Most bicycle and car trips start and end in buildings: in apartment blocks, in offices or in commercial buildings. Yet off-street parking is the often overlooked element in transport policy.

Fabian Küster, ECF Senior Policy Officer, reported about early results on a forthcoming ECF report comparing off-street parking codes for both bicycles and cars in 31 European countries. Based on Donald Shoup’s findings, Professor for Urban Planning at the University of California Los Angeles, that households own more cars, use them more often and drive further if there is good access to off-street parking. ECF recommends that public authorities get rid of minimum car parking requirements and replace them by maximum car parking norms. However, not a single European country currently applies this policy.

In contrast, in order to facilitate bicycle use, ECF recommends to introduce minimum parking norms, among other to accommodate for the boom in electric bicycles. Already 10 million such vehicles roam European roads, with a potential of as many as 62 million electric bicycles by 2030. At this point of time, 7 European countries – Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia – have national bicycle parking norms in place. Other countries are asked to follow suit.

Marie Kastrup, bicycle manager of the City of Copenhagen, presented the challenge of accommodating the huge demand for bicycle parking in her city. Every Copenhagener on average owns 1.2 bicycles. The city has been introducing creative solutions such as the flexible use of parking space: where kids can park their bicycles during school hours and residents park their cars overnight. Copenhagen is also increasingly introducing public private partnerships in order to provide for high-quality parking space, for example in commercial centres. “You can park 8 bicycles in one car parking spot. Shop keepers are increasingly aware that provisions for cyclists attract more customers.”