Promoting Bike-to-Public-Transport Intermodality

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly incentivised cycling as a mode of personal transport. While this is a welcome development towards more sustainable mobility patterns, cycling is often not well interconnected with other sustainable public transport modes such as bus and train systems. These deficiencies need to be assessed in order to popularise the usage of environmentally friendly transport modes.

Project

The project partners support regional and municipal governments of Livorno (Italy), Szombathely (Hungary) and Brasov (Romania) in formulating strategic action plans (SAP). These plans provide the necessary frameworks to strengthen the integration between bike, bus, train and other modes of sustainable transport. Integration measures vary across regions, but are all centred around physical connection of cycling and public transit, such as expanding cycle path networks and connecting them to public transit. Development of the SAPs rely on two elements: first, they gather learnings from similar, successfully implemented projects, analyse them and explore their potential for being replicated in the target countries. Second, project members consult with local transport users to ensure that the SAPs are tailored to local needs. The project team regularly conducts round tables for transport users, biking associations, environmental groups, research institutes and transport operators. These round tables ensure constant community involvement and allow participants to evaluate implementation of the SAPs, suggest changes to policy makers, and share ideas among each other. The SAPs lay the foundation for truly sustainable transport patterns, thus advancing decarbonisation, reducing air pollution and preserving citizens’ health.

Last update: September 2024