One Billion Bicycles Global Films

It’s not everyday that you hear that someone traveled the world in search of  bicycles. Adventure and love maybe, but the humble bicycle? Not so much.

It is true that I love my bicycle. I never however, expected my bicycle and I to take things quite this far. Not literally my bicycle and me, but my passion for living the bicycle life has just reached whole new heights.

In fact, I’m writing this from London, England, the first stop on my year-long study tour of the world’s best bicycle cities.

The tour starts in Europe then goes as far south as Mozambique – Southern Africa,  as far west as Colombia – South America as far north as Vancouver – Canada and as far out of my linguistic comfort zone as Beijing – China.

It’s the One Billion Bicycles Tour and it’s a journey to uncover the secrets, the style and the people of bicycle cities around the world.

Why One Billion Bicycles? Well if you Google the number of bicycles on the planet you get just over one billion. Even better, when you Google the number of cars on the planet you only get 600 million, that’s half the number of bicycles which is the way it should be.

What’s not as it should be is that although there are more bicycles in the world than cars (because they are the world’s fastest, cheapest, most convenient, most mechanically efficient, least polluting, healthiest and funest mode of urban transport), our cities, namely Melbourne, remain congested with cars – the world’s slowest, most expensive, inconvenient, mechanically inefficient, most polluting, dangerous and boring mode of transport.

No one, not even the most dedicated car lover, is convinced waiting in traffic jams when you just want to get home is fun, or that the road toll is not high enough yet, and so there is just no argument anymore that bicycles are not the way to go for urban transport.

Especially in Melbourne which has everything it takes to be not just a bicycle city, but the world’s best bicycle city.

If you’re going to do what it takes to transition a whole city, as our visionary Melbourne City Mayor Doyle envisions, you might as well do it in style and be the best.

So how do you transition from cars to bicycles? What’s it like to live in great bicycle cities? What are the secrets to getting the bicycle, car, PT mix right? And who has the best bicycle chic, because that is of course the most important part to get right: no style, no cycle lanes for you!

So those are the questions and on here will be the answers. Stay tuned…