Cycling Towards Low Carbon Cities
How European cities are promoting cycling during COVID-19, and what North America can learn: A conversation with Jill Warren, co-CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation
Faun: Thanks for taking the time to meet with us today. Could you begin by telling us a little about your work and the European Cyclists Federation in your own words?
Jill: Certainly. As you know, I am the co-CEO of the European Cyclists Federation (ECF) along with Morten Kabell. The ECF advocates for more and better cycling as a sustainable and healthy means of transport and leisure. We are the European umbrella organization for national cyclists’ federations throughout Europe. We focus on projects at the EU level, but we also work closely with our members to help them get access to funding or run projects at a national level. I’ve been here for about six months now, and before that I worked in law firms — it isn’t a million miles away, in terms of advocacy, and I’m a very keen cyclist. It’s my number one hobby, so this was a really exciting opportunity to spend 24 hours a day thinking about cycling and moving the needle on better conditions.
Faun: Getting straight to it, we’re seeing quite a few conversations about the future of mobility post-COVID, with the potential for a significant dip in mass transit ridership here in Canada. What impact do you see COVID-19 having on mobility patterns, first in Europe, then around the world?
Jill: If I’m not mistaken, Europe is a little further along in the COVID reopening process than where you’re at in Canada. The main lockdown restrictions were eased here in mid-May, and restaurants opened in June, just to give you a flavour of where we’re at. The need for social distancing has meant that people are continuing to work from home when they can, and people are travelling less on public transport or spreading out — not travelling during peak hours. So the patterns are changing there, and overall ridership is down. Air and long-distance train travel are way down, though trains are picking up faster than air travel, and there is definitely more active mobility. In addition to that, however, you have people back in their cars, and some people definitely see the car as the safest bubble for practicing social distancing in their journeys. That’s where we’re at.
Faun: In your view, should municipalities begin considering readapting transportation infrastructure to accommodate or facilitate these changes and, if yes, how?
Jill: The ECF has put out a set of recommendations regarding COVID changes that municipalities, regions, and countries can take inspiration from. We said that to meet the need for social distancing and to ease congestion on public transport and the roads, we require roads to be repurposed for cycling and walking, pop-up bike lanes, car-free zones, and reducing speed limits. We’ve also recommended that cycling be incentivized through fiscal measures, purchase schemes, things like that, and to disincentivize travel by car. So that could mean taking away car parking spaces, imposing congestion charges — anything that discourages car travel.
We also think it’s a good idea to facilitate cycle logistics, as in using bike couriers for business operations. Studies in Europe show that over 50% of motor vehicle trips to move goods in cities could be switched to bikes. Over 90% of the commercial vans and trucks in circulation in Europe are diesel fuelled. I don’t know about Canada, but there are certainly lots of diesel-fuelled trucks here. A single cargo bike replacing a diesel transporter can save over 5 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. That makes cargo delivery bikes one of the most effective tools for achieving the EU goal of CO2 emission reductions and CO2-free city logistics by 2030.
Faun: Is there any different advice you might give to Canadian municipalities, given the differences in our urban landscapes?
Jill: I think that the fundamental question, wherever we’re talking about, is, “How do we achieve more and better active mobility, more and better cycling, for more people in this particular context.” It might be a slightly different thing than in a more compact European city, but we still need to ask ourselves first, “What works?” and second, “What might stop people from cycling who would otherwise be open to it?” Is it perceived danger? Do they think it’s not convenient? Is it access to bikes? Is it an issue of affordability? What encourages more people to cycle? Is it good infrastructure, a safe parking space, not worrying about the bike getting stolen, and are there fiscal or purchase incentives that could encourage people to buy a bike and take up biking?
For example, anything we can do to improve the safety of cyclists, real and perceived, is extremely important. A big victory for us last year was getting a passage in the EU Road Infrastructure Safety Management Directive stating that the needs of vulnerable road users, including cyclists and pedestrians, needed to be taken into account in infrastructure projects. In a Canadian context, then, is there anything to make sure that vulnerable road users can be taken into account? Because historically, we’ve thought about road safety as the people inside of a car, not the people outside of and around the car.
The other thing is that e-bikes are one of the fastest growing segments of cycling just about anywhere, and we want to make sure that there is no directive mandating motor insurance for e-bikes. Once you do that, of course, you make it a less attractive option for some people. Then, on the other side of the coin, you can also ask, “How do we disincentivize car travel?” Any policy recommendations would have to be geared toward those variables in a particular place. The methods might be different, but the principles are the same.
Faun: Thanks for that. Turning back to the EU, do you keep any analytics on things like active transport uptake?
Jill: In May, we really started to record all the instances that we saw of municipalities in Europe releasing measures in response to the increase in active transport, whether it was the pop-up cycle lane, the slow streets, the traffic reductions, or fiscal measures. We record, fact check these instances, and update the site and our new dashboard on a rolling basis.
So we’ve seen about 2,000 km of pop-up cycle lanes and repurposed streets announced since then in Europe, and only 930 km actually implemented because it’s one thing to announce it and another to make it rideable and usable. The dashboard reports what we’ve collected along with the help of our members and supporters, and the total budget we’ve seen allocated to these measures is over 906 M Euros. Beyond those headline figures, you can drill down by country and city, and there are leaderboards where we’ve given star ratings to countries and cities to support some friendly competition.
Faun: Do you have a way of tracking the number of cyclists in various countries, or what kinds of transportation choices people are making?
Jill: Cyclist data is notoriously difficult to obtain in a consistent way because there’s no collective agreement at an EU level as to how to track and calculate it. There are some studies that have better data than others, and for the most part we’re happy for whatever we can get. There are some companies that offer solutions for monitoring the number of cyclists, such as sensors on the ground that you would ride over. There’s one I’m familiar with that is a “smart bike light” solution from a company called See.Sense in Northern Ireland. They’re in partnership with many cities. Their smart lights can measure movement patterns, speed, dwell times, road toughness by how the things move, collision and near-mess events. By connecting with that app and agreeing that anonymized data can be aggregated, the cities that partner with them can have a great dataset for urban planning, knowing where traffic is, and where danger spots are.
I think we’re going to see more and more of that going forward, which is really going to help planners know where they need to target investments and build further infrastructure.
Faun: Are there any other “smart cycling” solutions that the ECF uses for analytics, planning, or advocacy?
Jill: Bike-sharing schemes also have access to really useful data, including how people are using shared bikes as a part of multi-modality or on their own. We don’t collect any data directly ourselves, aside from in the context of participation in specific research projects, but going forward I think it would be useful if we had some consistent Europe-wide data collection measures and reporting. It would be great if EuroStat or a similar organization could develop cycling data that was comparable across jurisdictions.
Faun: The ECF has recently published about multi-modality and the need to make trains more bike friendly for cycling commuters. Could you talk a little about what multi-modal transportation means and how it might change in light of this pandemic?
Jill: Absolutely. First, I’ll speak to our campaign for dedicated spaces for bikes on trains, which relates to the recast of existing EU Passenger Rights legislation. We saw an opportunity there to try to get a stipulation saying that, on new and refurbished trains, they have to make eight dedicated spaces for assembled bikes — so not bikes that need to be disassembled or folded up. There are still too many train connections in Europe where you’re not allowed to take an assembled bike, including on numerous high-speed connections. We’ve mapped out all sorts of connections in EU to show where you could or couldn’t take a bike, or how much time you would lose taking another connection as opposed to the fastest one you could take.
So, why is it important to have bikes on trains? Well, if you want to have a truly green trip, that may be the best combination for you to achieve that: cycling to the train station and cycling again at the other end, for both long-distance travel and for commuting. In general, the best multi-modal transport is going to be the most seamless and convenient option, so the question is, “How do you make it that way?” You have to think about the journey of the person who is getting from place to place. If the bike-friendly combination is much more of a pain than another one, then that’s going to influence usership.
Relating this conversation to COVID in particular, the pandemic has really highlighted the importance of a flexible and adaptable multi-modal system. It isn’t sustainable if one part of the system breaks down or is at reduced capacity like we’re seeing now.
I want to add that, with COVID, people may not know what they’re going to do for their summer holidays. With restrictions and travel bans, people are staying closer to home, and we’re seeing more people considering cycling tourism. So we’ve also been advocating for support to the cycle tourism industry and green tourism industry to be sure that people can benefit from that over the course of the season.
Faun: Speaking of seasonality, I know that many Canadian cyclists may not feel that it’s feasible to maintain a bike commute throughout the winter. Do you have any comments on all-weather biking?
Jill: That is a very good question, I grew up in Chicago and know what a cold winter is like. There’s a saying in Europe that there’s no bad weather, only bad clothing, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. If you get yourself some really nice cold-weather gear in Europe, it might cost about three tanks of gas, right? Now, a really cold Canadian winter is likely a tougher challenge to face, both in terms of clothing, snow tires, and safe cycling. I’m one of those fanatics that has five or six bikes and I could tell you which one I’d use to bike through snow — but having the right equipment plays a big role, just like you’d have summer tires and winter tires. In other words, it might be about investing in a winter bike just like you would invest in winter tires for your car if that was your primary commuting vehicle.
That’s also why we’re interested in purchase incentives for e-bikes. They aren’t the cheapest bikes out there but, since they have the potential to go those longer distances and replace more car trips, we think it’s one of the best investments around in terms of impact on the environment, getting more people cycling, and job creation. I think the bicycle is a solution to so many things we see as a problem in the world, whether it’s air pollution, noise pollution, or health. By our estimate, cycling can bring health benefits of up to 73 billion euros in the EU. While we’re always thinking about emissions, I want to close on the idea that cycling’s benefit to public health also has enormous potential.
Faun: Thanks very much for your time!
