During Amsterdam，chaotic rash hour, nine-year-old Lotta Crok cycles to a very busy junction. "Look," she says, "there s traffic coming from everywhere. Four trams from four different directions. For a child on a hike, that's really confusing!"
Lotta is the first junior cycle mayor in the world and her working area is the Dutch capital. You would think this challenge would be superfluous in a city known as the bicycle capital of the world. The number of bicycles in Amsterdam is estimated at 800,000-more than the city s 750,000 inhabitants. According to an estimate made 5years ago, 490,000 bicyclists take to streets daily.
But children who cycle in Amsterdam face challenges. Lotta says, "The three biggest problems for us are cars, cycling tourists and scooters(小型摩托). The cars take up too much space, the tourists are always swinging side to side and stop when you least expect it, and the scooters simply run you over."
Lotta became junior cycle mayor in June last year when she won a contest in which school children were asked to come up with plans to make cycling safer and more fun. Her idea was to add children's hikes to the popular hike share programme.
Since Lotta was appointed junior cycle mayor, she has been busy, giving interviews, opening cycling contests in the city and being a jury(评审员)member during the Amsterdam Light Parude, an event in which Amsterdammers decorate their hikes with lights.
She is now planning a meeting with the city, mayor to discuss ideas that children have come up with: "One of our proposals is a bicycle park where children can learn how to cycle. Right now, most of us learn it in the street, which can he quite busy. Another idea is to create an app for tourists to teach them the piles of cycling, because most of them really don't know."
Following the success of the Amsterdam scheme, cycle mayors around the world are now planning to appoint junior colleagues. "They see it works really well," Boerma, the senior major, says. "I talk to the parents. Lotta talks to the children. And if you look at the city through the eyes of a child, you will also make it accessible for others. A city that, good for an eight-year-old is also good for an 88-year-old."
