Public bodies in England who wish to fund cycling infrastructure need to present a business case that justifies the investment. The idea of spending money to encourage people to cycle wasn’t central to public policy in the UK until quite recently. We therefore make the case for investment in cycling using an approach that evolved from the appraisal of more traditional transport projects, like highway improvements or new railway stations.
This chapter explores relationships between stakeholders, politics, and the media in relation to transport and urban planning, within the context of the need to move towards more sustainable mobility systems. It addresses these themes by discussing a case study of cycling in London, where the recent policy context has been shaped both by media and by cycling advocates. The chosen case study allows some broader conclusions to be drawn about social change and the prospects of moving to more sustainable transport systems. These relate to:
Cyclists in the UK are normally permitted to use with-flow bus lanes and other bus priority facilities because sustainable modes of transport are being encouraged and because cycling in bus lanes is usually safer than riding outside them between moving buses and general traffic.
This paper draws from a literature review and interviews to demonstrate the impact of advocacy, research, and culture on guidance for design users, bike lanes and separated (protected) bike lanes in the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Bicycle Guide content from 1974 to present. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a bicycle renaissance in America resulted in efforts at the local, state, and federal level to encourage bicycling.
Background: Ecological models emphasize that cycling for transport is determined by an interplay between individual, physical and social environmental factors. The current study investigated (a) which physical and social environmental factors determine adolescents’ preferences towards cycling for transport and (b) which individual, physical and social environmental factors are associated with their intention to actually cycle for transport.
Using 2014 and 2015 data from the UK Near Miss Project, this paper examines the stability of self-report incident rates for cycling near misses across these two years. It further examines the stability of the individual-level predictors of experiencing a near miss, including what influences the scariness of an incident. The paper uses three questions asked for only in 2015, which allow further exploration of factors shaping near miss rates and impacts of incidents.
Transport Focus represents the interests of users of England’s motorways and major ‘A’ roads (the Strategic Road Network or SRN) and therefore wanted to understand the experiences and needs of cyclists, pedestrians, equestrians and carriage drivers who travel along SRN ‘A’ roads or need to cross any part of the SRN.
Future Thinking was commissioned to study these audiences, exploring not only their attitudes towards and interactions with the SRN but to also gauge views of the best means by which to achieve a robust future measurement of SRN satisfaction for these groups.
With its high cycling mode share, the Netherlands is often seen as a best practice for cycling policies. However, there is little insight into the drivers behind this phenomenon, specifically which policy interventions increased cycling rates and which did not. The knowledge gap on the effec- tiveness of cycling policies seriously limits the potential for learning from the Dutch experience. This paper will address this gap, by exploring the performance of Dutch cycling policies in 22 medium- sized cities since 2000.
This paper investigates the place of utility cycling (cycling as a means of transport rather than as a sport or leisure activity) under urban modernism in the UK. In many western contexts the dominant feature of urban modernism was its emphasis on accommodating private vehicles to the neglect of other forms of mobility. The result was the production of a ‘car-system’ with significant change to urban and rural environments.
Roundabouts are safer than intersections because they reduce the number of potential conflicts between road users and lower the driving speed. In the Netherlands, replacing an intersection by a roundabout is estimated to reduce the number of severe casualties by approximately 46%. The traffic flow is usually better on roundabouts than on intersections, and exhaust emission and noise decrease, certainly when compared with signalized intersections. Roundabouts, however, take up more space.
