Cycling Research Board Annual Meeting

What if reaching daily essentials within 30 minutes—without a car—felt not only possible, but empowering and enjoyable? This session invites participants to explore how e-bikes can help reimagine mobility in peri-urban regions as more inclusive, climate-friendly, socially and spatially just and human-centered.
Extending the “15-minute city,” the current project shifts the lens toward a “30-minute region”, where e-bikes offer a way to increase accessibility beyond dense urban areas into car-dependent communities near Graz. Graz is the second large city in Austria and has a huge peri-urban region around.
It combines spatial analysis, lived experiences, and co-creation to understand how infrastructure, mobility behavior and regional planning intersect with social and spatial justice, and how interventions can reduce inequalities in access to daily destinations.
At the ongoing research project, participants tested e-bikes and kept mobility diaries. Their attitudes toward e-bikes and cycling were surveyed both before and after the trial. The documentation allows a deep understanding of how barriers and social contexts shape mobility opportunities, particularly for groups which have limited mobility options (less public transport, long distances).
The session is designed as an interactive exploration. Early findings, like the experiences of the participants, will be shared. Participants could share their experiences, reflect on the question of whether e-bikes have the potential to reduce inequalities in peri-urban areas and to co-create ideas for climate-adapted infrastructure and inclusive mobility strategies. The impulses generated during the session will complement the existing insights for the development of the further project.
By linking lived mobility experiences with questions of social and spatial justice, this work challenges car-centric norms and positions e-bikes not just as a technology, but as a motivation for more equitable mobility futures. The session aims to inspire new collaborations, spark creative thinking, and foster shared learning among different disciplines.