01473625

Component

The Bikes Belong Foundation and the Federal Highway Administration have sponsored a series of study tours for U.S. transportation professionals to European cities with more robust infrastructure and higher modal splits for cycling. Via this hands-on approach, professionals experience how bicycle transportation functions within integrated, multi-modal, balanced transportation systems. The ultimate goal of these programs is to give policymakers and transportation professionals opportunities to learn lessons they can apply in the US to encourage greater use of the bicycle for transportation. This research assesses the impact of those study tours through interviews with past participants, analyzing major lessons learned from the tours, how participants have implemented the lessons in US cities, and the barriers to implementation. Overall, participants highly valued the firsthand experience in cities where cycling is a significant mode of transportation as it expanded their vision for transportation infrastructure design and policy. Some insights were more readily implemented upon return to the U.S. and some remain slow to be adopted. This paper summarizes both aspects of these professionals’ experiences, as well as providing recommendations for future study tours. A few of these recommendations include: organizing a cycle track specific study tour, providing more firsthand experience with bicycle supportive policy formation and soft measure implementation, supporting participants through peer-to-peer information sharing and readjustment assistance upon return, and taking teams of politicians, engineers, planners, and community leaders from the same community to the most advanced European cycling cities.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Bicycle Transportation.

01470560

13-2389

English

0000-0002-7698-4814

15p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

References; Tables

Best practices; Bicycle facilities; Bicycle travel; Evaluation and assessment; Study tours; Transportation engineers

Europe

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-2389

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:31PM