Frequently asked questions

To cover as many kilometres as possible by bike for both private and professional purposes in order to promote cycling, help protect the climate and improve the quality of life in municipalities – and ultimately have fun!

• Members of the city councils/regional commitees of participating municipalities/regions
• Inhabitants of participating municipalities/regions
• Anyone who works, belongs to a club or attends school or university in a participating municipality/region

All participating municipalities/regions are listed in the overview. Should your municipality/region not feature in this list, then why not approach your municipality (administration, city council, etc.) and suggest that they participate in the campaign?

Your municipality (or region) first needs to register for the campaign, after which teams can be formed or joined.

To make the competition even more exciting, cyclists are now able to form subteams (e.g. for individual departments or classes) within their main team (company, school, public authority, club, etc.). The kilometres cycled count towards the subteam as well as the main team. First, sign up for TOUR du DUERF and join a main team. You will then have the option to “Create a new subteam” under “My team” after logging in. The person to create the subteam is automatically appointed as the subteam captain.

You can then get cycling and enter your climate-friendly kilometres in the online cycle log.

No, there aren’t any age restrictions for TOUR du DUERF. Everyone is able to get involved. That being said, participants aged under 16 years must obtain verbal consent from a parent or guardian first.

Yes, they can. Both the cyclist and the person being transported can record the kilometres.

The inclusion and participation of all people is very important to us. Wheelchair users can of course enter the journeys and kilometres they travel in their wheelchair during the TOUR du DUERF campaign. Distances covered by handbike also count.

The TOUR du DUERF campaign in Luxembourg takes place between 10th and 30th of September. 

• Participants with internet access are able to sign up for the online cycle log by entering their name and email address as soon as the log has been activated for their municipality/region. After signing up, the kilometres cycled can be entered here, which will then automatically be credited to the team and municipality.
• Participants with a smartphone are able to use the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app (for Android and iOS systems) to enter their kilometres. The app is very handy (it is no longer necessary to log in via the website) and it is even possible to simply use your mobile phone’s GPS function to calculate the exact route and kilometres covered.
• Participants with no internet access have to sign up through their team-captain and forward him their kilometres so that he/she can enter them into the cycle log. 

We strive to avoid incorrect kilometre entries, hence a message will appear if you attempt to enter more than 150 km per day for one single person. You will be asked to check your entry; the kilometres can then be saved. This is the first step in a plausibility check.

If you attempt to enter more than 300 km per day for one single person, a message will appear asking you to contact your local coordinator. You can then check the kilometres together with them, after which they will add the kilometres by accessing the cyclist’s cycle log under the ‘Manage cyclists’ tab.

If you’re entering kilometres for groups of people, the kilometre limit will of course be higher and depend on the number of people that you’re entering kilometres for.

In TOUR du DUERF, not only the kilometres cycled count, but also the number of journeys you complete. We strive in this way to help municipalities place greater emphasis on the bicycle as an everyday mode of transport in their local awards.

The number of journeys is currently publicly visible on the municipal subpage. It will also be listed in your cycle log and in your team overview.

For coordinators, the journeys completed by cyclists are also listed in all of the Excel evaluation spreadsheets.

Each and every kilometre covered by bike for professional or private purposes during the 21-day campaign period can be counted; Cycling competitions as well as indoor training on stationary bikes (e.g. spinning bikes) cannot be included here.

The kilometres cycled can be measured/estimated using an odometer (tachometer or cycle computer), the TdD / CITY CYCLING app or a route planning tool such as Naviki, for example.

A journey is a route that starts in one place and ends in another, regardless of the number of stops that are made along the way. During circular trips, the start and finish can also be the same.

Here are a few examples to explain:

Your cycle to work is one journey, even if you stop to drop your kid off at daycare or to get something from the bakery along the way or make any minor detours. Your cycle home at the end of the day is then another journey – also regardless of the number of stops you make.

Cycling to the shops is also just one journey, no matter how many shops you cycle to; cycling home again is another.

Circular journeys such as bike rides out into the countryside are considered one journey, even if the starting point and final destination are the same. For multi-day cycling trips, the routes covered each day count as one journey.

Do you use several modes of transport to get to work? So, do you first cycle to the local railway station, then take the train to the railway station near your place of work and cycle to the office from there? Then this is also just one journey, as your destination is the office and the railway stations are merely stops along the way. Only the kilometres covered by bike count, of course – and not the kilometres you travelled by train!

There are a few things to bear in mind when using one single collective account to record the kilometres cycled by several people.

Firstly, you will need to make sure that the total number of cyclists is entered and saved under Number of people in the account settings.

Secondly, every kilometre cycled must be entered in the cycle log. So if four people cycle 20 km together, then enter 80 km (4 x 20 km) in the cycle log. The kilometres will not be multiplied by the number of people automatically, as it is not always the case that all of the people managed via the collective account cycle the same distance.

If the TOUR du DUERF/CITY CYCLING app is used to track a route, then the kilometres are only recorded for the person using the app – the kilometres will not automatically be multiplied by the total number of cyclists. Meaning that you will need to add the kilometres for all of the other cyclists to the cycle log manually.

TOUR du DUERF lives from the principle of fair play and relies on the honesty of cyclists. It is not possible to check the kilometres entered by the tens of thousands of cyclists participating in the campaign, nor do we wish to do so. This being said, we ask that the municipal coordinators look into any “unusual” activities and to review these as necessary. “Social checks” among and within teams also tend to work.

This being said, the actual aim of the campaign is simply to get more people – and particularly local politicians as decision-makers for cycling promotion – on their bikes and to facilitate more effective public presentation and addressing of this issue by means of a competition. At the same times, cyclists demonstrate to those responsible with their participation how important climate protection and cycling promotion are to them and how many people are already using their bikes today.

Yes, of course! If you live and work or are active in an association in different municipalities, for example, then you can cycle for several municipalities during one TOUR du DUERF season. You’ll need to create separate user accounts for each though. Here’s how:

• Set up separate user accounts – you can use the same email address for these, but will need to provide different usernames
• Log into your new user accounts – when you do so, remember to enter the right username if you used the same email address to register several user accounts
• You’re now all set and can get cycling!

If the campaign periods for the municipalities you want to cycle in overlap, make sure that you only enter the kilometres you cycled in the account for one municipality – so not twice. If you use the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app to track or enter your kilometres, be sure to use the correct username to log into your account for each municipality.

You cannot use one account to record the kilometres for two different municipalities!

Every kilometre travelled by bike is almost inevitably a contribution to climate protection, too! Hence every kilometre cycled and every cyclist counts. TOUR du DUERF is not intended as a competition among individuals but rather a communal undertaking in which as many people as can and wish are able to participate. Perhaps you cycle so little because you are unhappy with the conditions for cyclists: your participation will help make the call for more cycling promotion louder! 

Particularly short journeys covered by car harbour considerable savings potential. In the first few kilometres, a cold engine needs up to 30 litres per 100 kilometres and the wear on the engine is particularly high. By covering shorter distances by bike, you will not only increase the life of your car but also save money and help avoid even more climate-damaging CO₂ being released into the atmosphere!

With your participation, you show those responsible for cycling in your municipality how important climate protection and cycling promotion are to you. The larger the number of cyclists who participate, the clearer – and louder – this signal will be! The (political) decision-makers will be made (more) aware how many cyclists there are and how many journeys are already being completed by bike in the municipality so that these road users must also be afforded more space. 

Take advantage of the TOUR du DUERF campaign to gain an insight into life as a cyclist for (at least) 21 days and experience the traffic situation for cyclists in your municipality first hand. The real experts on cycle policy are all those, who have considered the matter from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. Why not refine your senses and enhance your awareness to help improve the situation for cyclists.

You also should not underestimate – and indeed should also use – your role model function as a member of the local parliament: with your participation, you show others how important climate protection and sustainable mobility are. What’s more, in the process, the kilometres you cycle help your municipality achieve a good ranking in the “Most active local parliament” prize category.

Important for those wishing to register for the “Most active municipal parliament” prize category.

When a cyclist signs up for the first time, they will be asked about their status as a member of the local parliament. This information is decisive for the prize category of “Most active municipal parliament” in which Climate Alliance acknowledges municipalities’ achievements.

In principle, members of the local parliament are all persons belonging to the municipal/regional council or committee. A right to vote is always decisive here. 

In Luxembourg, registrations of municipalities for the TOUR du DUERF are accepted until September 9th.

The online registration form for municipalities is available under the Registration tab. Participation for municipalities (or regions) from Luxembourg is free of charge.

Municipalities (or regions) will first need to register officially with the TOUR du DUERF team. As soon as a subpage has been set up and added to the list of participating municipalities, teams are able to sign up for the online cycling log and to collect climate-friendly kilometres for the municipality/region during the campaign period.

In principle, any municipality in Luxembourg is able to participate in TOUR du DUERF. While a local council resolution or suchlike is not necessary for participation/registration, approval must be obtained from the municipality, e.g. by the  mayor, local authorities, etc.

The municipality – or, as appropriate, the municipal representative – is responsible for preparation and realisation of the local TOUR du DUERF campaign and must name (at least) one contact person, among others to serve as the local contact for participants.

All municipalities and regions from Luxembourg are able to participate. Participation in free, with the exception of the optional RADar! feature, submitted to licence fees.

Regions are able to choose whether they wish to participate together or for the individual municipalities to be listed separately (as indicated by the supplement “X in the rural district of YZ” next to the municipality’s name). The kilometres collected will then be credited to both the municipality and the region. 

Definition of a ‘region’: The existence of a board of elected municipal parliamentarians is decisive for a region to be considered.

Yes! 

For the details of the full conditions of participation, please see the rules of participation.

Pedelecs (250 W average engine power, support regulated at 25 km/h) are permitted in the TOUR du DUERF campaign as they are considered bicycles within the scope of the Luxembourg "Code de la route". Studies moreover show that pedelecs are also climate-friendly vehicles in terms of the battery production: with less than 6 g of CO₂ per kilometre, they emit around 20 times less CO₂ than an economical car with a combustion engine.

Pedelecs also deserve support, as they significantly increase a bike’s radius of use and can make cycling accessible to a great many new cyclists. A great deal of potential exists to reduce the number of journeys completed by car.

And last but not least: due to their high average speed, pedelec cyclists are also – and perhaps even more – reliant on good cycling infrastructure!

No, the kilometres you cycle using an e-bike are not recorded or evaluated separately. Allow us to explain why:

Many cyclists use both an e-bike and a conventional bike, which means that they’d have to indicate which type of bike they used for each individual journey. This could lead to errors during the recording of kilometres if they forget to make this distinction.

Another consideration: Many pedelec users don’t use the electrical assistance all the time, but rather only switch it on when cycling up a hill or if there is a strong headwind, for instance. They use the rest of their journey to get some exercise. Keeping track of such usage in the cycle log would be quite difficult!

Another particularly important consideration is that many teams include people with and without e-bikes, who cycle together. While it would be possible to differentiate between the types of bicycle in the team rankings to some extent (except perhaps in the two cases mentioned above), this would not be realistic on the municipal level. Unless teams only comprise cyclists who only ride an e-bike (or a conventional bike) that is. This would make the campaign considerably more complicated though, which could in turn affect some people’s motivation to participate: cyclists want to be able to select their team according to who they want to cycle with and not according to the type of bike they use.

Speaking of types: If we were to distinguish between e-bikes and conventional bikes, it would only be logical to also distinguish between other types of bicycle, too. After all, it obviously makes a big difference whether a child’s bike, an old Dutch bike or a state-of-the-art carbon-framed racing bike is used to cycle 10 km!

This would also complicate the campaign further, however, increase the likelihood of errors occurring during the recording of data and make it far more difficult to compare the results in the competition. Especially since, in addition to the type of bike, the cyclists’ physical condition or fitness level also plays an important role, which we (for many good reasons) do not ask about either.

Ultimately, the aim of TOUR du DUERF is simply to encourage as many people to cycle as possible, in the most uncomplicated way possible. For even though the campaign is essentially also a competition, it’s really all about promoting cycling and climate protection.

Hence we’ve come up with a different solution to the question of how to evaluate the kilometres covered by e-bike. In order to shift the focus from the number of kilometres cycled and the type of bicycle used towards seeing bicycles as a means of transport in everyday life, we’ve introduced a new evaluation category: journeys. A journey counts the same regardless of whether you travelled just 1 km to the bakery or used a pedelec to commute 35 km to work. For more information on this new category, type “Journeys” in the FAQ search field.

Beside promoting cycling and facilitating a long-term improvement in the cycling infrastructure, the TOUR du DUERF campaign aims to help protect the climate – this is also one of the overall aims of Climate Alliance. We strive to communicate and raise awareness using the simplest, most comprehensible messages possible. Every journey covered by bike is essentially environmental and climate protection as a matter of course. And this is what makes it so great!

We always consciously speak of CO₂ avoidance and not savings, as we know that not every journey covered by bike actually saved/replaced a journey by car. Strictly speaking, people who do not own a car cannot save CO₂ – the fact that their behaviour still has a positive impact on the environment should be undisputed, which we also wish to take into account and acknowledge.

The campaign does not make any scientific claim. By indicating the CO₂ avoided (based on 154 g of CO₂ saved per kilometre cycled, according to the German Federal Environment Agency) we merely wish to illustrate the positive effects cycling can have on our mobility behaviour – and how much greater these effects can be if more people choose to regularly switch to using their bicycle, naturally also beyond the TOUR du DUERF campaign period!

The free TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app offers two important advantages:

Firstly, thanks to GPS, you can easily track the journeys you complete by bike. The kilometres covered are then automatically added to the totals for your team and municipality.

Secondly, all of the routes tracked by the app are evaluated scientifically entirely anonymously as part of the RiDE project. RiDE stands for “Radverkehr in Deutschland”, which means as much as “bicycle traffic in Germany”. This evaluation allows us to provide your municipality with information that is extremely useful to it in its traffic planning: Where and how many cyclists are on the road when? Where does the traffic come to a standstill and where are the waiting times at traffic lights disproportionately long? Your municipality can then expand and optimise the local cycling infrastructure according to users’ needs.

For more information, see tourduduerf.org/app and radverkehr-in-deutschland.de.

We attach great importance to data security during your use of the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app.

The data collected and transmitted is used exclusively for municipal cycling planning and research projects. It is also anonymised so that no personal references can be made.

This purely factual data is then made available to the municipalities participating in TOUR du DUERF for their cycling planning.

Please see here for detailed information on how your data is used and the measures we take to protect your data.

Android:

Android devices have an energy-saving function that is often activated by default. When it is activated, no location services (GPS) are used when the screen is switched off. This can cause issues when tracking routes.

You can deactivate the energy-saving function under “Settings > Battery” or “Settings > Device > Battery”. The path may vary depending on your device. You may need to add the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app to the list of exceptions in the app permissions.

iOS:

For iOS devices, access to the location services (GPS) for the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app must be set to “When using the app” so that the app continues to track your routes in the background. You can set this under “Settings > Privacy > Location Services > CITY CYCLING”

All tracked routes must first be synchronised with the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING server before they can be added to your team total and cycle log. Depending on your internet connection, this can sometimes take a while (the clock symbol will appear next to the route in the meantime). As soon as your internet connection is sufficiently strong (e.g. a stable Wi-Fi network), your tracked routes will automatically be synchronised.

Routes tracked outside of your municipality’s local TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING period are not synchronised with our servers and are only stored locally on your phone. This local data is deleted during reinstallation. We’re working to enable the synchronisation of routes outside of the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING period with our servers in the future.

Single tick: The route has been tracked outside of the TOUR du DUERF period and will only be saved locally on your phone.

Double tick: The tracked route has been synchronised with our server and will be added to the totals for your team and municipality.

Clock: The tracked route has not yet been synchronised with our server and therefore does not appear in the “Results” yet.

Simply swipe left and a red “Delete” button will appear.

No, we deliberately do not offer such an interface.

In addition to using the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app to conveniently track your journeys completed by bike via GPS, we also wish to evaluate the cycling data we gain in the process scientifically and to make it useful to municipalities so that they can tailor expansion of the local cycling infrastructure accordingly. We’re collaborating with the Technical University in Dresden on a research project lasting several years to develop methods to evaluate data more precisely. Hence the TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app also records other sensor data in addition to the GPS data. Unfortunately, the data other providers collect is not as comprehensive or of the same quality.

The TOUR du DUERF / CITY CYCLING app was last revised in 2018. Its compatibility has continuously been adapted to the latest standards

iOS: From iOS 11.2.

Android: From Android 6.0.

Numerous virtual acknowledgements await in the app for those of you who cycle a lot and use the app to track the kilometres you cycle. These acknowledgements will provide added motivation and make your cycling successes visible in your personal account. Your achievements in three categories are acknowledged: kilometres, journeys and series. Here’s a brief overview of the different achievements:

Kilometres
km25 = Cycling Talent
km50 = Cycling Pro
km100 = Cycling Champion
km250 = Cycling Star

Journeys
tracks5 = Climate Cyclist
tracks10 = Climate Protector
tracks25 = Climate Saviour
tracks50 = Climate Hero

Series
streak3 = Series Cyclist
streak5 = Series Enthusiast
streak7 = Series Expert
streak14 = Series Master
streak21 = Serien Royalty

Here, a “series” means consecutive days on which at least one journey is tracked.

You can view your achievements and progress in the app under “My profile”.

NB: All acknowledgements relate exclusively to routes tracked via the app. Kilometres added manually are not taken into account.