Ljubljana named as one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities

Ljubljana has been named as one of the top ten world’s bike-friendly cities in terms of cycling infrastructures, number of cycling enthusiasts and modern guidelines and good practice of cycling system out of 136 cities evaluated, according to Copenhagenize Bicycle Friendly Cities Index 2017.

During Ljubljana’s assessment, the jury noted that the title “European Green Capital 2016” further supported cycling in the city having an increase on the proportion of cyclists and cycling infrastructure over the years, making expansion projects easier and more convenient. The jury pointed out the positive promotion of cycling on its campaign as a key element, and added that they see no reason why Ljubljana could not reach a 20% or even a 30% share of cyclists in the traffic in the coming years.

Ljubljana has 230 kilometres of dedicated cycling trails. Since 2011, Ljubljana’s citizens and visitors have been able to hire bikes through the very popular self-service bike-sharing system BicikeLj. Bikes are particularly suitable for shorter rides, as there is no charge once the bicycle was returned to the nearest docking station within an hour.

There are currently 51 stations and 510 bikes, and they have seen more than 4 million journeys since it started operating.

A total of 76,163 visitors from the GCC visited the Slovenia in 2016, resulting in a 10 percent increase compared to 2015 figures. Amongst those, the number from Saudi Arabia was the highest at 43,483 travelers, which was an increase of 11.5 percent compared to the year before. Visitors from the United Arab Emirates were the next highest, followed by visitors from Kuwait.