cycle to school by providing safe walking and cycling routes to school.
“It is essential that children influence the design of these schemes – they are the ones who are most affected and they are the voice of the future.”
DCC will be working with groups of children aged 10 to 15 years, to give them the tools to enable them to reimagine their city space to meet their needs.
They will be designing, exhibiting and presenting to transport engineers, planners and decision makers to influence the design of Dublin City spaces for that will benefit their transport needs.
Professor Brian Caulfield, of Trinity College Dublin, added: “Children have a unique perspective on their surroundings yet often go unheard.
“That's why a coalition of organisations are enabling young people to tackle urban challenges head on with a project shared between Dublin, Lisbon and Rome, that gives city building tools to children.
“The cities across the world that Dublin is trying to emulate in cycling numbers have been promoting cycling to and with children for decades and it has been shown that these early interventions can result in lifelong cycling habits.”
The project is called Bicycle Heroes: Youth Voices for Active Mobility and is supported by EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a body of the European Union.
The programme has been piloted by coordinating organisation BYCS over the last five years in the Netherlands. BYCS is an Amsterdam-based global NGO supporting community-led urban change through cycling.
Nearly ten thousand children have taken part in the initial awareness and problem-solving phase of the program, leading to the selection of approximately 150 Bicycle Heroes.
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