The Resurgence of Urban Cycling

Bicycles as utilitarian means of transport are once again becoming more and more relevant in the developed world. With increasingly alarming concerns about air pollution and climate change, many people are taking steps to finally ditch the private car in favour of seemingly old technology. Students in particular are active users of bicycles and other personal mobility devices thanks to the way educational campuses are built and planned, and it has been this way for many decades. I believe cycling should seriously be brought back as a method of urban transportation because it is much more beneficial for our health than car driving and because building bicycle infrastructure in turn improves our urban spaces in general.

Bringing urban cycling back into the mainstream should be a goal for all city dwellers right now, along with advocating for urban spaces that incentivise car-free lifestyle. Bicycles had largely disappeared from the roads and city streets in the developed world during the 20th century. A striking fact, considering that modern road networks with high-quality paths had been initially built to accommodate cyclists after the first “bicycle boom” in the 1890s. The reason is that during the last century, transportation sector has largely been putting more and more resources into car infrastructure. The quality of alternatives to driving, including public transport, has been diminishing due to the lack of funding and unwillingness to continue innovation. Cycling has been impacted the most, being diminished into a leisure activity mainly for children or perceived only as a sport. Fortunately, nowadays the ubiquity of private cars worldwide is being challenged, and the question of whether we should continue driving them en masse has become a socio-political issue. Still, sometimes bicycles are not seen as a serious alternative to driving despite having many advantages.

Routinely riding a bicycle improves your health. Whether you ride a traditional bicycle or one with electric assistance, your transportation turns into a part of your exercise. They are not that expensive and can serve as a good replacement for a gym membership. On the other hand, if you are a driver, your physical activity is limited. Car ownership forces you into sedentary lifestyle, leading to obesity and causing anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease and a number of other undesirable effects. Motor vehicles heavily contribute to congestion, air pollution, noise pollution and result in massive number of road fatalities. Motor vehicle collisions alone were a leading non-medical cause of death worldwide in 2019. They also lead to a lot of non-lethal injuries. Air pollution health effects are acute and very common. Aside from reducing life expectancy, it causes lung cancer, heart disease, asthma, and respiratory infections. Noise pollution impacts all city residents and is linked to increased anxiety levels. Many people argue that cities are inherently loud, but in fact it is the motor vehicles that produce a constant loud roadway noise. Even drivers can agree that sitting in traffic is irritating and wastes time, but by choosing to drive a car they themselves become a part of traffic, worsening the situation. Swapping your car for a bicycle mitigates some of these effects, but most importantly, it helps make systemic change happen. This, in turn, addresses the other health problems associated with our cities.

Our cities can often look and feel depressing. A lot of areas are not even built as a destination, a place people would want to be and spend time in. On the other hand, city centres are seen as cultural places and areas of interest because of their human-centric heritage and high-quality urban design. Research shows that when a relatively high percentage of trips in a city is made by bicycle, the roads are much less congested as bicycles do not take up a lot of space, travel time is short, air pollution and noise levels are low, and the streets are generally safe. All these measures also make city streets a much more pleasant place to be in. That is great, but how do we actually get enough people to cycle? Adoption of bicycle infrastructure such as bike lanes, bicycle paths, parking, and bicycle sharing has shown that if the conditions for cycling are safe, many people will indeed use a bicycle, even if there was not any particular interest before. A large amount of people prefer bicycles because riding them is more pleasant then sitting in traffic jams in a car or a bus. Some have an economical mindset and favour commuting by bicycle because it is a lot cheaper than buying, repairing, maintaining, insuring, and fuelling a car. Students in Europe already cycle due to the low cost, improved flexibility compared to public transport, and increased convenience when used for short trips, for instance to and from university or around the campus.

To conclude, a resurgence of urban cycling is a brilliant next step in the evolution of our city design. If using a bicycle in a city becomes a viable alternative to other methods of urban transportation, every citizen will receive a lot of health benefits and the city itself will become much more pleasant to live in. Should we move forward, or continue to defend the status quo?