Groningen is set to spend €85,000,000 promoting cycling in the next 5 years. This was confirmed by the city cycling policy officer, Mr Jaap Valkema, who pointed out that funding comes from municipal, regional and federal budgets.  That’s for things like a new underground bike tunnel and 5,000 extra parking spaces for bicycles, as well as in maintenance of the snow-free main cycling routes during rush hours, in mapping and making more new “cycling streets". ECF reported on these developments already last year when Groningen’s cycling strategy for 2015-2025 was approved. However, the magnitude of the spending demonstrates the kind of mature leadership we have come to expect from the top cycling cities.

ECF recently participated in the Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA) conference in Belfast where they discussed HEAT, the WHO’s tool to estimate the economic value of health. For instance, the value of health created by cycling in the Netherlands was estimated to be €31 billion which is equivalent to 3% of the country’s GDP (Fishman ea 2015[1]). “The report shows that the country invests about half a billion euros per year in cycling and reaps a benefit over 60 times as high” – commented ECF health policy officer, Dr. Randy Rzewnicki.

When the Groningen investment of €85 million is broken down per capita for the population of 200,000, the scale of investment is even clearer. “Over a period of 5 years, it comes up as €85 per year for every woman, man and child. It’s much higher than many other places and reflects what we think every city should be doing,” Rzewnicki said.

At the HEPA conference Dr Johan de Jong, professor at the Expert Centre on Healthy Aging at Hanza University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, told ECF that the city should consider using HEAT to estimate the value of their €85,000,000 investment. He noted that Groningen wants to be the premier cycling city, which is no easy task when competing with cities like Utrecht.

Groningen is a member of ECF’s Cities for Cyclists Network, and the 2017 Velo-city conference will be hosted not so far away – in Arnhem-Nijmegen. More information about Groningen's plans for more room for bikes is available in English here (and here in Dutch).

See here the full presentation by ECF at the Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA) conference in Belfast.

Follow Randy Rzewnicki on Twitter @ECFhealth