Author: Maya Watson

ECF's team and members have been collecting data on pro-cycling measures taken in Europe to combat Covid-19 and smooth the transition out of lockdown. Today, we passed 2,000 km on our dashboard. Keep reading to learn how to help us reach 3,000 km.

Across Europe, governments have rallied to ensure recovery from the pandemic supports cycling. ECF's COVID-19 Cycling Measures Tracker is monitoring these developments. As of July 28, ECF and its members have collected more than 2700 individual infrastructural measures from almost 400 cities and communes. Our dashboard has tracked the announcements of 2084.4 km of active mobility infrastructure. More than 1000 km of them are already implemented. Here are some of our highlights.

Highlights

In France, 904 km of pro-cycling measures have been announced and 496 km implemented. Only Île-de-France - the region around Paris - dedicated 300,000,000 € for a mix of new cycling infrastructure and temporary “corona cycleways”. This fund is supplemented by 20,200,000 € subsidies for repairing or buying bicycles.

Italian cities have also committed to impressive infrastructural developments for cycling post-Covid-19. Rome and Bologna have announced 150 km and 94.3 km of cycle lanes respectively. Turin has announced 80 km of traffic calming measures.

Brussels ranks third for the most pro-cycling measures announced and second for the most measures implemented. Since March 18th, the regional Mobility Minister Elke Van den Brandt has announced in co-operation with boroughs 83,7 km of cycling lanes, traffic calming measures, and car-free zones, of which 50 km are already implemented.

In terms of budget, the UK has announced the largest investment in pro-cycling measures: over 326,000,000 €. On the State level, a 250 million pound Emergency active travel fund has been created to help create pop-up cycle lanes, wider pavements, and improved junctions (among other measures). The Scottish Government has also committed 10 million pounds to fully fund a new infrastructure programme for pop-up walking and cycling routes or temporary improvements to existing routes. 

Lower-profile, yet significant contributions to cycling infrastructure come from north-eastern part of Europe. So far, Finland has allocated the most funding per capita for cycling infrastructure: 7.76 EUR/capita, total 43,000,000 €. Lithuania has announced extra funding for 2020 to subsidize cycling and walking infrastructure investments in cities totalling 18,000,000 €, or 2.61 €/capita.

Granada, Spain is another lower-profile case with significant impact. They implemented the most kilometers of cycling infrastructure - 60km of traffic calming/reduction measures - almost overnight!

What Next?

ECF needs your help. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive picture of all the cycling measures taken because of the pandemic. With that data, we can advocate to make the current measures permanent and create advocacy materials for more pro-cycling measures in the future. But, even with our member’s help, it is difficult to find all the actions taken to support cycling. That’s where you come in.

Do you know of any pro-cycling measures taken in your country, region, or city that we have missed? Have you noticed a mistake in our data?

If you have any information please contact us at policy@ecf.com and a.buczynski@ecf.com

Link to the dashboard: https://ecf.com/dashboard