Swiss capital Bern loses half its cycle campaign funding after vote blunder

A campaign to get more people cycling in the Swiss capital, Bern, will have less than half the funding that was anticipated after city councillors pressed the wrong button to vote through the budget for it.

Councillors voted yesterday on how much money to allocate to a three-year campaign called ‘Cycling is Cool’ due to be launched in the new year.

With most councillors backing the campaign, which aims to get more people cycling in the city, it was expected that the approval of a 750,000 Swiss Franc (£573,000) budget would be a formality.

Or it would have been, had confusion not intervened, reports 20minutes.ch.

Patrick Wyss revealed that he had pressed the wrong button in the chamber’s electronic voting system.

To compound his mistake, ensured that his fellow councillors in Green Free List party made the same error.

They should have pressed the green button, but instead pressed the red one – meaning that there was not the necessary majority to approve the full funding.

Instead, the initiative will receive a grant of 350,000 Swiss Francs (£267,000) for the three-year period – or 46.7 per cent of what was expected.

“I misunderstood the president of the council and thought the vote was for a different motion,” Wyss said.

 Once he became aware of his error, he asked for the vote to be held again, but the president of the council declined to agree to his request, saying it had been lodged too late.