Pop-Up Coronavirus Cycleways Deliver $3 Billion In Annual Health Benefits Across Europe

Keeping the pop-up “corona cycleways” installed on many main roads in European cities would result in health benefits of $3 billion a year, claims a new study from German climate-change researchers.

Using historic data from bicyclist counters in 106 European cities, the researchers estimate that the temporary cycleways installed during the coranavirus pandemic have, on average, led to a 7% uptick in cycling rates.

“Each kilometer [of pop-up cycleway installed] has increased cycling in a city by 0.6%,” claims the paper, published on August 14.

“We calculate that the new infrastructure will generate $3 billion in health benefits per year,” said the study’s authors, Sebastian Kraus and Nicolas Koch, who work for climate change institutes in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany.

Research published in Preventative Medicine in 2018 estimated that one kilometer of cycling generates health benefits of $0.62.

According to monitoring by the Brussel-based European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), local and national governments across Europe pledged to install 2,315 kilometers of pop-up cycleways during the pandemic. More than 1,000 kilometers have been successfully installed and are still operating, says the ECF’s online COVID-19 cycleway tracker.

The installation of these cycleways was recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“Whenever feasible, consider riding bicycles or walking,” said WHO on April 21 in new technical guidance on moving around during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Cycling and walking were deemed to be useful for both social distancing and meeting the minimum requirement for daily physical activity, stated the WHO guidance. From early in the pandemic, cities around the world started giving over road space to cyclists and pedestrians, providing people with the sort of generous space generally allotted to motorists. 

“The current health crisis forces us to rethink our mobility system,” Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France, told a French newspaper in April.

“All levers must be pulled so that the easing of lockdown restrictions takes place in the best conditions.” 

She added at the time that pop-up cycleways in Paris could help prevent the “complete paralysis of [our] road network, should there be a massive shift towards the private car.”

In May, the chief executive of St. Bartholomew’s hospital in central London wrote to Islington Council urging the installation of pop-up cycleways and widened sidewalks because, during the COVID-19 pandemic, “hospital staff are increasingly switching to walking and cycling to work.”

CEOs from two other hospitals also wrote letters to their councils as part of a coordinated effort to create safe routes for NHS staff. 

The “Key Workers Need Streetspace” campaign was created by NHS doctors.

The NHS has a workforce of 1.7 million, making it the largest employer in the U.K. and the fifth largest in the world. Bart’s alone has 16,000 staff.

Bart’s CEO Professor Charles Knight wrote that “heavy traffic” was a “blight,” and that “infrastructure for active travel enables people to exercise as part of their daily routine.”

Leicester installed a 500-meter pop-up cycleway close to the city’s NHS hospital on April 27. Marked out with traffic cones, the cycleway was put in place to help key workers cycling to and from Leicester Royal Infirmary during the coronavirus lockdown. Days later the cycleway was extended for an additional 500 meters.

Leicester—famous for links to King Richard III; he was found underneath a council-owned car park—went on to build even more emergency cycleways.

Pop-up cycleways installed on London’s famously traffic-choked Park Lane were soon made semi-permanent with the use of concrete curbs.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan feared that the collapse in transit use would lead to more use of private cars when lockdown was eased, which would have led to gridlock on the roads of the U.K.’s capital.

In an announcement made on May 6, Khan revealed that, to keep Londoners moving, road space would be taken from motorists to provide more social distancing room for walking and cycling. 

“Clean, green and sustainable travel to at the heart of London’s recovery,” said a press statement from City Hall.

Park Lane is one of London’s most prestigious streets—it adjoins Oxford Street, a major shopping street—but before the cycleway was installed it was a hostile space for cyclists who had to dual with often fast-moving motor vehicles.

The new cycleways were necessary to “accommodate a possible ten-fold increase in cycling,” claimed Khan in May.

“Millions of journeys a day will need to made by means [other than public transit],” said the Mayor’s statement.

“If people switch only a fraction of these journeys to cars, London risks grinding to as halt, air quality worse, and road danger will increase,” stated Khan.

Golden age

On May 27, the Department for Transport (DfT) wrote to English local authorities suggesting that “work can begin at pace on closing roads to through traffic, installing segregated cycle lanes and widening [sidewalks].” 

£250 million of “Emergency Active Travel Funding” had been announced by the DfT earlier in May. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament in the same month that the near future “should be a new golden age for cycling.”

However, not everybody is happy with such encouragement of cycling or the spread of pop-up cycleways in the U.K.

“There is no justification for the mass reallocation of road space to dedicated cycle lanes,” argued the Road Haulage Association (RHA) in June. The RHA represents some 7,000 U.K. trucking companies. The Freight Transport Association, which represents air, rail, and sea haulage companies as well as road haulage, was also opposed to creating cycleways for the use of key workers and others during the coronavirus pandemic. 

While the issue does not seem to afflict cycleway-laced Dutch cities, the RHA and FTA feared that the provision of protected space for cyclists in British cities would prevent member companies from making curbside deliveries.

“It is essential,” said the FTA, that the “needs of logistics businesses are taken into account when developing active travel plans,” fearing not just loss of curbside access but also that journey times might be “adversely affected.”

The RHA was more forceful in its complaints. “Dedicating space exclusively to one very small group of road users is an astoundingly wasteful use of a scarce resource,” said an RHA statement which recommended that the “reallocation of general road space for the exclusive use of cyclists should be excluded from the emergency procedures.”

In a May 20 letter to the Director-General of Roads, Places and Environment at the DfT, the RHA’s director of public affairs Rod McKenzie said his organization has “serious concerns” about emergency measures being put in place to protect cyclists and pedestrians during the lockdown. 

“The ability to move goods safely and efficiently is critical for everyone and all businesses,” he stated, adding that the government’s focus on encouraging cycling and walking was “faulty thinking.”

The U.K. government is set to spend £90 billion on new roads and £2 billion on active travel such as walking and cycling yet McKenzie claimed that “cycling is being disproportionately favored over other sectors.”

He lamented: “Just 2.5% of trips nationally are made by bicycle.”

However, such low usage can be increased with the provision of protected cycling infrastructure, as has been shown by the latest pop-up cycleways study.

As Canadian city planner Brent Toderian points out “it’s hard to justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across a river.”