With four years of mobility data, EIE is helping cities transition to sustainable transportation
By Christopher Bian, Sr. Software Engineer, & Michael Tavendale, Partner Activation Lead, Environmental Insights Explorer
We are excited to announce that 2021 mobility data is now available to over 40,000 cities and communities in Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE). Local governments can now perform year-over-year analyses of activity changes across four consecutive years — from 2018 to 2021 — to monitor real progress on climate action planning and implementation.
As the world continues living out the effects of COVID-19, mobility behavior is changing in many ways. For example, commuter activity decreased as regions went into quarantine and people began working from home, while biking and walking became popular ways to safely exercise and explore cities outdoors. With our latest data release, users can begin to see longer term trends and patterns emerge in their city. Analysis of select cities available on EIE revealed several trends around cycling behaviors:
- Pandemic recovery varies by city and region. Live-and-work patterns among the city’s residents and the population of the surrounding metro area contribute to different recovery patterns. Some experience a V-shaped recovery where biking has returned to pre-pandemic levels, while others have shown a steady increase over the past several years.
- Fewer, but longer bike trips. Across areas measured by EIE and on average over the past 2 years, cycling trip counts decreased, but the total distance traveled increased. The average trip went about 5.8% farther, to nearly 3 kilometers per trip. This could be considered an overall boost in biking activity when contrasted with the fact that nearly all other modes of travel decreased significantly at the beginning of the pandemic, such as private vehicles and public transit.
- Many cities that have implemented bike policies are positively impacting bike adoption. Over 4 years of EIE measurement, some cities where cycling behavior has been on a steady rise have seen the activity exceed pre-pandemic levels. These cities have adopted bicycling-forward policies and plans which are enabling higher levels of cycling activity. Moreover, the pandemic has created an increase in cycling interest, providing an additional boost to cycling activity across the world.
– Buenos Aires, Argentina: To reach its goal of 1 million daily bike rides by 2023, Buenos Aires plans to create cycling routes between the suburbs and city center, and increase protected bike lanes on major thoroughfares by about 7%.
– Fingal, Ireland (Greater Dublin): In response to COVID-19, the county council’s plan, “Walk Bike Fingal”, promptly created new and repurposed existing infrastructure to be more accommodating to cyclists, while still adhering to social distancing guidelines.
– Mississauga, Canada (Greater Toronto): Mississauga adopted a new framework for keeping pedestrians and cyclists safe, which included designating “Quiet Streets” and building an additional 17.9 km of bike lanes by the end of 2020.
Importance of sustainable mobility
Walking and biking are the ultimate modes of sustainable transportation that provide economic, social, environmental, and public health benefits without requiring access to a car. These non-motorized alternatives emit zero pollutants, occupy little physical space, and promote physical activity. Not surprisingly, many cities seek to boost non-motorized travel through infrastructure (e.g., sidewalks and bicycle lanes), and land-use planning (such as increased densities, connected streets, and replacing parking with public spaces).
“A global shift towards active travel is not only one of the fastest ways to reduce emissions, it also improves public health, boosts local economies and improves equity — walking and cycling is accessible for people of all abilities and income groups. Having more people walk or bike through communities creates more vibrant high streets, contributing to that much sought-after quality of liveability that every city aspires to cultivate.”
-Mark Watts, Executive Director of C40 Cities
Members of the C40 Walking and Cycling Network are working to accelerate this mode shift by building climate-resilient walking and cycling networks that serve current and future needs. Many cities are working to reduce the need for long-distance travel — specifically, rethinking public spaces and adopting the “15-minute city” vision of creating neighborhoods with walkable core services and amenities. According to a new report by C40, Barcelona is creating additional bike lanes and converting 1 million square meters of pavement and road space into sustainable public spaces to ensure that walking, biking, and public transit comprise 80% of all trips in the city by 2024. Introducing permanent active transportation infrastructure supports increased walking and cycling over time, which promotes equity and creates long-lasting benefits for city residents and businesses.
Reimagining cities with reliable mode share data
While many cities recognize the benefits of biking and walking, we often hear that cities lack reliable data that shows mode share usage over time, which makes it difficult for cities to identify where and how to invest in these alternative transport modes. EIE fills this gap by providing aggregated biking and walking trip information within and across city boundaries. By surfacing this data for over 40,000 cities and regions, local governments across a range of city sizes and structures can draw insights and identify effective policies that promote more sustainable modes of transport.
“Sustainable mobility and climate action planning on a local level require data on mobility patterns and transport emission sources. Google EIE provides current and easily accessible data for thousands of cities worldwide, and can in combination with local data sources support and facilitate decision-making for decarbonising the transport sector and developing new sustainable mobility alternatives.”
-Wolfgang Teubner, Regional Director, ICLEI Europe
“For cities to have accurate data on modal share, it is important to base the data on on-site annual observations, not only for the estimation and mitigation of greenhouse gasses, but also for the improvement of commuting, which is vital for the quality of life within cities.”
-Dr. Eleftheria Alexandri, Civil Engineer, City of Athens
Similar to the approach used for all transportation modes, EIE classifies biking and walking trips based on anonymized trip characteristics, such as speed, and road segments, then aggregates the results to the entire city. We also conduct regular quality assurance testing with cities to ensure that this data is reliable and helpful. (For a quick refresher on how EIE calculates transportation emissions in general, click here)
City spotlights
To help celebrate World Bicycle Day on June 3, we are spotlighting how local governments around the world are using EIE to promote mode shifts from private passenger cars to alternative, low-to-no-emitting transportation options, such as biking and walking.
Denton, Texas
The City of Denton is a rapidly growing, medium-sized city in North Texas. EIE data will be used in both the implementation of the City’s Sustainability Framework and the future development of a Climate Action Plan. City level mode share data is a helpful tool for evaluating the effectiveness of strategies that encourage alternative transportation and emission reduction in a city on the rise.
Dublin, Ireland
Since 2019, Dublin City Council has been using EIE to analyze bicycle usage across the city and implement smart transportation policies that improve cycling infrastructure. As part of its City Development Plan, Dublin aims to increase bike trips across the city by up to 20 percent by 2025. By tracking their progress in EIE year-over-year, Dublin can monitor the effects of policy decisions and observe how things change over time.
Kingston, Victoria (Australia)
EIE data was used to develop the transport emissions baseline for the City of Kingston, a rural town in Victoria, Australia. Kingston’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Response Plan (CEERP) identifies transport as a key sector for Kingston to direct emissions reduction actions within the municipality. The availability of transport data at the municipal level, broken down by mode type, was a key enabler in the analysis behind CEERP and in the integration of mode shift interventions. Where possible, Kingston intends to integrate EIE data for alternative transport planning, monitoring and evaluation.
İzmir, Turkey
Monitoring city-wide emissions is critical for local governments to assess the effectiveness of GHG mitigation actions. In Izmir, Turkey’s third most populous city, transportation emissions account for almost 23% of total city emissions in 2018. These are constantly on the move, making it difficult to monitor emissions overall. The city often has to rely on fuel sales and number of vehicles at the city level to gauge transportation emissions, although this is a rough estimate and does not provide information about geography and modes. Moving forward, Izmir seeks to use EIE in its policy and planning decision-making in alignment with the goals defined in the City’s Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP).
“Google EIE provides data based on the usage of different transport modes including cycling and walking, which we cannot estimate through the fuel sales emissions accounting approach. These data come directly from citizens and are processed and summarized in a way that they are useful for the municipality. With the transport mode share and possible transport mode switching scenarios, Google EIE is a promising tool for the transport planning department to make policy and planning decisions.”
-Çağlar Tükel, PhD, Engineer at Directorate of Climate Change and Clean Energy, İzmir Metropolitan Municipality
Translating EIE data into smart policy
To meet global climate targets, we believe more cities should consider shifting to sustainable mobility. Our goal is to support city governments with useful data and insights to successfully make this transition. We continue to partner with climate organizations including C40, ICLEI USA and ICLEI Europe to explore how we can further support cities in their climate action planning. In the future, we see value in partnering with research organizations to better understand patterns of walking and cycling worldwide, and identify city best practices to help residents make more sustainable transportation choices.
If you work with a local government and are interested in what EIE can do for your community, fill out this form to get in touch with our team. And, if you haven’t signed up for EIE, you can do so here.
