EuroVelo Route Inspectors’ Training Home and Away: Two more courses, more than 300 inspectors certified in ten years

The European Certification Standard (ECS) is a methodology developed by the European Cyclists’ Federation to evaluate the quality of long-distance cycle routes. It incorporates analysis of infrastructure, services, and communication to offer a holistic assessment of route quality focusing on the users’ perspective.

ECS has a wide range of uses, from cycle routes in their very infancy up to established, popular cycle routes. It can be used to:

• Plan cycle routes, offering benchmark quality criteria.
• Evaluate the need for improvements, investments, and maintenance on existing cycle routes.
• Collect useful and precise data to lobby public authorities.
• As a communication tool to provide reliable information to users.

In order to implement this methodology, ECF has developed a mobile app that allows for the recording of detailed GIS data by trained EuroVelo Route Inspectors cycling the route in the field. Each year, we organise training courses to certify EuroVelo Route Inspectors in the use of the methodology and the app, allowing them to conduct ECS surveys themselves.

Route inspectors come from a wide variety of backgrounds: cycle route managers, academics, NGO employees, representatives of public authorities, and participants in EU co-funded projects, among others.

The Route Inspector certification is valid for five years and is an absolute prerequisite to perform ECS surveys. A one-day online Refresher Course is offered every year and open to anyone who has previously completed an in-person training. Upon completion of the Refresher Course, the Route Inspector status is renewed for another five years.

Business as usual in Brussels

The 13th Route Inspectors’ Training took place from 7-9 April 2025 at ECF HQ in Brussels, Belgium. Modules on all ECS criteria, ranging from infrastructure, services, and promotion, offered a mixture of presentations and interactive exercises, where the future inspectors could get a taste of the ECS criteria and how they are applied in practice. For the first time, modules focusing on survey preparation, tools for analysing the collected data, and the creation of reports based on the field data were incorporated, allowing the future inspectors to tap into the wealth of practical experience gained from last year’s record ECS activity.

For the second year running, the weather gods smiled down on the training during the field trip along EuroVelo 5 – Via Romea, where participants first put the methodology into practice in a collaborative group effort under the guidance of the trainers, before testing their knowledge in an individual practical test. Having passed this practical test and a theoretical test in the afternoon, 22 participants from 9 countries became official EuroVelo Route Inspectors!

Slovenia gains a record-breaking number of inspectors

Our ECS Team stayed busy in May, traveling to Slovenia to conduct the second ECS training there in as many years. This time in Ljubljana, hosted by the Regional Development Agency of Ljubljana Urban Region and facilitated by the Ministry of the Environment, Climate, and Energy, it involved 24 participants from regional development agencies as well as representatives from the Slovenian Infrastructure Agency and the Ministries of Tourism and of Environment, Climate, and Energy.

Much like in Brussels, the theoretical knowledge gained on the first day was put into practice on the second day, surveying in a mixture of wood, park, and urban environments in group and individual settings.

This successful training makes Slovenia by far the country with the most certified EuroVelo Route Inspectors, now numbering 41. This takes the total number of inspectors that have been trained above 300! Combined with the extension of the Slovenian ECS app licence until the end of 2027, this provides a great boost to the ambitions of surveying the entire Slovenian cycle route network, including EuroVelo routes. Provided the quality criteria of a certified EuroVelo route are met, fans of cycling in the sunny side of the Alps may soon even be able to enjoy the high quality guaranteed by the EuroVelo certification.

There are currently more than 213 up-to-date EuroVelo Route Inspectors out of a total of 301 inspectors trained since the release of the first version of the methodology in 2014-2015.

The list of EuroVelo Route Inspectors who can be contacted for survey work is available here.

Authors: Mark Sheridan & Alexandra Fournier