Our Story
In 1994, four cyclists met up to discuss the potential of bike transportation in Tel Aviv.
“It’s a flat, compact city with hardly any snowy days (if at all), terrible parking problems and a huge traffic overload.”
At a meeting with a senior official at City Hall, they did their best to market their strategy to transform Tel Aviv into a cycling city.
Their answer to us was blunt: “You’re completely misinformed". They argued that Tel-Aviv / Jaffa is a modern city, the metropolitan heart and the business center of the State of Israel. "You are delightful tree-huggers, but we’ll never go back to such modes of transport. We face forward, we will push for advanced transportation. Don’t you read the newspapers? Any day now we’ll have a subway here….”
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But the four were not dejected. They fixed another meeting, with another City Hall official, this time one whom they knew to be a cyclist. He listened intently to their idea, but replied tiredly: “I appreciate your initiative, but these kinds of ideas are successful in the European countries that support sustainable transportation. We, in contrast, are a Middle Eastern country, with Israelis attached to their cars or to camels…. It’s a shame to waste your time.”
After multiple failed attempts to get City Hall to take the lead, the four added more people to advance their cycling-oriented vision of Tel Aviv, and finally, in 1995 Tel Aviv bicycle association was founded.
In 2008 the NGO expanded its activities to a national level and changed its name to Israel bicycle association. Its aims – to encourage the use of, culture of and transportation by bikes in Tel Aviv and in Israel have helped transform a rapidly industrializing country into a cycle-friendly haven.
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