Představujeme evropský projekt Handshake. Pomůže českým městům?

Policy makers, practitioners and academics across the globe seek detailed information on urban policies and, importantly, a better understanding of how to effectively emulate policies that have been successful elsewhere. We know from research and practice that policies are continuously borrowed, translated, and customised, but there is still little empirical evidence on what positively influences the learning and 'policy transfer' process related to cycling.

The focus of this EPOMM e-update is on the Horizon 2020 project CIVITAS Handshake, and how it supports the implementation of policies to improve conditions for cycling as an everyday mode of transport.

Author: Fred Dotter, Mobiel 21 on behalf of EPOMM

Cities are complex systems requiring complementary skills

Although policy is scientifically challenging and cities are far from being stable living laboratories, decades of policy work concludes that the common denominators of most policy transfer success stories are: i) knowledge, ii) appropriate methods and tools and iii) a peer environment.

It is also known that these elements can be enhanced by the assets of the key players of a policy transfer effort, such as city coalitions and supporting experts. Intangibles such as commitment, courage, vision, innovation and leadership considerably impact the outcome and often separate success from failure.

This is the concept underpinning the CIVITAS Handshake project, funded under Horizon 2020 and which is running from September 2018 to February 2022. It empowers through an integrated methodological approach that applies methods that have already proven effective locally and nationally in a diversified European context.

Key to the project´s concept is the adoption of a multidisciplinary outlook, which stems from the acknowledgement that cities are complex systems requiring complementary skills to bolster problem solving innovation.

Share and inspire excellence

In all corners of Europe, cities face alarming levels of congestion and air pollution and a scarcity of public space, whilst urban environments remain dangerous for vulnerable road users. Cycling is a powerful way to address these challenges and steer cities towards being more sustainable, equitable and economically prosperous places for citizens.

The CIVITAS Handshake project helps cities of all types become more liveable places, improving conditions for cycling as an everyday mode of transport.

The project will achieve this by improving the quality of both cycling infrastructure and communications by identifying innovation in areas such as intelligent transport systems, bike sharing, modelling, bike parking, socio-economic assessment and governance and decision-making.

13 of Europe's top cycling cities

Handshake involves many coastal cities as well as inland cities located throughout northern and southern Europe. The cities represent a diverse range in terms of both population size and cycling levels.

The three pioneering, successful, and world-class cycling cities Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Munich, also known as the 'Cycling Capitals' support the so called 'Future Cycling Capitals' Bordeaux, Bruges, Cadiz, Dublin, Greater Manchester, Helsinki, Krakow, Riga, Rome and Turin, in the uptake of over 60 proven cycling solutions designed to make cycling a more attractive everyday mode of transport.

Inspiring the creation of holistic cycling visions

The Handshake project focuses on all stages of delivery, from planning through to implementation and the monitoring of success. These are aided by governance arrangements that help manage a transition towards a greater quality of life through increased levels of cycling.

Experts and local authorities join forces in Handshake to design, develop and implement over 60 solutions across these 13 cities. These solutions may be multi-faceted or interconnected, but each solution fits into one of the following four categories of activity that help drive the performance of successful cycling cities.

Category I: Planning, Regulations and Standards

The delivery of high quality infrastructure, together with achieving a motivated cycling population, require effective planning and preparation.

Activities include the preparation of cycling infrastructure network plans, raising the standards in design guidance documents, and linking with other modes of transport to improve how the transport system is managed. Together these help give cycling projects a fair chance of success.

Category II: Infrastructure and Services

The design and layout of physical infrastructure is the most topical aspect within Handshake. Cities recognise the importance of getting investment right by learning from those cities that have refined and developed their techniques over a number of years.

Solutions range from expanding the quality and proportion of space created for cycling, to improving the street environment, catering for bicycle storage and changing traffic lights to give cyclists easy and continuous journeys without stopping.

Category III: Modelling and Assessment

Techniques can be used before and after cycling schemes are implemented to make sure they contribute effectively towards a wide range of different objectives.

Handshake looks at the effectiveness of cycling solutions from many angles, such as through the experiential analyses of cyclists' safety, to the modelling and measuring how the transport system operates, to the effectiveness of publicity to encourage cycling.

Category IV: Awareness and Education

What is the point of only having infrastructure if nobody knows where the routes go, or they don't feel motivated or confident enough to try riding a bike in the first place?

Communication campaigns and approaches help blend practical knowledge with inspirational messaging. When done well, they can heighten the success and status of new infrastructure projects. Handshake will support the delivery of information to key audiences, including school children and their parents, those new to cycling and those already existing bicycle riders looking for better and safer routes.

Bringing together cycling innovations into a novel transfer cycle

In order to pave the way for the collaborative actions of the CIVITAS Handshake project, a set of headline tools and methods helps to establish the methodological and organisational framework.

These outputs are the foundations of the transfer approach, a designed pathway for the cities to follow.

Collaboration and mentoring

A cornerstone element in Handshake is the mentoring scheme, whereby each Future Cycling Capital establishes a direct relationship with a mentoring Cycling Capital.

This system is used as a method for the informal and formal transmission of knowledge and tips, and for the much-needed work of inspiration, encouragement and comforting that only peers can afford to each other. The goal is to open personal and professional channels that the mentoring and mentee staffs can use with confidence and ease, without fearing the approach or shying away from asking questions that may be deemed inappropriate or silly. Therefore, a mentoring session is a safe and privileged time in which a mentee has permission to concentrate on and talk about her or his issues related to the transfer of knowledge of cycling innovations.

Transition Management

Transition management is a technique that will ensure there is a context of support and understanding for the implementation of solutions in Handshake.

Transition management also allows new ideas and approaches to be introduced to combat the inertia that often stops cities changing their approach to addressing problems. Handshake cities start by developing a "transition arena" – a group of people that helps guide cities through the process of developing and implementing better cycling solutions. This group helps update objectives and set a direction for experimental measures and, ultimately, long-term planning.

The idea is that the transition arena is far more inclusive than traditional transport planning approaches. In Handshake, transition management influences methods to change the design of streets and the social culture of cities to allow them to become more bike-friendly places.

Immersive Study Activities

Handshake is running 'Immersive Study Tours' and 'Immersive Symposia'. Whereas 'Immersive Study Tours' involve a delegation of leaders from the Future Cycling Capitals travelling to either Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or Munich (the Cycling Capitals), the 'Immersive Symposia' take place in the Future Cycling Capital itself, with a visiting delegation of experts from the Cycling Capitals offering content and inspiration.

Unlike standard conferences or training, these events are highly personal and sensory learning experiences. They use Handshake's mentoring relationships to enhance the transfer of measures and knowledge between cities. Immersive events are an effective tool to advance specific priorities or goals.

Assessment and Evaluation

Handshake assists its cities to maximise the positive socio-economic and environmental impacts of cycling solutions, capturing quantitative and qualitative effects on different target groups. There is a need to invest, and to choose 'the right way' to invest.

The state-of-the-art 'Bikenomics' methodology supports Handshake cities in every step of the process: from problem framing, definition of alternatives, selection of measures and monitoring.

Bikenomics combines established welfare analysis techniques – such as social cost-benefit analysis and economic impact assessment – with other qualitative and quantitative methods. By assigning a weight (in monetary values as much as possible), local city decision-makers and cycling leaders will be able to use Bikenomics to identify and select solutions that are effective (in terms of dealing with the problem and reaching local goals) and cost-efficient.

Grab your bike and be safe!

The COVID-19 outbreak also has a serious impact on CIVITAS Handshake's project activities and the partner cities themselves. Therefore, they are taking major steps to get more people in the saddle and to unveil emergency cycling plans to combat the pandemic.

Can bicycles be a solution to the challenges of the post-COVID-19 recovery? European member countries of the United Nations recently created a taskforce to take this question further and discuss ways to make post-COVID-19 mobility more environmentally sound, healthy ‎and sustainable.

As many countries in Europe and elsewhere are starting to lift lockdowns, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) sees an opportunity and obligation for the transport sector to restart in a manner that is conducive to a more efficient, greener system. "A 'new normal' needs to be developed to replace 'business as usual'," it states. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), investing in pedestrians and cyclists – who often make up the majority of citizens in a city – can save lives, help protect the environment and support poverty reduction.

"What we're seeing across Europe is a brilliant move in cities like Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Paris, Milan, Vienna – the list is extremely long now – that will remove the old, obsolete car infrastructure and actually make infrastructure for all of us," Morten Kabell, CEO of the European Cyclists' Federation, told Euronews in a live interview.

For example, the Flemish Cycling Embassy, Fietsberaad Vlaanderen, proposes practical solutions to give more space to cyclists and pedestrians. To further support the decision-making process, Fietsberaad provides a framework note 'Organisation of bicycle traffic during and in the aftermath of COVID-19' (only available in Dutch). This memo bundles all information on the evolution of bicycle traffic due to COVID-19.

As part of the extraordinary and urgent measures in response to COVID-19, and in order to facilitate access by citizens and businesses to useful information on transport and mobility, the EPOMM Portuguese National Focal Point, Institute for Mobility and Transport, I.P. (IMT, IP), offers a new webpage on useful information on mobility and transport (available only in Portuguese).

Austria seizes the opportunity to initiate life-long cycling habits

Governments all over the world are currently in the unique situation to address two key topics of our society at the same time. On the one hand, cycling as a form of mobility is ideal to keep your distance in the face of the COVID-19 crisis and, on the other hand, to travel in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

The latest figures (German only) from the public benefit organisation VCÖ show that the usage of bicycles in Vienna increased by 20 percent compared to previous years. At the same time, search queries for secondhand bikes at online sales platforms explode and show a growth of 82 percent for e-bike queries within two years.

To seize the opportunity to change mobility habits, the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) in Austria supports cycling in different spheres of life with its Master Plan for Cycling and the klimaaktiv mobil programme. Klimaaktiv mobil includes various measures such as tax breaks for companies that provide job bikes, training courses for cycling instructors and bicycle mechanics, knowledge transfer on topics like cargo bikes and practical examples for cycling promotion in cities and municipalities, for schools, developers and tourism businesses (all links in German).

To benefit from international knowledge exchange, klimaaktiv mobil is strongly engaged in partnerships such as the Transport Health Environment Pan European Programme (THE PEP) and coordinates THE PEP Partnership on Cycling, which includes the compilation of a Pan-European Master Plan for Cycling Promotion.

The Austrian Government uses the actual societal challenges to provide tailwind to the mobility transition.

CIVITAS Handshake

Bringing together 13 of Europe's top cycling cities to share and inspire excellence

The project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement no 769177.

The sole responsibility for the content of this e-update lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. Neither the INEA nor the European Commission are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Technical Partners
ISINNOVA (Coordinator)
Decisio, ICLEI Europe, Mobiel 21, Urban Cycling Institute, Vélo Mondial

handshakecycling.eu | contact@handshakecycling.eu