Pedaling into the future: How can we ensure cycling and micromobility become embedded as preferred and safe modes of urban transport?

Several cities across Europe and worldwide have been facing an increase in the number of cyclists and other light mobility vehicle users in recent years. Due to the sustainable mobility agenda, the COVID-19 response or the growing delivery economies, the phenomenon is putting pressure on cities to respond with appropriate infrastructure to guarantee a safe environment for those users to travel. Moreover, new micro-mobility solutions have pushed for an innovative, creative, and fast response to new travel demands, leading to an explosion of pop-up initiatives with a genuine potential to transform urban mobility and the urban environment.

Besides, investing in cycling and cycling infrastructure can significantly contribute to alleviate poverty. Cycling is a mean of transport accessible to the vast majority of people, and it help to reduce social imbalances. Despite situations can differ considerably, much remains to be done in both developed and developing countries. In developed countries bicycles can represent a fundamental mode of transport for low-income people and minorities to reach work places.
Road safety is one of the major concerns of people to start cycling, frequently demanding better infrastructure to do so. However, understanding the challenges that cyclists and light mobility users face every day is not an easy task. The level of underreporting or road crashes, especially with crashes that do not involve a vehicle, highlights the need to look beyond crash data to prevent deaths and severe injuries proactively. iRAP addressed this issue with a new risk assessment tool called CycleRAP, which aims to reduce crashes and improve safety, specifically for bicyclists and other light mobility users, by identifying high-risk locations.

In collaboration with Fundación Mapfre, the Union Cyclist Internationale and PTV Group, we want to test the model in five pilot cities: Madrid and Barcelona (Spain), Bogota (Colombia), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Fayetteville (Arkansas), which will allow cities to learn how safe their infrastructure is and provide key safety recommendations to help reduce risks.