This allows people who are new to this to plan a route and reduce the perception of risk, which quickly increases the number of cyclists,” explains Lois. “Temporary cycling lanes work like large avenues, showing continuity and coherence. And Lisbon, which had 105 kilometers in May, wants to double that figure by early 2021. But the pandemic, as well as growing citizen concern for public health and the environment, are pushing more capitals to follow in their wake.ĭuring the coronavirus deescalation process, Berlin created 27 kilometers of pop-up lanes (which the far right has challenged in court), while London built more than 30 kilometers of permanent lanes, and the mayor is promising to multiply the city’s cycling infrastructure tenfold by 2025.īrussels, which already had a network of 130 kilometers, has added 40 provisional ones, increasing the number of riders by 40%. Some European cities such as Amsterdam, Oslo and Copenhagen have been encouraging bike use for years. “It’s not enough to just lay down the lanes in order for them to work, but it’s a first step, and if it hadn’t been for the Covid situation, they would surely have been very difficult to execute, people would have said, ‘How can you take a lane away from the cars?’” says Juan Carlos Escudero, head of the city’s Information and Innovation for Sustainability department. An example of this is the cycleway on Avenida de los Huetos. The Basque city of Vitoria has created on-road lanes marked with lines and separated from motorists by bollards. This is the opposite of Madrid, where cars often double park on the bike lanes.īarcelona has done some positive work, such as the cycleway it created on General Roger de Llúria Street, while other lanes that are shared with buses can feel less safe, such as the one on the Sants Creu Coberta road. In Paris, the new cycleways are wide and take space away from motorists. For those that had clear plans, this situation has served as an acceleration,” says David Lois, a researcher at the Madrid Polytechnic University’s Center for Transportation Research.īut not all cycle lane extensions are the same. “Temporary bike lanes depend largely on a city’s pre-existing political will to adopt efficient measures to increase the number of people on bikes. It took a pandemic for many cities to start thinking about bicycles,” says Mikael Colville-Andersen, an expert in sustainable city planning. If you make cycling lanes, people will use them. “Any cycling infrastructure is a good solution to make people move in a sustainable way on bikes. Other cities, however, have made insufficient or purely cosmetic changes. It is also the case in Bogotá: the capital of Colombia has doubled the percentage of cyclists in the city by adding 80 kilometers of bike lanes. This is the case in Paris, a city whose transformation is being noted across Europe. Urban centers that were already working on this idea in recent years have made the most of the current situation to accelerate their self-transformation by creating temporary cycling lanes, made at no great cost using traffic cones and paint. The coronavirus pandemic is having an unexpected effect on mobility: many cities are taking space away from motor vehicles and giving it to bicycles, a mode of transportation that reduces pollution and encourages a way of getting around that is healthy and safe against the virus. They are old car lanes that have been converted using paint and bollards. Vitoria has created eight kilometers of cycling lanes leading to industrial parks to connect strategic hubs. “That doesn’t encourage bicycle use,” says the association Pedalea. Instead, there are avenues with speed limits of 30 km/h for both cars and bikes. Zaragoza, which has a good network, has not built more lanes. These lanes run through the city center, taking space away from motor vehicles. Another 12 kilometers of provisional lanes have been created, although these are not connected and they do not take space away from cars.Ī comparison shows that Paris has a large network of bicycle lanes to move around the entire city, while Madrid lacks one in the city center instead, most lanes are located on the periphery.īarcelona is the Spanish city that has added the most kilometers of lanes during the pandemic: 21 temporary kilometers (which will become permanent), and a further eight planned kilometers. The city has a network of 130 kilometers (with a further 130km in the outskirts). This is the map of cycling lanes in Madrid. These lanes are wide, protected and they connect stretches of the existing network. In 2014, Mayor Anne Hidalgo launched a plan to create a network of cycling lanes, and around 700 kilometers have already been built.Īs a result of the health crisis, Paris has built a further 50 kilometers of temporary bike lanes by taking space away from motor vehicles. This is the map of bicycle lanes in Paris before the pandemic.
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