Municipality of Maastricht and Maastricht Bereikbaar SDG-Challenge Autumn 2025

SDG 9 aims to improve mobility and infrastructure, while reducing its drawbacks – such as time lost in traffic jams, traffic-related safety issues, and environmental pressure. At the
same time, businesses are encouraged to innovate and become more sustainable.

Sustainable infrastructure can be considered on a global scale, but also on a micro level, for example in the inner city of Maastricht. The Municipality of Maastricht has adopted the
so-called STOP principle and focuses on making passenger mobility and freight transport more sustainable, serving a healthy living and working environment as well as economic
vitality.

Zooming in on cycling, the municipality of Maastricht is working on:

• Cycling more often (for example, choosing the bike instead of the car, ensuring that
• people with limited financial means have access to bicycles, and offering newcomers/foreigners the opportunity to start cycling).
• Cycling safely (for example, through the creation of cycling zones and by encouraging the use of helmets).
• And above all, safe bicycle parking.

To achieve this, the municipality collaborates with Maastricht Bereikbaar, educational institutions, interest groups, housing corporations, property owners, entrepreneurs, and employers in and around the city center. Maastricht is increasingly becoming #posifiets. See the separate appendix on the #posifiets approach.

Zooming in further on safety, inclusivity, sustainable use of space, and social responsibility: An example of traffic-related safety issues in the inner city of Maastricht is overcrowded
sidewalks due to bicycles parked haphazardly and unsafely. At first glance, this might seem like a “small and easy-to-solve problem.” In reality, it is more complex:

• Entrepreneurs suffer economic losses because their shops or terraces become less accessible and less attractive.
• Residents grow increasingly frustrated with, for example, students/young people who appear to have little regard for their surroundings. As a result, public support for students, particularly as temporary residents of the city, decreases.

• People with physical disabilities feel less and less able to go outside. They feel forced to stay indoors because there is literally not enough space to move around safely.
• Room landlords experience mounting social pressure to encourage their tenants to park their bicycles safely and avoid causing nuisance.

SDG Challenge at the strategic level
Now that you know more about the importance of (mass) safe bicycle parking in the inner city of Maastricht and have learned about the #posifiets approach:

What kind of multi-year strategy can you develop to engage important (existing and new) stakeholders, to bind them to the initiative, and to ensure they show co-ownership of the #posifiets approach?