Evaluating the Impact of Innovative Cycling Measures in EU cycling cities

The impact of “softer” measures to improve cycling mode share are often difficult to quantify and assess. The CHAMP project is an Intelligent Energy Europe funded project which brings together a range of cycling cities across Europe which are all cycling “champions” in their local context; Groningen (NL), Orebro (Sweden), Bolzano (Italy), Edinburgh (UK), Burgos (Spain), Kaunas (Lithuania), Ljubljana (Slovenia). All cities have developed an updated cycling strategy after conducting a self-assessment and engaging in peer reviews and as part of the strategy each city selected two innovative cycling measures to be implemented within the CHAMP project. The implementation phase for the measures ended in January 2014 and this paper presents the evaluation and assessment of these measures.

A range of evaluation indicators were developed with the city partners and customised where necessary to the individual measures implemented. The measures include the creation of bicycle accounts; marketing to improve co-existence of pedestrians and cyclists; route promotion marketing, innovative parking solutions, healthy cyclist campaign, cycle website improvements and safety strategy improvements. The impact of such “softer” measures is difficult to analyse and assess and hence the evaluation indicators include media exposure, user awareness and satisfaction, political engagement and stakeholder feedback in addition to cycle usage figures and cycle mode-share figures.