Lotte Slagmolen
Lotte has established herself as a key figure in the fields of transport poverty and cycling education. She works with a wide range of target groups, from children and adults to non-native speaking youth and people with disabilities.
Rooted in a strong pedagogical background, Lotte brings action and inspiration to everything she does. Her cycling lessons go beyond simply teaching road skills; they spark genuine enthusiasm for cycling and road safety across diverse communities. As Project Officer, she also takes responsibility for training cycling instructors, pilots of shared bicycles, and other volunteers, ensuring her impact reaches far beyond the classroom.
Through her coaching of local educators and volunteers, Lotte continues to leave a lasting mark on cycling culture in Flanders.
Sesión
Cycle Skillz examines cycling not merely as a transport mode, but as a lever for inclusive labour market participation among vulnerable workers in the social economy. It focuses on employees in sheltered workshops and domestic service companies, many of whom face compounding barriers to cycling, including limited skills, traffic anxiety, linguistic obstacles, and unsafe commuting environments. By positioning “mobility poverty” as a structural constraint on employment access and retention, the project reframes cycling competence as a form of human capital rather than an individual lifestyle choice.
The research combines a scaled cycling education programme with action research. It includes tailored, language-sensitive safety training, a train-the-trainer model embedded within workplaces, and a citizen science approach using hazard mapping (i.e. the PING application) to capture workers’ lived experiences of unsafe infrastructure. These components generate primary data on behavioural change, safety outcomes, and organisational capacity, while also documenting systemic barriers such as insurance constraints, employer limitations, and inadequate infrastructure in industrial areas.
The contribution to the broader mobility discourse is threefold. First, the project challenges the dominant paradigm of the “able-bodied commuter” by demonstrating that mainstream cycling policies and programmes systematically exclude large population groups. Second, it introduces an interdisciplinary framework that connects transport research with labour economics, adult education, public health, and social policy, thereby expanding the analytical scope of cycling research. Third, it provides empirical evidence for the social return on investment of targeted mobility interventions, linking cycling competence to reduced accidents, improved job access, and increased employment stability.
By embedding cycling within workplace contexts and policy structures, the project advances a more inclusive understanding of mobility transitions: one that centres equity, capability, and participation across diverse populations.