Many Swedish municipalities have since the 1990s set up policy objectives of reducing the proportion of car travel and increase travel by alternative modes: walking, cycling and public transport. In the case of an increased proportion of cycling national and local travel surveys show that this target is not achieved, instead the share of car travel increases. This research report is based on case studies in four municipalities: Linköping, Malmö, Västerås and Örebro. The research has been guided by the aim of increasing knowledge about why not the target of increased share of cycling is achieved, by focusing on how this target has been implemented in planning, and how the deficit can be reduced. The data analyzed consist of municipal policy and planning documents, and interviews with various categories of officials involved in the planning process. The results of the case studies indicate that the implementation gap partly is a consequence of so called path dependency. The target of increased cycling has since the 1990s been dealt with in the context of an implementation structure, organization– knowledge–action, where professional groups are characterized by an education and profession practice since for long formed by the underlying rationale of optimizing the flow of car traffic: functional construction of road networks, road design and other road infrastructure measures. This approach has served as a model for operational set of problems and solutions in the implementation of the target to increase the share of cycling. The mobility of cycling, in the sense of facilitating speed and flow, has increased over the years, but the effects in terms of increased cycling has not materialized. Lack of goal achievement has not led to any reconsideration of exciting approaches and methods among officials. Instead the case studies show that the officials are oriented towards maintaining occupational boundaries of knowledge and skills. In practice, the boundary work results in accessibility conditions for cycling not being secured and provided for in planning. This poses a risk that effects of infrastructure measures aiming at increasing mobility for cycling, and other complementary measures such as Mobility Management, will be small or even absent. In international research a holistic, or so called multilevel approach is advocated in order to reduce uncertainties and increase the effects of measures for a modal shift. All levels of actions - system (accessibility), structure (mobility), individual (behavioral change) - must be included in the implementation of objectives for sustainable transport. If this will come about current path dependency has to be broken and the traffic professions have to develop along other pathways. The report concludes with an outline of how this can be achieved. (Author/publisher)
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