The Practice of Integrated Bicycle Planning

In communities where cycling has become accepted as a major mode of transport and has grown to encompass a large percentage of personal trips, a comprehensive bicycle planning process is usually in place. In the most cycle-friendly towns, bicycle planning is a discipline in itself, no longer subsumed under highway planning departments. In others, cycling is at least treated as a significant component of municipal transportation, alongside planning for auto and public transit, and is explicitly written into both general transportation plans and specific construction projects.

In the Netherlands, for example, town bicycle planning is heavily funded by national programs and supports one-third of national commuter trips on a well-planned infrastructure of 10,000 kilometers of bikeways, bike bridges and underpasses, bike-priority intersections and dedicated bicycle parking facilities. [2] In Dutch cities like Delft which have made enormous strides in bicycle transport, designing the bicycle system includes not only master-planning and integrated facility development, but also detailed analysis of bicycle traffic flows and safety and accident surveys.

More and more towns and cities in northern and western Europe are devoting highly professional treatment to bicycle transport. Several European bicycle-friendly cities have launched a coordinated effort to share bicycle planning experience and promote it elsewhere. The “Cities for Cyclists” league includes Copenhagen and Nakskov, Denmark; Groningen, Netherlands; Erlangen, Germany; Nottingham, England; and Winterthur, Switzerland. [3] Such cities have considerable bicycle program staff, including bicycle-specialist engineers — with direct input into transport policy formulation.

Positive experience in Europe as well as in the United States suggests that three elements are necessary to guide bicycle planning and projects through government agencies which were created to plan for automobiles.

1. Government must have staff specifically devoted to bicycle planning and promotion. An official Bicycle “Coordinator” or “Program Manager” is needed to ensure that master plans, design guides, policy documents and specific capital projects take account of cycling and plan for its growth within a city's or region's transportation mix.
2. Bicycling staff must enjoy the ongoing, visible support of other agency staff and elected officials.
3. Governmental transport planning must be connected to and integrated with the bicycling community, generally in the form of a bicycle advisory committee or regular meetings between government agencies and organized citizens' cycling groups. [4]

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