New tool shows impacts of combining public transport and cycling

Replacing 10% of car journeys with cycling and public transport shows significant social, environmental and economic benefits, according to a new study.

The research shows that a high proportion of car trips in urban areas of Lisbon could be replaced by a combination of public transit and cycling for the first-and-last mile.

Doing so could reduce annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 28,000 tons.

The researchers, including Professor Robin Lovelace at the Institute for Transport Studies, developed a new tool to assess the viability and impacts of combining public transport and cycling to replace car travel.

They found that 10% of trips could be made this way, and that this could have socio-environmental benefits of up to €325 million over 10 years.

‘Reproducible methods for modeling combined public transport and cycling trips and associated benefits: Evidence from the biclaR tool’ is published in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.

The biclaR tool

The biclaR tool supports the design and development of an improved metropolitan cycling network.

It was commissioned by Lisbon's Metropolitan Department of Transport to support the Portuguese Government’s national cycling strategy, which aims to increase bicycle use in urban areas up to 10% by 2030.

BiclaR builds on the Propensity to Cycle Tool – a web application and research project led by Professor Lovelace and funded by the UK's Department for Transport to reveal the areas of England with the greatest potential for cycling.

The researchers merged data about transport routes and links, inter-modality and emissions to create maps that show the best cycling routes with access to public transport in Libson.

With this and open data about the social, environmental and economic impacts of transport, they quantified how much carbon the combined cycling and public transport journeys could reduce.

Local authority practitioners have access to the interactive map through biclaR, so that the evidence may contribute to their decision-making about cycling interventions.

This research can be replicated for other cities and urban areas to provide evidence for the decarbonisation of transport systems across the world.