Promoting cycling in cities and regions: key learnings

Key learnings 

• Active mobility, such as walking and cycling, is a vital part of the low-carbon transport system, helping to reduce carbon emissions and air pollution, while decreasing traffic congestion and contributing to improved public health through promoting physical activity. It is a key element of the European Green Deal and the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, aiming to shift to more sustainable transport modes and achieve climate neutrality by 2050.
   
• To promote cycling, the European institutions have established the European Declaration on Cycling in 2024, to set the overall strategic direction of cycling policies. It looks to prioritise cycling at all levels of policy-making and is the most ambitious cycling policy at the EU level, touching on the most important issues related to cycling, including funding for cycling at the regional and local level.
   
• The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) have analysed the use of structural funds for promoting cycling. EU funds are available for promoting cycling, particularly under the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund, but also under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. The new Social Climate Fund can also support investments in cycling, including infrastructure and bike sharing schemes.
   
• Despite these funds being available, a large amount has not been absorbed. Politicians needs to make cycling a political priority and ensure the right political framework is in place, including setting long-term strategies and assigning responsibility to a cycling co-ordinator to provide training on how to access the funds and increase capacity in local authorities to be able to set up projects.
   
• Zaragoza’s Cycling Master Plan provides a comprehensive example of a cycling strategy, covering infrastructure design criteria, road safety, and cultural shift. The process began with a political decision to integrate cycling into multiple policies and the creation of a bicycle office as a single point of contact.
   
• The plan set out to create a city-wide cycling network, installing cycle lanes and bike racks, and establishing ordinances for cycling infrastructure to make roll-out mandatory rather than voluntary. They also sought to change behaviour and encourage more cycling, with safe school route projects, donation of abandoned bicycles, and establishment of a bike registry to prevent theft. The city also noted the need to limit cars and implement traffic calming measures. Zaragoza increased its daily cyclers from 0.5 to 10% of the population, with 19% as regular cyclers.
   
• Coimbra, Portugal, set out to increase its cycling rate and established a detailed proposal in 2018 for implementing cycling lanes. Having used a top-down process, Coimbra switched to a new methodology in 2023, enabling co-design and participatory planning with citizens. The city implemented events to show its cycling network plans and invited people to explore them in depth with maps and visualisations on which they could write and make suggestions for new routes and the most important interventions.
   
• The city noted some important success factors including keeping presentations easy to understand and going back to citizens to inform them on what has been integrated into the final plans, as well as why certain things were left out, to show that inputs are valued. They noted also that the reception to the process was very positive and that implementing the approach was neither time nor resource intensive, while leading to more successful implementation.
   
• The SABRINA project set out to improve cycling safety in the Danube area, looking at road infrastructure. The project examined more than 5,000km of cycle routes, identifying safety issues such as route blockages, narrow passages and poor infrastructure conditions. The project developed a toolkit for road safety, building on the iRAP and CycleRAP methodologies.
   
• Several speakers noted the chicken-and-egg problem – that some people argue there is no need for infrastructure as there are few cyclists, while others argue there are few cyclists because the infrastructure is not there. The consensus was that infrastructure needs to come first to ensure safety and encourage modal shift.
   
• Discussion also explored the differences between urban and rural cycle planning, noting that rural areas need to focus more on longer distance cycle routes, integrating with public transport, and developing separate cycling infrastructure rather than dual use roads. While cycling continues to grow in cities, in rural areas it is not seen as a replacement for private cars, which will require additional effort to overcome.

Presentations

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