Above image: TRAIL Cycling Autumn School participants © TRAIL
As a second-year PhD student researching nature and cycling here in the West of England, I was delighted to attend a Cycling Autumn School in the Netherlands this November, organised by the Netherlands Research School on Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics (TRAIL). The event saw 24 cycling PhD students from around the world gather at The Hague, hosted by Dr. Kees Maat and Professor Vincent Marchau, for lectures and group work on a range of cycling topics.
The programme opened with a series of lectures from some of the Netherlands’ leading cycling researchers. Professor Bert van Wee began with a helpful and practical session on why and how conceptual models can be useful tools for cycling research, which left us all frantically scribbling. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to have a ‘conceptual epiphany’ as a result.
In the afternoon, two sessions from Dr. Kees Maat and Professor Ralph Buehler presented an overview of historical trends and geographical perspectives on cycling and the aspects of the built environment, policy, planning and culture that have influenced cycling practices and mode share in Europe, the United States and other countries. They highlighted some of the key conditions for improving cycling facilities and rates in urban areas, such as the default accounting for bicycles in planning decisions and gradual changes that build support for more ambitious ones.
The following day, Dr. Maarten Kroesen built a compelling argument for the importance of assessing causality when considering relationships between active travel and health, through the example of relationships between walking for travel and Body Mass Index (BMI). Many cross-sectional studies had found relationships between these variables and surmised that walking helps to reduce BMI, but Dr. Kroesen’s work to assess causality shows that it is more likely that having a higher BMI reduces the likelihood of walking for transport, than the other way around. He also demonstrated the usefulness of applying appropriate modelling techniques to secondary panel data to answer such questions of causality. None of us were aware of any similar research regarding cycling for transport, which would be great to see.
Next, Dr. Paul van de Coevering presented a whistlestop tour of behaviour change theories and models, including heuristics and nudging, as well as sharing examples of interventions that put these theories into practice. It was interesting to reflect on the ways in which various successful interventions had considered the role of habits, beliefs and identities, in addition to providing appropriate infrastructure for cycling.
After much discussion of how to address cycling challenges in different global contexts, we reconvened for the afternoon session. Professor Henk Meurs highlighted the important role of governance in achieving cycling goals, as exemplified by the approach to cycling at various levels of governance in the Netherlands. Finally, Dr. Jan Anne Annema introduced us to two innovation theory frameworks to help us consider what effective levers for cycling might be, in the context of wider programmes of urban innovation.
The content of these two days provided a wonderful overview of cycling from multiple disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Some of the content was very familiar, but the value was in the way it led to such fruitful discussions arising from the varied disciplinary and theoretical perspectives each student was bringing with them too, as well as the different geographical contexts in which each students’ research was situated.
On the final day, the students joined a Bicycle Streets workshop and cycle tour as part of the International Conference on Cycle Safety. This gave us a great opportunity to understand the challenges and aspirations of cycle planning in many countries – and particularly in The Hague thanks to the bike tour led by Emma Stubbe from the Dutch Cycling Embassy and Nana Slof from the Safety Team at the Municipality of The Hague. It was a delight to hear their insights and get first hand experience of the travel environment in a city where active and public transport have been prioritised in recent years.
From a UK perspective, it’s tempting to think of the Netherlands as a cycling heaven, but some challenges are similar. Firstly, there is still a need for improvements to cycling infrastructure that vastly outweighs the available budget. Nana explained that the Safety Team have a list of over 250 streets in the Hague that need improvement works but they have to prioritise the most dangerous and get creative to fund them – for example by piggybacking on things like sewerage works where the road will be dug up anyway from another budget.
Secondly, the role of community engagement and incremental change is just as important where road space for drivers is being reduced. As Emma and Nana emphasised, there was a point at which The Hague also had infrastructure that was mostly tailored to motor vehicles and it has taken time to change this. A former six-lane highway is now a beautiful historic canal area, for example, but many of the most successful projects initially faced resistance – such as from shopkeepers concerned about losing trade from drivers. Emma says the Dutch Cycling Embassy is here to help: “Come here and learn from our mistakes as well as our successes!”, she said.
While returning to the less optimal transport infrastructure of Bristol, and leaving behind all the wonderful new cycling researchers I had met, was a little sad, it was inspiring to remember that every city has to start somewhere. Bristol cycling has come a long way in terms of infrastructure and culture in recent years, and I hope our planners and policymakers will take up the Dutch Cycling Embassy’s offer.