"Cycling is an issue of mobility, an issue of equality, and only third and last it became an environmental issue", Enrique Penalosa, the former two-time mayor of Bogota, tells me.
The Colombian city of close to nine million people is home to the largest cycle path network in the Americas, covering more than 600km; each Sunday 120km of the city's major roads close entirely to cars and wheelers of all kinds – cyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders – take over, flanked by runners and pedestrians.
Close to 900,000 bike journeys are made each day in the city, despite the "many hilly areas, a lot of rain and a lot of crime", Penalosa told me, factors frequently cited as barriers to making Scotland's largest cities cycling hubs.
The city's embracement of cycling started in the 1970s when the Ciclovia – the day the roads close down for all motor vehicles apart from delivery trucks and council or emergency services – was made an official programme by the city, but the boom in cycling infrastructure and uptake came in under the leadership of Penalosa, who's first term came from 1998-2001, before he was re-elected from 2016-2029.
"There was this tradition of Ciclovia that we consolidated and increased very much, but [at the start] there was nobody using bicycles for daily transport, and the people cycling were only the poorest," he explained.
“If you just want to wait for everybody to support you... you are not going to do anything," he explained, saying joint-up, effective cycling infrastructure, combined with fast and affordable public transport, will speak for itself when the "war" to build it is over.
"You have to do these things" if you are serious about offering alternative, affordable transport methods to unlock employment, education and leisure activity while also working to reduce urban inequalities, he added.
But this is where Scotland's cycling infrastructure, and its transport network more broadly, struggles.
Taking Glasgow as an example – although every town and city suffers from the same issue – the network of segregated paths, those which offer a semi-protected barrier between vehicle traffic and bikes, is disjointed, forcing bikes onto the road at various stages of the journey, slowing down and frustrating road traffic while making cycling less appealing, particularly for less experienced riders and the elderly.
While the broader plan for bike networks across Scotland generally include joining these segments up to offer fully segregated journeys to key locations the lack of a full network continues to hamper usage.
Where some key routes do exist -- like the South City Way running from the south eastern side of Glasgow's Queen's Park, through Govanhill and the Gorbals into the City Centre -- bike journeys have risen steadily and continue to do so. In the case of Glasgow's South City Way, there are even some days where rush hour sees more bike journeys than cars.
The struggle to build out the network while battling opposition that pointed to low starting figures plagued Bogota as well, Penalosa said.
But he remained firm on the philosophy that if you build it, they will come, even implementing new laws that mandate that all new roads being constructed must include protected cycleways.
"People on bicycles [in Bogota] used to feel they were like a nuisance to people in cars," he said while explaining why he wanted to build out infrastructure to give both cars and bikes their own space.
"[His government's goal] to create cycle paths, sidewalks, and to get cars off these sidewalks", in relation to disruptive on-curb parking, "was a war… but if every citizen is equal, then somebody on an old bicycle has a right to [use the road] as much as somebody in a luxury car."
"When you have a $100,000 car stuck in traffic and it doesn't move, and the bike or bus zooms by next to it, it's a very powerful symbol... that clearly shows that the public good prevails over private interest".
