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Bengal

New Town wins Centre's 'Cycle Challenge'

kolkata: The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs ( MoHUA) has declared New Town as winner of its 'Cycle 4 Change Challenge.'

At a ceremony chaired by the secretary MoHUA, the winners of the challenge were declared. Each of the winners of the competition will be awarded Rs 1 crore as prize money.

About 107 cities from across the country participated in the challenge in July 2020.

New Town is the youngest among the winners. The other cities that have won the award are Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Kohima, Nagpur, Rajkot, Surat, Pimpri Chinchwad, Vadodara and Warangal.

It may be mentioned that Bengal is the only state where nearly one crore students of state-run and aided schools and madrasas studying between classes IX and XII are given cycles free-of-cost under Sabuj sathi project.

The project, an initiative of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has bagged international awards.

The project has helped to bring down the number of school drop outs particularly girls in the districts. New Town has built a cycling network comprising 20 km of cycle tracks / lanes and proposes to build another 70 km with all ancillary cycle infrastructure – cycle stand, signage, signal, cross over.

The Public Bicycle Sharing system has been re-launched in the area with 100 pedal bicycles, 400 e-bikes and 23 docking stations, said Debashis Sen, managing director of Housing infrastructure Development Corporation ( HIDCO).

Amid the pandemic, the cycling initiative undertaken in New Town provided citizens and visitors a safe and sustainable means of transport ensuring compliance to all Covid safety norms.

Bicycle ridership in New Town has increased by about 50 per cent over the last quarter due to the safe cycle infrastructure developed by NKDA and HIDCO.

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