A view on sustainable mobility at The Victoria School in Bogotá From 4 to 2 A view on sustainable mobility at The Victoria School in Bogotá Our initiative, “From 4 to 2”, looks forward to promoting the use of sustainable mobility at our community, especially the use of the bicycle as an efficient and viable mean of transportation.

Participants: 9th and 10th grade students English, Social Studies teachers and CAS Coordinator

THE IDEAS: “A million cyclists taking over the busiest, biggest, and most important streets of a notoriously traffic- snarled metropolis? No big deal—it happens every week in Bogotá, Colombia”. Mark Jenkins 2015 Bogotá as most of the world's cities, is affected daily by various mobility issues; mainly traffic, motorcycle accidents, lack of planning and infrastructure, a basic public transportation system and furthermore a lack of civic culture. In casual conversations you can easily notice a collective frustration and dissatisfaction on how mobility issues affect life quality of citizens in Bogotá. When we heard about this invitation the first thing that caught our attention was the topic of sustainable mobility, taking into account that our students are really concerned with environmental issues at a local and national level, so we set out a team of teachers and students inspired and worried about better commuting conditions and eco friendly mobility practices, this taking into account that one of the main conclusions of our exploration relates to the exponential increase of CO2 emissions in the city .

In first instance, two meetings were held to brainstorm the main mobility issues affecting our community and we immediately got engaged with the topic of sustainable mobility and the use of the bicycle as a mean of transportation to get to school. We found out that various members of our school community (including teachers and students, among others) found the bicycle to be their favorite transportation mean. The research process included the design and application of some questioners for the bike users in our community in order to find out the advantages and disadvantages of commuting on bike. Another research strategy was to record the route that those who opt for the bike need to take. These initial strategies allowed us to identify various elements affecting and favouring bike users. Even though Bogota is a pioneering city when it comes to the implementation of cycling routes, some of these paths need a maintenance and a continuity, taking into account that some tracks end abruptly leaving no option to the cyclist but to take the traffic lane exposing themselves. Security issues, specially theft, was another main concern expressed by the bike users. When focusing on the community internal limitations were found, principally the lack of an appropriate bike parking inside the school, sustainable mobility campaigns, the promotion and relevance of the bike in the schools committee and the whole community. Riding bicycle as a healthy practice and as an exercise routine were both identified as the main favouring reasons behind cycling. Finally, findings allowed us to conclude that before promoting bike as a sustainable transportation mean, we need of internal and external actions to improve security and infrastructure condition in favour of those who cycle.

First Day: reading the contest rules and inviting students to participate

Brainstorming and collaborative work

Research: bicycle routes

https://youtu.be/CmJRkdUggxs

PYP Coordinator: daily bike user

Questionnaire

Initiatives Taking into account that this is the first project of sustainable mobility lead in our school community, there is a lot of work to get done. After the brainstorming and research process we decided to work towards the promotion of the use of bicycle So we decided to divide our project into 3 stages: Communication and participation: A- Student's participation and involvement in the schools mobility committee (2 of the students of the project are participating in the committee once a month) B - Meeting held with the administrative director of the School to present internal and external bike users needs (She facilitated the communication of a local political leader in charge of promoting sustainable mobility issues in the schools sector and provided the resources needed to build a bike parking at school) We also schedule for December 2017 the mobility campaigns with High School Students, teachears and workers) C - Establish communication with mobility local authorities through email ( They offered mobility workshops to promote sustainable mobility at school. This would be held on the third stage of the project) D- Participation in the Public Leadership Seminar at Universidad de los Andes (one of the main institutions promoting the use of bicycles) - During this Seminar we had the opportunity to talk to the main bike promoter of the local mobility entity in Bogotá (Secretaría de Movilidad), Andrés Felipe Vergara, who shared with us experiences from other neighbouring institutions with similar concerns and how they were approaching them. He also provided relevant information in order to establish connections with them and work together to present a formal proposal to the local entities of mobility and infrastructure (Secretaría de Movilidad y de Infraestructura) Phase 2: Design and elaboration of proposal and Phase 3: Sustainable mobility campaign will be held during the remaining year 2017.

Initiatives Phase 1: Communication and participation A and B

Contact and information: local political leader on sustainable mobility

Design of a new bike parking

D. Public Leadership Seminar. Universidad de los Andes

With Andrés Felipe Vergara. Secretaría de Movilidad

Researching for the design