How to increase bicycling by John Putcher, Jennifer Dill, and Susan Handy

I love the Fall.  Perfect operating temperature and beautfiul colors. But I digress…..

 John Putcher (Rutgers University), Jennifer Dill(Portland State University), and Susan Handy (University Of California at Davis) have published  “Infrastructure, Programs and Policies to Increase Bicycling:  An International Review,” prepared for the Active Living Research Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Preventive Medicine, Vol. 48, No. 2, February 2010. [Download paper – pdf]

The 54 pages are worth reading.  It describes the wide range of bicycle promotion interventions (infrastructure, program, and/or policies) and their impact on levels of bicycling.

The paper points out what interventions have the biggest impact. First as individual interventions and then when taking into consideration the interventions in an integrated package.  An important point this paper makes is that it is risky to generalize about the effectivness of certian measures and that every context brings different challenges.  Importing models from abroad without paying attention to local habits could reduce the effectiveness those same programs had elsewhere.

A summary of different bicycle programs around the world can be found at the end of the document.  Bogota, Colombia is now in my list of cities to visit.

Happy reading

Cheers!

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