City to get a junior ‘bicycle mayor’ by February 2020

To encourage cycling among children, the city will get a junior ‘bicycle mayor’ in February 2020. The mayor will be aged between nine and 16.

The world’s first junior bicycle mayor was selected in Amsterdam. In India, Gujarat’s Valsad was the first city to get a junior bicycle mayor in September 2019.

The initiative was started by Amsterdam-based BYCS to make “cities fit for children” and close to 50 bicycle mayors reportedly have adopted the theme.

BYCS is a social enterprise working towards increasing use of cycles in cities across the world. “In this digital age, where every child is hooked to their devices and parents are also not encouraging their children to cycle, this is an opportunity to motivate kids to take out their cycles. The idea is to catch them young,” said Mumbai’s first bicycle mayor and founder of Smart Commute Foundation, Firoza Suresh.

The junior bicycle mayor will be selected on the basis of a form to be submitted by the children and will be announced during the Mumbai cyclothon in February 2020. The tenure of each young bicycle mayor will be a year. “We will also select cycling avengers in different schools as the catalysts. We are also trying to introduce cycling as a subject in schools,” said Suresh. There are currently 41 bicycle mayors in India.