Europe walked more than 1.3 billion steps in a contest that ran for European Mobility Week.
The challenge was offered by Walk15, a sustainable initiative app which lets users convert their steps into discounts across food, retail and transport. More than 1.3 million users and 2,500 companies use the platform.
For European Mobility Week, which was celebrated between September 16th and September 22nd, Walk15 hosted a challenge with support from EIT Urban Mobility which ranks cities for the number of steps walked by its people.
“We’re honestly amazed,” Walk15 CEO and Founder Vlada Musvydaite Vilciauske told Zag Daily. “Our goal was to reach one billion steps and show that sustainable mobility can start with something as simple as walking.
“We passed that goal by more than 310 million steps. For me, the most exciting part is how many cities joined in: 972 across Europe from capitals to small towns. That shows how much energy there is for healthier, greener cities.”
The 1.3 billion steps travelled across the week translates into over 935,000 kilometres of distance. It also marks a substantial improvement compared with the first edition of the challenge which launched last year. This year, Walk15 recorded a 28% increase – or 290 million – in steps taken for the challenge, while the number of participating cities increased from 577 to 972.
The steps leaderboard
The Latvian capital of Riga took top spot for the most active city with more than 134 million steps taken during the week.
Riga was followed by Vilnius (Lithuania) with 126 million steps, Kaunas (Lithuania) with 77 million steps, Klaipėda (Lithuania) with 36 million steps and Ankara (Türkiye) with 23 million steps who respectively made up the top five cities.
By nation, the top country was – perhaps unsurprisingly – Lithuania. The nation was followed by Latvia, Romania, Germany and Italy in the top five.
The challenge was open to people of the city as well as city officials themselves who were encouraged to distribute the news. Officials acted as a “multiplier”, Vilciauske said, with “friendly competition” between cities.
Representatives of the top three municipalities will now be invited to a recognition ceremony that will form part of the Tomorrow Mobility congress in Barcelona later this year. The invitations extend to Riga, Vilnius and Kaunas as the top three as well as Ankara which achieved the highest average number of steps per participant.
