On April 05, 2023, Professor Heather Kaths team celebrated two years of Bicycle Traffic. Time to look back on the past year!

After much organizational work in the first year, the second year was already characterized by significantly more project work.

The team was strengthened at the beginning of April by Cat Silva, who serves as the lead researcher and is primarily responsible for setting up the new teaching in BT. Just one month later, Leonard Arning began work as a research associate to conduct research in the area of macroscopic modeling of bicycle traffic. The team team will contiune to grow ths year and will bring on three more research associates in the next months, allowing us to work on even more projects and further expand our expertise in the field of bicycle traffic.

Our team also began working on several research projects over the last year. 
 The first project "Technical and planning solutions to topographical problems in bicycle traffic" (TiptoP) started in May 2022 and is funded by NRVP funds. The next project we started is on "Modeling of Pedelec Traffic Based on Traffic Behavior Surveys and User-Generated GPS Trajectories" (PLUG-IN). This is a project carried out within the framework of the Endowed Chair of Bicycle Traffic. The third project "Building Cycling Futures" (BCF) started on 01 October 2022 and received European funding under the Erasmus Mundus Design Measures. The fourth and most recent project "Benefits and feasibility of detector-based detection of cargo bikes" (NUErLast) started on 01 March 2023, and an official kick-off event was held on 20 April 2023. Strengthened by our new employees, we will tackle new projects in our third year of BT, including e.g. the BIKEhub project, which has already been approved and will start in June 2023. More information about this will be published on our website soon!

In the past year, the team around the Chair of Bicycle Traffic was also active in the area of teaching. We took over the course "Microscopic Modeling and Simulation" and parts of the "Projekt Entwurfsplanung" for the first time in the summer semester 2022. This year we also began teaching the „Projekt Radverkehr“ in the Bachelor and BT aims to develop collabrations in teaching with other universities to advance the internationalization of teaching for Transportation Engineers and Civil Engineers.

The Chair of Bicycle Traffic was also very active last year away from research projects, teaching, and the university.
 At the beginning of June, we went on a hike together from Solingen-Schaberg through the Müngstener Brückenpark to the Freudenberg. Even though the weather did not want to cooperate with the hike, we were able to cook and enjoy paella together in the open air afterwards.
In mid-June, we received a visit from Prof. Dr. Nicolas Saunier from Polytechnique Montreal in Canada, who stayed in Wuppertal for four weeks for a research stay. He was, together with Heather Kaths, part of the Urban Mobility Jury of the Solar Decathlon 21/22. Additionally, he held a workshop at our chair for our research associates and for colleagues from other departments. In early November, Nicolas Saunier visited us for another week, during which our cooperation could be further intensified.

Our team was also represented at many conferences. It started with the SUMO User Conference 2022 in May, where Heather Kaths gave a keynote. In June, Cat Silva went to Ljubljana to participate in the Velo-city 2022 conference. In September, the Chair of Bicycle Traffic participated in the Universitätstagung Verkehrswesen 2022. In October, Leonard Arning presented his research findings to this point at the sixth Annual Meeting of the Cycling Research Board (CRBAM) in Amsterdam, and Cat Silva hosted a workshop on our efforts to internationalize teaching at BUW. Also in October, the PEGASUS annual meeting was held at BUW, and work from our chair was presented there as well. For the first time, we were also represented at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual meeting in Washington D.C. in January 2023.
This year, our team will continue to participate in these national and international conferences to share our work and seek out collaborations with other like-minded researchers. We are also proud to have won a bid to host the CRBAM in Germany for the first time in 2023. We look forward to welcoming this international cycling conference to Wuppertal this October for its 7th annual meeting.

The CRBAM may be the first international event BT will host, but it is not the first event our team will organize. Another highlight of the our second year was the organization of the summer bike tour of the seven BMDV endowed professorships. It was organized by our chair and took place on 13 and 14.09.22 at the University of Wuppertal. The event kicked-off with welcome from the rector Prof. Dr. Birgitta Wolff and a keynote speech by the mayor of Wuppertal Prof. Dr. Uwe Schneidewind. This summer event involved a workshop with the colleagues from the other endowed chairs to co-create ideas for joint research and projects. In the late afternoon the Nordbahntrasse was explored by bicycle and further discussions were held during a dinner in the restaurant Alaturka, in preparation for the presentation of the results of the workshop discussed in a closing session on the following day.

To round off the year 2022, the Chair of Bicycle Traffic invited the entire Fachzentrum Verkehr to its festively decorated offices for a Christmas party, where they celebrated together until late into the night with a buffet, drinks, games, good conversation, and the best of spirits. We plan to make this holiday event an annual tradition to strengthen our relationships with our mobility-minded colleagues.

In the future and in this coming year, we aim to take on new research projects, expand our teaching profile and contribute to the internationalization of our university. Indeed, we are already international with Prof. Dr. Kaths coming from Canada and, including the new colleagues joining our team soon, our team includes team members from the Iran, Russia, USA, UAE and Germany. As we continue to grow, we look foward to bringing the unique perspectives from our international and interdiciplinary team to deliver high-quality courses to our students and advance innovative research on bicycle traffic.