The economic benefits of cycling have gained increased recognition in recent years. Spiralling fuel costs and urban congestion has refocused attention towards less energy and space intensive forms of transport. Cycling, with no oil requirements, offers an effective way to lower the pain at the pump. The benefits extend beyond the individual and flow to the wider community, as each additional dollar not spent on fuel can be injected into more productive sectors of the economy. Traffic congestion also impacts negatively on the economic performance of our urban areas. Taking around 1/10 the road space of a car, bicycles are an effective tool to unclog our congested streets.
Australia
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Inner Sydney Regional Bicycle Network - Demand Assessment and Economic appraisal
AECOM, 2010, commissioned by the City of Sydney
The economic desirability of developing the Inner Sydney Regional Bicycle Network for the purposes of informing submissions to Federal and State bodies for project funding. As part of this study, usage forecasts were prepared to estimate the additional levels of cycling that will be generated from an expanded and improved cycle network.
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Benefits of bike network far outweigh cost, says study
MATTHEW MOORE, 14 May 2010, The Sydney Morning Herald - URBAN AFFAIRS
AN INNER-CITY network of bike paths would deliver economic benefits more than triple the cost of building it, according to the first full economic appraisal of cycleways in Australia.
The report, commissioned by the City of Sydney and to be released today, says the 293-kilometre network proposed by 15 councils would deliver $506 million in economic benefits to the community over 30 years, $3.88 for every dollar spent.
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Recognising the economic role of bikes: sharing parking in Lygon Street, Carlton
Alison Lee and Alan Marcha, 2010, Australian Planner, 47: 2, 85 — 93, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Debate over the best allocation of public space, particularly between cars versus other potential users, is intensifying. As attention is increasingly paid to the quality of the public realm for pedestrians, transport modes other than cars are considered more carefully, and the implications of streets' detailed design are recognised more fully, acceptance of consuming space for car parking has diminished. In retail or recreational areas, pedestrianisation has often been a key element of projects to improve to aesthetics, safety, and provision of greater amounts of land for community uses. However, concerns for traders' economic fortunes are often used to oppose reduction of car parking in mixed use areas. In contrast, this study demonstrates that, in appropriate areas, economic benefits may be achieved from replacing car parking with bike parking in public space areas, particularly as intensification of activity occurs as part of urban change, and as transport mode shifts over time. In the inner city case study examined, car users averaged more overall spending per hour than bike riders. However, the small area of public space required for bike parking means that each square metre allocated to bike parking generated $31 per hour, compared to $6 generated for each square metre used for a car parking space. The paper concludes by recommending circumstances where the findings provide a basis for action, and considers potential impacts upon components of a local retail market.
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Working paper - Economic evaluation of cycle projects - methodology and unit prices, Summary
Dec 2009, City of Copenhagen
In order to evaluate cycling on equal terms with other modes of transport and improve the foundation for prioritization of resources for transportation, it is necessary to establish a methodological basis as well as unit prices for cycle transport. The City of Copenhagen asked COWI to take the first steps in this direction by carrying out a project for evaluation of cycle initiatives.
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Evaluation of the costs and benefits to the community of financial investment in cycling programs and projects in New South Wales
PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW and the Department of Environment and Climate Change, 2009
The quantifiable benefits of cycling or walking along cycle ways are largely a function of the amount of cycling or walking. They will invariably depend on finer details such as the location, purpose, person cycling or walking, and characteristics of the facility being used. The overarching issue is reliably determining an economic value for a facility for which there is no market value and little data for its use.
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Economic Benefits of Cycling for Australia
Cycling Promotion Fund
Documents the rising cost of motoring and the economic benefits of cycling and brings together the costs and benefits from key areas, including transport, health and environmental sectors.
PDF Economic Benefits of Cycling for Australia (1.7 Mb) - View PDF -
On ya bike!
ABC, Radio National: The National Interest podcast (6 June 2008) - guests Cr Jane Prentice; Chair Brisbane City Council's Public and Active Transport Committee and Elliot Fishman; Director Institute for Sensible Transport, presenter Peter Mares and producer James Panichi
Worried about high petrol prices? Weekly fuel bill burning a hole in your pocket? Well, perhaps it's time to consider pedal-power. Of course, cycling isn't an option for everyone, but a number of councils in Australia think the time is right to throw some infrastructure at potential cyclists, to see if they'll take the bait. Take Brisbane City Council: it has some interesting ideas and says it's ready to put $100 million into bicycle facilities over four years. Of course, there's much more to it than that: no matter how many bike-paths, no matter what the health benefits, no matter how high petrol prices, some people either don't feel safe on two wheels or consider it downright daggy. So, what can - or should - Australian governments do to encourage cycling?
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Costs associated with buying a new vehicle
State Government of Victoria, Australia, Department of Human Services
The costs associated with buying a new vehicle comprise much more than just the purchase price. Buyers should ask for the ‘on-road’ or ‘changeover’ (when trading in) price. This includes the dealer delivery charge, compulsory third party insurance, registration, motor vehicle duty, number plate fees, optional extras and adjustment for the trade-in vehicle.
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Benefits of cycling
Australian Bicycle Council
A great resource on health economic, social, environmental and other benefits of cycling.
Visit Site - Using the concept of Effective Speed
Tranter, P., May, M., 2005,
As a stimulus for travel behaviour change and policy development, University of New South Wales for the Australian Greenhouse Office, Australian Government.
Effective speed incorporates the time required to earn the money to cover all the costs associated with car ownership and use into vehicle speed. This calculation results in some surprising effective speeds for different modes of transport. Bicycles emerge as one of the fastest forms of transport.
View PDF - Benefits of Cycling
Queensland Transport, 2007
The environmental, economic, transport and social benefits of cycling.
Visit Site - Planning for healthy communities
Department of Human Services, 2004, Victorian Government, Melbourne.
This document outlines the most effective health promotion strategies for preventing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. It assesses the economic costs of both these diseases. Cycling features throughout the document as an effective response to lowering the costs of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes for the community.
View PDF - Cycling and walking benefits
TravelSmart (VIC)
Provides evidence on the benefits of walking and cycling, focused on workplace outcomes, such as absenteeism.
Visit Site - Guide to Project Evaluation - Part 8: Examples
Austroads Guide - AGPE08/06 - this guide can be purchased here
Part 8 of the Guide to Project Evaluation (the Guide) presents worked examples demonstrating appropriate use of project evaluation techniques applied to a selection of infrastructure upgrading projects commonly faced by practitioners. Some of these examples are updated and expanded from the Austroads Benefit Cost Analysis Manual (1996), and are intended to demonstrate the benefit-cost analysis (BCA) methodology and techniques described in Part 2. Each of the nine worked examples (flood mitigation, sealing and realignment, bridge maintenance, ferry upgrade, blackspot evaluation, timing of project, bus priority, town bypass and road widening) is linked to an executable Excel spreadsheet showing all relevant BCA calculations.
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New Zealand
- Relative costs and benefits of modal transport solutions
Nariida C. Smith, Daniel W. Veryard, and Russell P. Kilvington, (December 2009), NZ Transport Agency research report 393
The report looks at issues decision makers face in estimating costs and sets out an approach to providing estimates. This approach provides parameter values such as cost per vehicle kilometre, which can then be applied to the number of vehicles and the distance they travel, so readers may tailor comparisons to their own situation.
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International
- What’s Good for Green Transport Is Good for Business in the East Village
Noah Kazis, 1 June 2010, StreetsBlog
Wherever parking spaces are replaced with infrastructure for sustainable transportation, you can usually find a local merchant yelling about how it will destroy his livelihood. With the redesign of First and Second Avenue bringing safer biking and faster buses to their neighborhood, five NYU undergrads set out to measure what local merchants stand to lose or gain. Their findings suggest that protected bike lanes and Select Bus Service are going to be good for business in the East Village.
Visit Site - Results from the first three years . . of Cycling Demonstration Towns
Cycling England
Prior to the start of the programme, each town had different levels of people cycling and different local circumstances. As such, Cycling England worked with each individual CDT to establish a tailor made programme to encourage cycling. Cycling England also established a consistent monitoring programme to measure progress across all six towns. For the past three years, Cycling England has been gathering extensive and robust quantitative data from the original six CDTs in order to measure progress and evaluate the impact of their cycling strategies.
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Video showcase of the successes of the Cycling Towns - Visit Site - Crunching the Numbers ($$$) on Bike Commuting
Michael Graham Richard, 9 March 2010, Canada: TreeHugger - Cars & Transportation (bikes) Via CarFree.us Visit Site
"I knew I was benefiting myself and the environment by commuting without a car, but to see the real impact is very amazing."
Visit Site - Transport: External Cost of Transport In Switzerland
Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications
The term «external transport costs» denotes those costs imposed, but not borne by users of the mobility infrastructure. Though chiefly incurred in the environmental and health sectors, they also feature among those costs arising from traffic-related building damage and depreciation. Expenditure borne by society as a whole for public service provision is not allocated to the external transport costs.
Visit Site - Estimates of the External Costs of Transport in 2007
KOTI World-Brief, Vol. 1, No. 3, Korea Transport Institute (Visit Site), July, pp. 8-10;
This study estimates that during 2007, South Korean household expenditures on transportation totaled 11.4% of GDP, and external transportation costs (congestion delays, accident damages and pollution emissions) totaled 5.4% of GDP. The study compares South Korea's transport costs with other countries and indicates changes over time.
View PDF - Sponsors Sold on Health, Economic Benefits of Minneapolis Bike-Share
Ben Fried, 8 February 2010, StreetsBlog-New York
Don't count out Boston just yet, but it looks like Minneapolis may be the first American city out of the gate with a public bicycle system of 1,000 bikes or more. Last week, the non-profit Nice Ride Minnesota selected the Public Bike System Company (the same firm behind Montreal's Bixi) to install its system, which is slated to feature 1,000 bicycles at about 75 stations when the first phase wraps up later this year.
Visit Site - The Economic Benefits of Bicycle Infrastructure Investments
Darren Flusche, League Policy Analyst, June 2009
Today the national bicycling industry contributes an estimated $133 billion a year to the U.S. economy.i It supports nearly 1.1 million jobs and generates $17.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Another $46.9 billion is spent on meals, transportation, lodging, gifts and entertainment during bike trips and tours.
The League of American Bicyclists - Visit Site
Full document (13 meg PDF) View PDF - An economic evaluation of health-promotive built environment changes
Jessica Y. Guo, and Sasanka Gandavarapu, 17 October 2009, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA, Published by Elsevier Inc.
This study aimed to help public investment decision makers see the greatest return on their built environment investments by developing an analysis framework for identifying the most promising improvement strategies and assessing the attainable return on investment.
This paper will need to be purchased from Elsevier Inc.
Visit Site - The Economic Value of Active Transportation
Ryan Snyder, (date unknown) A Fact Sheet, RYAN SNYDER ASSOCIATES, LLC, Visit Site
Active transportation and livability should be funded because governments can recover their investment through enhanced tax revenues, and developers can recoup their investment in higher sales or rents.
View PDF - Benefit-cost analysis of bicycle facilities
Bicyclinginfo.org
How much do bicycle facilities cost? Can we quantify their benefits? In what cases do estimates of benefits outweigh costs?
If your community is considering building a new bicycle facility, you can use this tool to estimate costs, the demand in terms of new cyclists, and measured economic benefits (e.g., time savings, increased livability, decreased health costs, a more enjoyable ride).
Access the analysis tool - Visit Site - The Manifold Value of Walkable Places
Lily Bernheimer, 28 August 2009, StreetsBlog.org
As Elana Schor wrote here a few weeks ago, transportation reform is health reform. The connection between active transportation and public health took center stage at PA Walks and Bikes this week, where Michele Barrett shared some startling statistics on the huge toll obesity takes in Pennsylvania:
Visit Site - BIKE & WALK TO MONEY
Michele Barrett, 23 August 2009, LiveableStreets - Community
Visit Site - New Study Shows More Walkable Homes Are Worth More
Posted by Sheila, 18 August 2009, CEO's for Cities
Visit Site - Mountain Bikes Empower Cacao Farmers in Congo
Jeff Nield, 26 June 2009, Canada: TreeHugger - Food & Health
A few months ago I posted about Original Beans and the true cost of chocolate. The company is has committed to planting a tree in the country of origin for every bar sold. And now, Original Beans is celebrating a partnership with mountain biking legend Hans Rey's Wheels4Life foundation, that will allow cacao farmers in the Congo much needed mobility.
Visit Site - Making the invisible visible - the real value of park assets
CABE space, (2009), Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment- Making the invisible visible - the real value of park assets (summary) (PDF, 616.40 kb) View PDF
- Making the invisible visible - the real value of park assets (full report) (PDF, 5.89 mb) View PDF
In Making the invisible visible: the real value of park assets CABE challenges the ‘invisibility’ of parks and green spaces within current asset management planning. An improved understanding of the current value of park and green space assets is an important first step in better strategic management and in assisting local authorities in using their assets to make a positive difference to communities.
- Making the invisible visible - the real value of park assets (summary) (PDF, 616.40 kb) View PDF
- Planning for Cycling
SQW consulting, (2008) Report (1.2 Meg) prepared for Cycling England
The aim (of the report) is to encourage local authorities to treat cycling investments alongside mainstream transport projects, balancing the full costs and benefits for each case before making rational decisions. The report finds that despite good intentions, the challenges of understanding and applying the full benefits, and a lack of evidence on the performance of cycling investments, remain obstacles to achieving this aim.
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SQW consulting, (2008) Planning for Cycling, Executive Summary, prepared for Cycling England
View PDF - Encouraging Bicycling and Walking - The State Legislative Role
Shinkle, D. & Teigen, A. (2008) National Conference of State Legislatures: The Forum for America's Ideas, Washington USA
The report first provides an overview of recent trends in bicycling and walking and the related transportation, economic, public and environmental health benefits. A snapshot of the current state of bicycling and walking in the United States follows. Subsequent chapters examine state legislative activity in three key areas: funding, planning and safety.
Visit Site to purchase the PDF - Velo.Info - Cycling and Economics
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This briefing focuses on the economic costs and benefits of transport View PDF and the role cycling can play in reducing those costs. The following topic areas are discussed:
- The external costs of transport
- The economic value of cycling
- Increased urban efficiency and quality
- Time and money savings on the road
- Savings on infrastructure
- Reduced environmental costs
- Reduced health costs
- Improved road safety
- Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business: A Study of Bloor Street in Toronto’s Annex Neighbourhood
The Clear Air Partnership, (2009), Toronto
This report takes a closer look into fears that improved walking and biking conditions through reallocation of road space would hurt business.
View PDF - Active Transportation for America - The Case for Increased Federal Investment in Bicycling and Walking
Gotschi, Dr T. & Mills, K.J.D. (2008) Rails-to -Trails Conservancy, USA
To learn more about Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and its role in making trails, walking and biking a part of the national transportation solution, visit Visit Site.
View PDF - Quantifying the benefits of non-motorized transportation for achieving mobility management objectives
Litman, T., 2004, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Victoria, Canada.
This paper outlines the numerous benefits associated with active transport modes such as cycling. It discusses the methods available to quantify the social, economic, environmental and transport benefits of cycling.
View PDF - Win-win transportation solutions: Smart transportation strategies can achieve emission reduction targets and provide other important economic, social and environmental benefits,
Litman, T., 2007, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Victoria, Canada.
This paper introduces a range of market-based policy reforms aimed at increasing transport efficiency, improving health and reducing emissions.
View PDF - The economic significance of cycling: A study to illustrate the costs and benefits of cycling policy
Spreekmeester, R., Wittink, R., Van Den Berg, J., 2000, VNG Uitgeverij, The Hague.
An important, unique contribution, this document assesses the various costs and benefits of cycling. Their wide ranging analysis covers the costs of traffic and infrastructure, economic considerations and the health and environmental benefits of cycling, to name just a few.
View PDF - Economic appraisal of local walking and cycling routes
Sustrans, 2006, Sustrans, Bristol, UK.
A UK based assessment of the economic benefits of active transport modes such as cycling. Using the UK Government’s method of evaluating the economic benefits of transport, walking and cycling are demonstrated as having a 20:1 cost benefit ratio.
View PDF - Methodology used in the economic appraisal of local walking and cycling routes
Sustrans, 2006, Sustrans, Bristol, UK.
Explains the methodology used in the economic appraisal of local walking and cycling routes, Sustrans, Bristol, UK.
View PDF - Collection of Cycle Concepts
Danish Roads Directorate, 2000, Government of Denmark, Copenhagen.
The Collection of Cycle Concepts is a comprehensive Danish publication on cycling. It offers a wide ranging, yet detailed analysis and discussion on promotion, urban planning, facility design, signage and parking. Although some of it is specific to Denmark, much of the content is internationally relevant.
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Cost Benefit Analysis
Everything has a 'cost' whether it is economic, environmental or social. The 'triple bottom line' has emerged as the way to analyse the true costs and benefits of all actions, but to do this type of analysis we require a monetary value to be placed on social and environmental factors. The following are journal articles on the cost benefit of cycling (available for a fee) from Science Direct Visit Site :
- Sælensminde, K., 2004, Cost-benefit analyses of walking and cycling track networks taking into account insecurity, health effects and external costs of motorized traffic, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Volume 38, Issue 8, October 2004, p.593-606
Visit Site - Elvik, R., 2000. Which are the relevant costs and benefits of road safety measures designed for pedestrians and cyclists? Accident Analysis and Prevention, Volume 32, Issue 1, Jan 2000, pp. 37-45
Visit Site - Potter, S. and Parkhurst, G., 2003, Taxation futures for sustainable mobility, University of the West of England.
Visit Site - The Cost Benefit Analysis of Cycling, TemaNord, Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 2005.
View PDF - World Health Organisation - Regional Office for Europe
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This project looks at quantifying the health effects of walking and cycling. - Science of Cycling: Human Power
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The bicycle is a tremendously efficient means of transportation. In fact cycling is more efficient than any other method of travel--including walking! The one billion bicycles in the world are a testament to its effectiveness. The engine for this efficient mode of transport is the human body. Because bodies are fueled by food, diet plays an important role in how the body performs. Different muscle groups and types provide the power. Genetic inheritance, intensive training, and a competitive drive help top athletes push the boundaries of endurance and speed on the bicycle.
