Enhancing walking and cycling infrastructure and its supply and network design in a city encourages more people to walk and cycle. Providing cycling infrastructure and bike lockers/parking spaces close to the origin and destination of potential journeys encourages cycling, especially if the cycling infrastructure is safely separated from other road traffic. Similarly, creating pleasant walking infrastructure, for instance by creating spacious, green and safe sidewalks and/or pedestrian areas will encourage walking in a city.
On average, cycling or walking saves 747g CO2 per trip if the alternative would have been to take a private car (assuming an average trip distance of 5km).
According to the literature, typical costs to adapt existing roadways to provide enhanced walking and cycling infrastructure are USD 10,000-50,000 per mile; costs for bicycle racks or lockers are USD 50-500 per bike.
In Berlin, EUR 8 million were spent over 10 years to increase the mode share of cycling from 10% in 1998 to 15% in 2010 (however, the impact of the enhanced cycling infrastructure are difficult to separate from the impacts of other policy measures that were deployed in the same time frame).
Cycling and walking (i.e. 'soft' modes) have a large number of benefits compared to motorised transport. They have positive impact on:
• Congestion: they reduce reliance on private car use and public transport; a traveller shifting from driving to cycling reduces congestion costs by GBP 0.22 per km in urban areas and by GBP 0.11 per km in rural environments.
• Public health: they promote regular physical activity which is essential to a healthy lifestyle; it also reduces air pollution, alleviates respiratory problems and noise pollution.
• Environment and Climate Change: they are very energy efficient, i.e. they do not cause any local air/noise pollution or GHG emissions.
• The community: well-designed urban spaces that incorporate walking and cycling infrastructure encourage community interaction and social well-being.
British studies showed that each GBP 1.00 spent on enhanced walking and cycling infrastructure provides overall benefits worth GBP 2.59.
• Mode shift: Studies have shown that infrastructure like bicycle parking and cyclist showers are associated with increased levels of bicycle commuting. A study in the New York - New Jersey region showed that individuals with either bicycle parking, workplace showers and lockers, or shared-use paths were 50% more likely to cycle to work. Another one in the United States by showed that provision of bicycle parking was associated with increased active travel to work.
The introduction of separate bike lanes (or other infrastructure for soft modes that requires the use of public space / of space previously dedicated to motorised transport) may lead to an increase in traffic congestion on the remaining network space, related emissions and travel times for other road-based transport modes.
