This report presents the results of a study to research the options for robustly evaluating the economic and social impacts of investments in new or improved cycling infrastructure, in a mixture of different types of urban and rural areas. The report has been written for evaluation practitioners and commissioners, and while it attempts to avoid using evaluation jargon without suitable explanations, the document is rather more discursive than would be appropriate for a more general reader. The ‘Briefing on the Government’s Ambition for Cycling’ (2013) is a commitment to bring about a step change in levels of cycling across the UK and lists some of the major investments available to support this agenda: close to “£700m was made available through the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, Community Linking Places Fund and Cycle Safety Fund on top of block allocations provided to local authorities” (pp. 4).1 The briefing document also outlines the rationale for increasing investment in cycling, including amongst other things the desire to reduce congestion, unlock development and support economic growth. The Department for Transport’s (DfT) Cycling Delivery Plan (2015) further developed these ideas and set out the government’s 10-year strategy, which, amongst other things, commits to double cycling levels overall by 2025. The UK government as well as local government’s investment in cycling infrastructure is part of a wider movement that seeks to improve the urban realm (‘green’ projects) and overall transport infrastructure — the redevelopment of infrastructure around the Elephant and Castle area in London is an example.2 Part of this project is the development of segregated cycling lanes, specifically targeted at improving safety for cyclists; the programme as a whole is intended to improve the connectivity of the area. Other major programmes include the HS2 cycle highway and the Cycle City Ambition plans (total investment £148M, more than £10 per capita per year) for Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Birmingham, West of England, Newcastle, Cambridge, Norwich, and Oxford. Currently the average level of cycling in the UK is low relative to the levels seen in many other EU countries. A special Eurobarometer report (2014)3 found that across the EU28, on average, around 8% of people will use a bicycle as their main mode of transport on a typical day. The survey revealed a wide distribution across countries, with the Netherlands and Demark recording the highest proportions of people using cycling as their mode of transport (at 36% and 23% respectively), three or four times higher than the EU average, while the equivalent figure for the UK was around 3% or less than half the EU average. There are several pockets across the UK where the level of cycling is relatively high, and arguably, the government’s various cycling interventions have played a part in increasing the level of cycling. There is also a high degree of variability across areas. For instance, in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, in West London, 4% of residents (of working age, 16-74) cycle to work, while just to the North, in Hillingdon, the percentage is only 1.5%.4 In Brighton and Hove, during 2005-2008, the city invested in new cyclepaths, parking and improved intersections and the proportion of residents cycling to work increased from 2.7% in 2001 to 4.7% in 20115. As part of its long-term commitment to increase the level of cycling, the DfT seeks to better understand the economic and social impacts associated with investments in cycling infrastructure in order to encourage and shape further investment. However, the Department recognised there was a gap in its current guidance, which do not include recommendations or metrics relating to impacts of the local economy, the health and well-being of citizens or on the quality of the local environment. The principal objective was to develop an evaluation framework that will allow the DfT and other organisations with responsibility for transport to differentiate and measure the economic and social impacts of cycling infrastructure investment. The evaluation framework focuses on longer-term impacts and does not propose indicators or data collection strategies for the more immediate effects of infrastructure investment on, for example, levels of cycling. That said, in several cases these important outputs are used as a component within the impact indicators we have suggested. As an aside, our research suggests that local authorities have a keen interest in strengthening and harmonising evaluation for the more immediate effects of their cycling schemes. The framework provides advice on a robust approach to establish a causal relationship between a cycling investment and specific local impacts, for a range of impact types, including economic, social, distributional and health-related factors. It proposes various strategies for coping with the challenge associated with impact evaluation, which is to credibly distinguish the contribution of an upstream investment in transport infrastructure within wider social conditions that are the product of multiple factors. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting