[sustran] A concise cycle strategy relevant for Asian megacities

[Eric Britton]

Dear Simon,

 

While it is perhaps not quite as concise as you may be looking for,
nonetheless I am sure you may find some good value in the attached by Roelof
Wittink of the I-CE which will shortly appear as a World Streets article.
Here it is in advance (in simple text form). Hope it serves you well.
Roelof's coordinates.

 

Roelof Wittink, Director

I-ce = Interface for Cycling Expertise

Trans 3, 3512 JJ Utrecht, The Netherlands

tel: +31 (0)30 2304521  fax: +31 (0)30 2312384 

email (general): i-ce at cycling.nl

email (personal): roelof.wittink at cycling.nl

website: www.i-ce.info 

NGO registration KvK41265203

 

By the way, I am sure that he will appreciate comments and suggestions.

 

Best/Eric

 

Eric Britton | WorldStreets.org | NewMobility.org  | Paris  | +331 7550 3788
| Skype: newmobility  

 

 

---

Cycling as the catalyst for more human and sustainable transport 

 

Roelof Wittink, director I-CE, April 2010 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

The interest for a human and sustainable transport is growing in the public
and private sector, at local, national and global level.  Our cities and our
planet cannot rely on cars for our transport needs, even if they become more
energy efficient or even carbon neutral. We have to create accessibility for
people. With current planning and design, roads are isolating people from
important destinations.  The public domain should be designed with priority
for people over motorised traffic.  Apart from emission reduction, mobility
with zero emission should get value. 

It is the combination of a human-rights-based orientation with
eco-efficiency, that will direct us to a real sustainable transport system. 

 

A people oriented transport system requires out-of-the-box thinking, away
from paving more asphalt and building fly over’s to cater for more and more
cars. The fact that cycling as a mode of transport has gained interest at
all levels in the last years, is an expression of the will to make a
fundamental change. It seems that cycling represents in the best way a
vision for change. The promotion of cycling was mentioned by the mayors from
New York, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, London, Copenhagen, Mexico at the mayoral
conference during the climate summit COP15. Cycling was the positive reverse
of the negative connotation of our current system dominated by cars.
Looking at these mayors, it was as if a choir was assembled, that shared:

1.         There is an urgent need to do something completely different

2.         We have a vision and we can make it concrete

3.         We are acting now

 

The recognition that cycling has a key role to play in the transformation of
our transport system, is very new. E.g. in India until only 5 years ago, the
governments did not want to take cycling on board of transport policies. Now
the policy is to demand that transport interventions include cycling
facilities. So cycling policies emerge in the context of new approaches for
a human and sustainable transport system. As a consequence there is a huge
demand for innovation, to showcase practices, to transfer expertise, for
capacity building, for international exchange. At COP15, the mayor of
Amsterdam announced to set up a global network of mayors for cycling and the
climate. Amsterdam is still the cycling capital city of the world with more
cyclists than cars, with people from 6 to 90 years riding in traffic. 

 

It is obvious that cycling on itself cannot deliver the accessibility people
need, although all over the world between 40 and 60% of all trips people
make are within a cycling distance. The combination of public transport with
walking and cycling is the only strong alternative for car transport. This
combination serves short and long trips in a easy way, from door to door.
Both cycling as a stand-alone policy and public transport as a stand-alone
policy cannot become an attractive alternative for cars. If cities
accommodate a smooth and safe flow of walking, cycling and public transport
and pay special attention to an efficient combined use of these moods, they
will become most accessible,

 

It is a long way to mainstream new planning and design 

 

There is still a huge challenge to develop and implement cycling inclusive
policies. 

 

The first need is to analyse the interest for cycling promotion. There are
different agenda’s to influence transport policies. Interesting to note that
cycling contributes to all agenda’s in a positive way. 

The second thing to do is to analyse the bearer of current policies and
planning & design practices. We have to find the right match between
commitment and instruments for policy implementation. It turns out that
brave policies receive a lot of attention and rewards: the network of BRT,
cycling and walking facilities in Bogota, the Velib in Paris, the terraces
on Broadway Manhattan, the congestion pricing in London, the removal of a
fly over in Seoul. These enlightening examples have to be transferred into a
new structure of urban planning and design and this is the long term
approach that needs as much courage as the new examples. We cannot realise
sustainable transport without sustainable policies, new guidelines and
regulations, cycling inclusive investments, cycling inclusive planning and
design.  

 

This transformation process can be supported by impact assessments: what
does planning and designing for public transport, cycling and walking do for
accessibility, participation in society, road safety, social inclusion, the
local economy, air quality, health and well being? The current indicators
for impact of transport interventions have to be reviewed since they are
biased in favour of car transport. 

 

Agenda’s

The interest for cycling comes from different directions, such as :

-          Disfunctioning of the current transport system, resulting in e.g.
congestion

-          The concern about road safety, which will become globally the
third cause of death if the current trend continues

-          The concern about health, which goes far beyond the road safety
problems and includes  air pollution and lack of physical exercise.  

-          Climate policies, which cannot do without a paradigm shift of
transport policies that should incorporate avoidance of the need to travel
and a shift to sustainable modes

-          The enormous costs for transport interventions if the bias for
cars continues

Interesting to note that all these directions are motivations arising from
problems.  When an interest is growing as much as is the case with cycling,
there must be other, positively stated reasons too and this is the case: 

-          People want to ride a bicycle and enjoy independence, fresh air,
the ease way to go and the more direct social contact (read just as a case
the book by musician David Byrne (2010) about his trips in e.g. New York,
London, Istanbul, with references to the vision by Penalosa and others)

-          People experience e.g. through public bikes and the showcase of
city bicycles and of carry bicycles, that there is much more than cycling
for leisure and recreation; that cycling is a great way to get around
quickly and to use the bicycle for different motives, such as  social visits
and commuting

-          The interest to make cities attractive, liveable,  in which
people instead of traffic have priority and the public space is designed for
social activities: mayors are proud to present their cycling policies,
taking Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Bogota as good practices, highlighting the
change in appearance it makes to their city and the different social,
economic and ecological co benefits

-          The huge cost benefit ratio for investments in cycling facilities
(ranging from 1:3 till 1:12, ref. Promising, EU project coordinated by the
Dutch Road Safety Research Institute SWOV )

 

Moreover, the bicycle increases opportunities for people to participate, to
find or create jobs, to make use of services and follow education, to
recreate etc. If we take “Accessibility for all” serious, we need a
substantial share of cycling.  

 

What we need to do is combining the different agenda’s and make the
strongest case for cycling inclusive sustainable transport policies. 

 

Planning principles

Most cities that start with planning for cycling tend to create only some
km’s of marginal tracks on roads where there is no obvious need to claim
more space for cars. There is still no coherence in facilities from origin
to destination and the citizens react according to the state of mind of the
institutions: “We have no idea if this will ever work, we do not want to do
any harm to the needs of cars, we hope you want to give it a try”. Car
drivers and cyclists tend to do what they did and the new facilities are to
a large extent ignored. This is not very rewarding for the professionals
that introduce cycling facilities. 

We have to notice that this approach is not yet professional. How different
has been the approach on the pilot corridor for Bus Rapid Transit in New
Delhi, supervised by TRIPP/IIT Delhi. The planning and design started in a
time when it was not allowed to explicitly facilitate cycling. Prof. Geetam
Tiwari decided to purse for an all inclusive planning and design for BRT,
cars, cyclists, pedestrians and even street vendors, convinced that this
would support the traffic flow in the best way. The corridor was a busy one
and very dangerous one, with on average 8 traffic fatalities per year over
about 10 km’s !! After the implementation an evaluation pointed at a number
of weak design details which were adapted. One year after, the number of
cyclists on this corridor has been doubled and there was no single fatal
accident with a cyclist. 

 

In fact there are two approaches that work to promote cycling and the best
is to combine them: 

·         Create a network of main cycling routes with safe crossings and
build additional facilities such as for parking

·         Make every (re)construction of roads cycling inclusive.

 

The first approach asks for substantial investments but with a high cost
benefit ratio. A long term plan for a metro pole city could demand 50-100
million dollar per year. Most cities depend heavily on funds from national
governments to invest in transport facilities. And many developing countries
ask for loans by banks to invest in transport. The donors start to get an
interest in projects when a substantial amount of money is involved. A
strategic long term program to make a city cycling friendly cannot do
without that. So cycling becomes a feasible subject for donor money if this
is needed. If cycling is valued as a zero emission mode of transport these
investments allow also for an appeal on carbon funding. UNEP has set up a
campaign in Africa to allocate 10% of road investments for safe mobility by
cycling and walking.

 

The second approach demands that investments for transport accommodate safe
cycling. The rule should be that all transport investments should take into
account the requirements for cycling and walking. A right approach for
integration is very cost beneficial:  the performance of mobility will
improve with the same volume of investments. 

For metro pole cities, the combination of public transport and cycling is a
strong asset for donor and carbon funding for sustainable transport
policies. Safe feeder routes and easy and safe bicycle parking facilities at
bus and rail stations, make bus and rail systems much stronger. Bicycle rent
facilities are as important to facilitate an efficient door-to-door
transport. The Velib in Paris became famous worldwide. The Dutch public bike
system is oriented on chain mobility and organised by the Dutch railways.
40% of all train passengers arrive at railway stations on their bike and
they together make 1 million rides per year on a public bike from their next
train station to arrive at their final destination.    

 

Benefits

Cities in Western Europe that are cycling friendly show that congestion and
safety problems vanish.  TRIPP/IIT Delhi  found confirmation in India
through simulation studies. If car use is restricted in favour of other
modes, the whole traffic system is better off. The Netherlands faces a lot
of congestion on their roads but this is only the case outside urban areas.
When the Netherlands started to invest in cycling facilities, the downward
trend in cycling changed into an upward trend. The absolute number of
cycling fatalities reduced notwithstanding the growth of traffic. But on the
whole, road safety standards improved. A study in Denmark comparing cities
showed a perfect correlation between the share of cycling and road safety of
cycling. Better planning, higher use and more safety interact. 

 

The social benefits of cycling have not been studied very well. There is a
paradox inherent in cycling promotion regarding the social benefits. Cycling
supports very significantly the livelihood of poor people. Just an example:
home care workers in Cape Town and housekeeping woman in Delhi doubled their
income when they could go by bike to deliver their services. But to make
cycling a full- fledged mode of transport, the bicycle should not be linked
only to the poor. On the contrary, it should get rid of the status as a
vehicle only for the poor as is the case in developing countries. When
middle and higher income people ride a bicycle too they create another
status of cycling. Still, the social and economic benefits can be
highlighted much more than nowadays. People are stuck, imprisoned, to their
neighbourhoods said minister of transport in the Western Cape Tasneem Essop
in 2003. Children are deprived from many development and growth
opportunities when they are not allowed to go somewhere independently and to
play in the public domain.  Social participation is so much easier with a
bicycle. And a critical mass of cycling make areas much more safe. Enrique
Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota said: “We have to make the public space
dangerous for criminals to operate”.  

 

Traffic related air pollution causes an equal volume of premature deaths as
road safety does and the lack of physical exercise due to the use of
motorized vehicles instead of walking and cycling has an impact on health
which is even greater than the impact of road safety or pollution.  

 

The global financial crises, energy crises and the protection of the
climate, all direct to an important role of cycling in our transport system.
Investing in sustainable modes of transport saves lots of investments and
enables spatial planning that avoids a substantial amount of mobility needs.
The climate agenda cannot do without a fundamental transformation in
transport policy and the partnership for Sustainable Low Carbon Transport
claims that AVOIDance of km’s travel and a SHIFT to sustainable transport
are as important as technical IMPROVEments.   

 

Indicator development for impact assessments

Traditionally the benefits of improving transport infrastructure has been
measured by performance criteria for vehicles, like improved connection,
travel time, speeds and fuel savings. The cost specifications are limited to
construction, ongoing operations and maintenance. This provides only a
limited picture on real impacts. The performance criteria are to a great
extent based on and applied to motorized traffic.

 I-CE uses the travel, transport and traffic market model, to better
understand travel behaviour and analyze policy options to optimize the
benefits for people and society. The challenge for transport and spatial
planners is to affect travel behaviour to optimize social and economic well
being and control negative aspects like accidents, liveability, air quality
and emissions that induce climate change. 

I-CE developed in two projects, for UNEP and the Global Road Safety Facility
at the World Bank, directions to find alternative indicators for
accessibility, safety and sustainability. For accessibility, the common
indicators are defined in terms of speed of motorised vehicles and vehicles
flow per hour resp. delays. We propose number of destinations within reach
for persons given the access to transport modes based on travel times. For
road safety, most common indicators regard fatalities and injuries per km.
We propose per 100.000 people. For the environment, common indicators are
pollutants per vehicle or passenger km whereas we propose pollutants by
100.000 people or percentage of trips for which people have the option to
choose for a sustainable mode of transport. 

 

Interfacing cycling expertise 

Road users, decision makers and professionals do have a different
perspective on traffic and mobility and a different framework to assess the
quality of provisions. Looking for the pioneers in cycling policies we find
advocates, politicians and experts as well. To know what quality is needed
for cycling, how to integrate this in planning and design and how to ensure
consistency in the implementation of planning and design principles, we have
to involve advocates, professionals, donors, politicians, experts and bring
their strengths together. 

 

The I in I-CE stands for Interface and I-CE interfaces between cycling
expertise and policies and between cycling and development.   I-CE involves
the public and private sector with civil society,  to develop local cycling
policies and to bring the expertise and experiences gained with these local
actors to a global audience. 

There is a huge eagerness to learn how to transport current planning and
design standards.  In our view, to fully exploit the potential of cycling
and cycling promotion, we need to strengthen the local, national and
international networks to learn from each other and cooperate with each
other. An important framework at global level is the partnership on
Sustainable Low Carbon Transport which demands a global coalition on cycling
to deliver inputs for programming. We need to built up expertise centres on
cycling policies and cycling inclusive planning and design.

 

The Dutch model for cycling and for road safety 

We know that thinking in terms of the requirements by pedestrians and
cyclists, is the best way to learn about transformation of transport
policies and bring about a paradigm shift towards safe, clean and affordable
transport. This happened in the Netherlands with the design of a new road
safety policy, based on the prevention of the chance that serious accidents
can occur. The majority of urban roads have a speed limit of 30 km per hour,
cycling and walking with public transport have received lots of priority
over cars, and against 3200 traffic deaths in 1972, we suffered 720 traffic
deaths in 2009. The aim is to bring this down to less than 500 in the coming
years, which is again a challenge. The Netherlands keeps on investing and
learning, on road safety and on cycling in particular as well. On cycling it
is still investing 200 – 300 million euro per year in facilities on or
alongside the road, apart from the integrated measures which in fact have
more impact.   

 

Expertise still has to grow

Expertise on cycling inclusive planning and design has been built up
substantially in only a few countries. The Netherlands has not only the
highest share of cycling in transport (and at the same time the highest
density of cars per km2) and the highest level in road safety of cycling. It
has also the best record in developing cycling policies, in documenting
experiences and lessons learnt, in implementation of lessons into manuals,
in the share of cycling in transport and. I-CE built on this expertise to
deliver support and applications in a wide different context all over the
globe, in particular in developing countries. 

 

Institutional settings

I-CE has not only expertise in cycling policies and cycling inclusive
planning and design, it also has built up expertise and experiences for
institutional settings to promote cycling. I-CE took notice of the important
role by civil society organisations and set up networks of these
organisations in India and  in Brasil, and supports Sustran LAC and
Locomotives Africa as networks for a whole continent.  On advise of I-CE,
Cape Town, Pune and Delhi set up structures for consultation with civil
society and other stakeholders.  

 

 

Structure for capacity building

For capacity building, I-CE developed a structure for capacity building and
assessments for both civil society organisations and local governments. To
learn more about the significance of cycling and it’s potential in a
different context, I-CE initiated a network for academic research, the
Cycling Academic Network which started with universities from the
Netherlands, Brasil, India and South Africa. 

Since planning and designing for cycling is new for professionals, support
by capacity building can make the difference in policy development.
Sometimes we are surprised what people notice: “One of the important points
which has struck the traffic planners and city planners is that the
development of the road should be done on the basis of the purpose it
serves” said Pravinshi Pardeshi, municipal commissioner of Pune, India. 

 

I-CE has 9 resident representatives in 6 countries who assess with local
authorities the needs for inputs. Two of them summarised the results of the
Bicycle Partnership Program as follows:  

 

“If I-CE was not involved in planning, things would have went on as usual.
The infra would have been built without anyone using it. We gained
confidence in our decisions to reintroduce the concept of cycle-inclusive
planning for the city. The capacity building helped in clarifying many
doubts about cycling-inclusive planning and its benefits. This also helped
in convincing stakeholders about the use of bicycling in the city and in
reducing the resistance of those who were not in favor of promoting cycling.
In Delhi it is an obligation now that all new transport policies include
cycling and pedestrian facilities”, according to Anvita Arora, Resident
Representative I-CE, Delhi. 

 

“Cycling has become stronger, strategic and fundamental. It is for Rio de
Janeiro one of 38 strategic plans for 2012. Moreover, all new roads and
parks we have to build to prepare for the World Cup Soccer will have cycling
facilities. Cycling is now in the mind of decision makers and they are
looking at it as one of the important contributions to provide for
accessibility during both the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in
2016”, says Ze Lobo, director of the CSO Transporte Ativo and Resident
Representative of I-CE. “I think we are strong enough now to survive any
political changes because we always rely on technicians who have become like
partners. In the next years I think we are going to develop in the same way,
improving our knowledge to exchange with the municipality and also with
companies. I-CE is responsible for this in many ways. The financial support
has allowed us to move forward and focus on our priorities. The technical
support has made us more respected by official departments and gave us the
opportunity to learn from cycling cities and other CSOs from all over the
world. This provided us an excellent knowledge base. Without that, TA would
not be what it is now.”

The Approach

The mid-term evaluation of our Bicycle Partnership program has clearly shown
that a 3 pronged approach is necessary to comprehensively bring change on
ground with regard to inclusion of cycling:

*	The users and civil society need to be empowered so that they can
create a critical mass for demand for inclusion of cycling according to
quality standards
*	The critical mass and awareness raising needs to lead to a political
momentum on the cycling policies. The policy-makers, both political and
administrative need to have a buy-in on the need for cycling inclusion and
its social, economic and environmental benefits
*	The planners and engineers need to have capacity to implement
cycle-inclusive infrastructure in the cities.

The I-CE network in India, Latin America and Africa has the capacity and the
partnerships to make this comprehensive intervention approach with these
three categories of stakeholders and create the process that would lead to
change on ground.

It is feasible

A main result of our programs so far has been that decision makers,
professionals and experts learnt that cycling in a high motorised context is
feasible. “A Dutch solution that amazed me in particular was to reduce a
lane for motorised traffic on an avenue with congestion. The result is that
this avenue has a better traffic flow now. Learning from cycling in the
Netherlands gave me a lot of positive energy: If developed countries are
doing it, it is even more important that a developing country does it. And
we cán do it. Dutch cities are a living laboratory for us. I learned also a
lot about campaigning to create a favourable political environment. This
gave me the reason to always work in partnership with CSO’s.” Vera Lucia
Goncalves da Silva, City of Florianopolis, Brasil.

In a period when there was more hesitation about cycling, we heard people
saying that the Netherlands is different. Nowadays the eagerness to learn is
dominant. As long as solutions are not being copied but principles are being
learnt for application in a local context, and good examples are taken from
the whole world, we can offer partners what they ask for. One of our
partners sais, he does not fee like a lonesome crusade anymore. Another said
she appreciated how I-CE led her by the hand to integrate cycling in urban
transport policies. Most common evaluation by our partners was that they
gained trust to involve their colleagues in cycling planning. And Donald
Cupido and Elias Tukushe of Cape Town were telling us: “If it took the Dutch
30 years to develop their system, we can avoid lots of their mistakes and do
it in 15 years”. An important consequence would be that the development of
road safety problems,   does not necessarily have to follow the same path as
in highly motorised countries. If the prevention policy for serious
accidents will be implemented in developing countries, the curve will be
flattened and road safety will not become globally the third cause of death.


 

Cycling coalition within the Partnership for Sustainable Low Carbon
Transport

 

The Partnership for sustainable low carbon transport has a multi-stakeholder
membership representing development organizations, intergovernmental
organizations, governmental organizations, NGOs, private sector, and
academic organizations, hosted by UN-DESA. I-CE has been asked and offered
to establish s cycling coalition to provide inputs for the programming. 

 

The workplan of the SLOCAT partnership consists of four components:

-          Transport and ghg data and indicators

-          Climate instruments

-          Financing

-          Outreach

The partnership notices an absence of comprehensive and reliable datasets on
the composition or the transport sector and activity patterns. When we
analyze the potential contribution of cycling to mobility and accessibility,
we notice a great unfulfilled need of mobility in developing countries. Poor
people are not able to reach important destinations, since motorized
transport is expensive and cycling is not safe. When we exchange activity
patterns in cities, we notice a strong bias by planners for corridors, as if
cycling facilities are only of importance alongside corridors. Further we
notice that zero emission transport does not count in policies to bring down
ghg emissions. Above we presented comments on the current indicators which
measure the performance of the transport system and directions for an
alternative approach which will measure progress in terms of people
orientation.

 

As a result of COP15 in Copenhagen,  NAMA’s have gained further importance
as an instrument for carbon funding of transport interventions.  Cycling
programs and cycling inclusive projects and programs are feasible. A big
step forward would be if Brasil or India would adopt a cycling NAMA, which
enables a substantial program for cycling with assessments of the emission
reduction and co-benefits. The Netherlands, Denmark and the USA should
provide funds for the program development, transfer of expertise and co-fund
the implementation of the interventions. 

 

A broad coalition on cycling within the partnership can be composed of:

*	International non-profit bodies such as  I-CE, EMBARQ, the Danish
Embassy and ITDP, to organize international exchange and cooperation
*	City networks, e.g. the network of mayors headed by Amsterdam, to
support urban strategies
*	Regional networks of civil society organizations, such as ECF, the
American League of Bicyclists, Sustran LAC, Locomotives Africa, Locomotives
India, to promote the interests of citizens/road users
*	Research institutions, such as the Cycling Academic Network and
consultancies, to collect data, study conditions for cycling, assess impacts
etc.