Rubin Singh Maharjan; Poster
Shifting the number of people from motorized mobility towards non-motorized mobility has been a global concern due to the rise in private vehicles. Cycling is considered one of the sustainable modes of mobility that supports the green economy. However, many people do not prefer it for their daily commute and are inclined towards using motorized vehicles. This study aims to understand the social acceptance of cycling, people's travel behavior, and attitudes towards cycling. These three factors play a vital role in understanding mobility behavior and the reasons behind the resistance to shifting towards cycling. This mixed-method study is based on both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. For the interviews, participants were selected through purposive sampling, and data were collected through semi-structured key informant interviews. In addition, an online survey and field-level data collection were conducted using convenience sampling for survey participants. Inferential analysis, cross-tabulation, and regression analysis were also conducted to understand the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The study resulted in these major findings. Firstly, in understanding the social acceptance of cycling, the theory of planned behavior consisting of attitude, perceived behavioral control, and social norm barriers was identified. Overall, social acceptance of cycling reflects a positive attitude towards cycling. However, some people still hold a negative attitude due to social norms and perceived behavioral control, which act as major barriers to cycling. This indicates that young people have a more positive attitude towards cycling compared to other age groups. Secondly, non-participatory observations were conducted to assess the current condition and functionality of bicycle infrastructure. These observations indicate a positive inclination towards cycling in the future. However, people are not taking action to incorporate cycling into their daily routines. Providing basic cycling knowledge to students and employees may help them better understand bicycles and their potential uses. This initiative could potentially encourage a habit of cycling to school or work on an occasional basis.
CHRISTIAN BLANCO; Talk
Parque Metropolitano de Santiago Cerro San Cristóbal -one of 22 urban parks managed by Parquemet and exceeding 700 hectares- constitutes a major ecological and recreational asset within a densely populated metropolis. Located across a system of six urban hills, the park combines environmental value with intensive public use. Its steep terrain and extensive network of formal roads and both formal and informal trails make it particularly attractive for diverse cycling practices, from gravity-oriented mountain biking to endurance and recreational riding, while also supporting pedestrians, runners and other recreational users with differing expectations and risk perceptions. In this context, building collaborative governance has often felt like a process of collaborating uphill.
This contribution examines the Mesa de Trabajo established in 2025 between Parquemet and cycling communities as the most formal attempt to date to stabilize collaboration within this multi-user landscape. Previous interactions between riders and park authorities had enabled trail improvements and isolated initiatives, yet remained fragmented, informal and unable to consolidate over time. The Mesa introduces a more structured space organized through thematic commissions addressing safety and coexistence, events and infrastructure development, communication and participatory planning. Despite limited formal progress, the initiative has gathered over 150 participants, enabled informal agreements for events, volunteer trail maintenance and clean-up activities, dialogue on signage standardization and shared safety protocols.
Significant challenges remain. Only eight mountain biking trails currently some kind of formal recognition, while community mapping has identified at least 37 routes requiring institutional definition. Intermittent communication channels, leadership turnover, uneven participation, gender unbalance, weakening engagement and internal diversity among cycling disciplines and commitment levels constrain consolidation. Reputational stigma toward mountain biking in urban settings and limited public understanding of multi-user trail dynamics further complicate legitimacy.
While participants have attempted to familiarize themselves with international frameworks such as IMBA and ITRS, translating external models into locally viable governance arrangements remains difficult and no contact with international peer organization has been attempted. The case highlights how participation advances through incremental, negotiated steps and steps backwards, rather than linear institutionalization, in a context without a strong history of community participation. By sharing our interpretation of this experience, the session seeks to reflect collectively on how initiatives that have long been collaborating uphill might begin to move downhill — gaining coordination speed, legitimacy and stability without losing inclusiveness or environmental responsibility.
Author: Christian Blanco
Member of the Mesa de Trabajo de Ciclistas con Parquemet
PhD (c) in Sociology, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Heidelberg University
Primary email: chblancoj@gmail.com
Alternative email: christian.blanco@uni-heidelberg.de
Laurent Guennoc; Workshop
As cities rush to promote cycling, a critical question emerges: Are we creating new urban conflicts? While cycling infrastructure expands, pedestrians, especially the most vulnerable, often find their space and safety compromised. This tension reveals a deeper challenge: How can data and policy design equitable, inclusive public spaces that prioritize people, not just modes?
Instead of top-down presentations, we invite you to a participatory workshop to explore the raw realities of data-driven decision-making. Together, we’ll have a loot at:
The data dilemma: Fixed counters, GPS traces, qualitative data, surveys —what actually works to capture the needs of all active mobility users? Where do these tools work or fall short?
The action gap: From dashboards to policy, how do we translate data into just outcomes? Share your wins, fails, and the barriers (budget, privacy, political will) that hold us back.
The equity test: How can we ensure cycling progress doesn’t come at the expense of pedestrians, children, or people with disabilities? What metrics and methods center their voices?
Format: Bring your data questions, we’ll use real-world case studies (from Eco-Counter’s global projects) to spark debate: What if we designed data analysis with conflict resolution and equity in mind?
Malte Schröder; Talk
Sustainable urban mobility is an essential foundation for livable cities. Especially in urban areas, public transportation and active modes, such as cycling, are two key components of achieving sustainable mobility. However, planning infrastructure networks for different modes of transport must accommodate distinct requirements and user behavior, often resulting in various, even contradictory, constraints.
Here, we present initial results from an ongoing project on data-driven planning of efficient cycling infrastructure networks, including bike paths and sharing stations, from the perspective of multi-modal mobility, combining cycling with public transport. We focus on the city of Dresden, Germany, where the local public transport provider DVB also offers bike-sharing services at many public transport stations and physical or virtual mobility hubs. In the project, we aim to develop a data-driven planning model for different infrastructure types to generate efficient cycling infrastructure networks for different user types. Comparing the resulting networks highlights the various constraints during network planning and may help to answer questions such as: How does the structure of efficient bike path networks change when explicitly accounting for first- and last-mile demand from intra-city public transport trips? Does the same network equitably serve different user and usage types, such as short-range city trips and long-range commuting including cycling to access public transport stops? Which part of the bike-sharing network should offer electric bikes to enable longer-range cycling trips?
Overall, we aim to provide an automated, data-driven planning tool to support strategic infrastructure design that helps promote multi-modal active mobility to contribute to more sustainable urban mobility.
Christoph Steinacker; Talk
Cycling is a cornerstone of sustainable urban mobility, yet its potential is often limited by fragmented or poorly connected infrastructure. Designing effective bike path networks is not simply achieved by adding more lanes; it is important to create coherent, safe, and attractive routes that encourage widespread adoption. In contrast to many traditional planning approaches that typically focus only on individual segment improvements, our method reveals how upgrades can amplify each other’s impact, improving overall network performance. Upgrading one bike path segment shifts travel behaviour across the entire network, influencing where people go, and which routes become popular.
Here, we introduce a framework to quantify both the individual importance of segments and the synergistic interactions between segments in bike path networks. We illustrate the approach with a perturbed utility route choice model, calibrated to empirical bicycle traffic data. By analysing the higher-order interactions between different segments, we identify which combinations of upgrades generate the most significant system-wide benefits.
The approach not only offers a new tool for planning and expanding bike path networks but also for infrastructure network planning in general, by evaluating complex interactions between multiple segments and support informed, evidence-based decision-making in urban infrastructure planning.
Tomas Peciar; Workshop
Urban cycling debates often revolve around infrastructure: how many kilometers of bike lanes, what design standards, which modal share targets. But what if the real transformation in the future does not begin with asphalt — but with children? The first movement of Dutch cycling also started with children. Now we should move on one more time.
This workshop provocatively reframes cycling as a form of social medicine: a low-cost, high-impact public health intervention capable of addressing physical inactivity, confidence deficits, and social fragmentation in cities. Drawing from hands-on experience with school and community-based cycling programs in Bratislava—particularly in low-income and migrant neighbourhoods—the session argues that behavioral change, peer dynamics, and parental trust can sometimes shift urban mobility cultures faster than infrastructure alone.
Instead of asking, “Where do we build the next lane?”, we ask:
What happens when children reclaim the street?
What happens when cycling becomes a tool for integration, not just transportation?
What if the most radical urban mobility policy is teaching an eight-year-old to balance confidently?
Participants will engage in a collaborative design challenge: building an inclusive cycling intervention for a city struggling with health inequalities and limited infrastructure. Together, we will identify hidden barriers—psychological, cultural, institutional—and co-create strategies aligned with WHO physical activity frameworks and health equity principles.
This session aims to unsettle conventional transport thinking and bridge mobility research with public health, sociology, and political theory. If cities are serious about reducing inequality and improving well-being, perhaps the most disruptive infrastructure is not concrete—but confidence.
Toby Liu; Poster
Urban cycling is central to sustainable transport policy, yet uptake remains limited despite substantial investment in infrastructure and bike-share. In London, recent strategies have prioritised network expansion and access provision, but provision alone has not secured widespread adoption.
This study examines how medium-term access to a personally assigned bicycle can support cycling transitions in ways that short-term hire does not. Using a mixed-methods design centred on qualitative inquiry, following five participants in London through a one-month trial, combining interviews, GPS travel logs, and bi-weekly reflective sessions.
Findings show that change was not a simple linear process of skill building, but emerged through the coordination of material, spatial, and temporal factors. Continuous access enabled regular use, route experimentation, and a sense of responsibility that encouraged attachment. The material qualities of the bicycles built confidence and comfort, spatial practice reshaped cognitive maps and route choices, and temporal structuring allowed new routines to take hold within the trial window.
The analysis develops a coordination framework that demonstrates how these dimensions work together to embed practice, offering a dynamic account of cycling adoption. It addresses the limits of behaviour change theories that emphasise attitudes or fixed routines, showing instead how adoption unfolds across interacting contexts. This perspective also challenges the assumption that access alone guarantees use, highlighting the importance of continuity, control, and time-bounded engagement.
The findings suggest that medium-term loan schemes can complement infrastructure investment by creating conditions for skills, confidence, and habit formation, informing the design of future urban mobility programmes.
Anastasiia Zhokhova; Talk
Poland has high levels of bicycle ownership — according to GUS data (2021) around 79% of households own at least one bicycle and up to 80% of adults report cycling occasionally, and in recent surveys, around 89 % of respondents report owning a bike, suggesting that material capacity for cycling is widespread in Poland [1,2]. Yet everyday cycling remains marginal within urban mobility systems.
This paradox raises a critical question: how can cycling be materially present yet politically and culturally subordinate — and what forms of unused potential does this condition conceal?
In Wroclaw — a city that around a decade ago was considered one of Poland’s leaders in cycling infrastructure development, but has since lost this pioneering position — visible investments coexist with persistent structural imbalances. Although the city recently reappeared relatively high in the Copenhagenize Index ranking (Copenhagenize Design Company) [3], such external recognition does not fully capture the more complex local reality. It does not necessarily reflect concerns raised by NGOs and cycling advocates, the depth of political debate, or the degree of alignment between strategic commitments and their implementation [4–7]. While Wroclaw provides the primary lens of analysis, the patterns observed here resonate with broader dynamics present across many Polish cities and, potentially, other Central and Eastern European contexts — contexts where significant material capacity for cycling exists, yet remains only partially activated. Recent mobility data from Wroclaw illustrate this imbalance clearly: motorised mobility accounts for nearly 40% of daily trips (39.8%) and increased by 26% between 2018 and 2024, while bicycle mobility represents less than 5% (4.7%) and declined by around 2% over the same period, alongside negative dynamics in public transport use — despite the construction of new cycling corridors and tram–bus routes during these years [5–7].
Cycling is widely framed, by both citizens and decision-makers, as leisure rather than legitimate everyday transport. This perception becomes particularly visible on weekends, when cycling infrastructure — especially along recreational corridors such as riverside routes — is intensively used by families and leisure riders. At the same time, many residents transport bicycles by car to regional cycling paths, national parks, or mountainous areas, reinforcing associations of cycling with nature and recreation rather than daily mobility. National surveys also reflect that recreational riding through parks and non-street environments dominates cycling practices, with over half of respondents identifying leisure as their primary motivation [1]. The typology of commonly used bicycles further suggests predominantly recreational use (the national survey indicates 1/3 cyclists using mountain bikes) [1]. Seasonality deepens this pattern: limited winter maintenance of cycling infrastructure and a significant decrease in winter cycling volumes reflect a perception of cycling as a fair-weather activity rather than a year-round transport mode. Nationwide data confirm that most cyclists ride primarily in warmer months, reinforcing the perception of cycling as a seasonal activity [1].
I propose the concept of “infrastructural hypocrisy” to describe the tension between symbolic endorsement of cycling and the material reproduction of automobility. Rather than evaluating progress primarily through the implementation of planned investments or the number of kilometres of cycling paths constructed, this approach seeks to capture the problem in a more complex and systemic way. It shifts attention from quantitative expansion to qualitative, relational, and institutional dimensions of how cycling is embedded — or marginalised — within urban space, and how this marginalisation constrains its transformative potential.
This imbalance becomes visible in:
• the accessibility and spread of car parking compared to bicycle parking (for example, often producing everyday situations in which finding a legal parking space for a bicycle in the city centre is more difficult than parking a car);
• the quantity, typology, quality, and standards-compliance [8] of cycling infrastructure within both street design and new housing, commercial, and cultural developments;
• the factual priorities and compromises embedded in street design decisions;
• the continuity, usability, and maintenance prioritisation of cycling networks, including winter service standards;
• the absence of systemic integration despite strategic declarations;
• the educational gap reflected in the marginal treatment of cycling as a mobility mode and cycling infrastructure planning within urban planning curricula;
• etc.
Importantly, the typology and quality of implemented solutions — including their compliance (or in some cases lack thereof) with existing standards and recommendations — often unconsciously reveal deeper priorities. They reflect prevailing perceptions of cycling not as a full-fledged and equal transport mode, but as marginal or recreational, and of cyclists as secondary users of public space. In one study, nearly 59 % of cyclists assessed local infrastructure quality as poor or very poor, suggesting a qualitative gap beyond mere kilometres of paths [1].
Rather than interpreting these patterns as a simple implementation deficit, this contribution invites discussion of infrastructural hypocrisy as a structural condition shaping mobility transitions in post-socialist contexts, where the material foundations for change may already exist but remain politically and culturally underutilised.
The session will explore four open questions:
- How do cultural perceptions of cycling shape infrastructural investment and spatial justice?
- Can high bicycle ownership be understood as latent but unused transformative capacity?
- How can infrastructural hypocrisy be analytically assessed beyond conventional infrastructure metrics?
- How might this phenomenon be addressed in policy, planning education, and governance, and what broader lessons might it offer in global debates on cycling transitions?
By situating Wroclaw as both a specific case and a representative example of wider regional dynamics, this contribution invites interdisciplinary dialogue on how cultural narratives, institutional practices, and street design interact to shape unrealised mobility potential.
- Raport 2025: Jak Polacy jeżdżą na rowerach? | CentrumRowerowe.pl Available online: https://www.centrumrowerowe.pl/blog/raport-2025-jak-polacy-jezdza-na-rowerach/.
- Radziwonowski, G. Ilu właściwie jeździ ludzi na rowerze w Polsce? Available online: https://magazynbike.pl/2025/09/01/ilu-jezdzi-ludzi-na-rowerze-w-polsce/.
- Wroclaw – Copenhagenize index Available online: https://copenhagenizeindex.eu/index.php/project/wroclaw/.
- Historia działań prorowerowych Available online: https://rowerowy.wroclaw.pl/historia-dzialan-prorowerowych/.
- Wrocław Się Liczy - Kompleksowe Badania Ruchu - Wrocław i Otoczenie 2024 Available online: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/wroclaw-sie-liczy-kompleksowe-badania-ruchu-wroclaw-i-otoczenie-2024/273800383.
- Kompleksowe Badania Ruchu We Wrocławiu i Otoczeniu - KBR 2024 - Kompleksowe Badania Ruchu - Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej Urzędu Miejskiego Wrocławia Available online: https://bip.um.wroc.pl/artykul/565/70659/kompleksowe-badania-ruchu-we-wroclawiu-i-otoczeniu-kbr-2024.
- Perzanowski, M. Bez auta we Wrocławiu ani rusz. Niechętnie jeździmy rowerem, komunikacją – bez zmian. Znamy wyniki Kompleksowego Badania Ruchu 2024 Available online: https://gazetawroclawska.pl/bez-auta-we-wroclawiu-ani-rusz-niechetnie-jezdzimy-rowerem-komunikacja-bez-zmian-znamy-wyniki-kompleksowego-badania-ruchu-2024/ar/c1p2-27053231.
- Standardy Techniczne Infrastruktury Rowerowej Available online: https://www.irt.wroc.pl/pliki/standardy_techniczne_infrastruktury_rowerowej_2021/index.html.
Simon Mader; Workshop
Automated mobility technologies are increasingly promoted as solutions to urban transport challenges. Yet even before large-scale deployment, anticipatory governance—through pilot projects, planning strategies, and regulatory frameworks—already reshapes urban mobility environments. These changes may affect children’s opportunities for independent and active mobility, which play a crucial role in the development of autonomy, spatial competence, and social participation.
This PhD project investigates how the anticipatory governance of automated mobility influences children’s real opportunities for independent mobility in cities, and under what conditions democratic societies may be justified in constraining automation to protect these capabilities.
The project combines normative political theory with comparative urban governance analysis. It develops a theoretical framework integrating capability theory, intergenerational justice, and democratic governance under uncertainty. Independent mobility in childhood is conceptualized as a key enabling capability that supports multiple dimensions of human development.
Isobel Bishai; Talk
Rapid urbanisation and the urgent challenge of climate change have made sustainable transportation a priority for cities worldwide. Public transport plays a central role in reducing environmental impacts and promoting social equity, yet existing policies often overlook marginalised groups such as low-income communities, women, and racial minorities. In London, transport systems act as political infrastructures that shape who can access and participate in urban life. Balancing sustainability goals with economic growth, while addressing persistent inequalities, remains a critical challenge for governance bodies like Transport for London (TfL). My research thesis examines whether sustainable transport policies reproduce inequality, focusing on their impact on disadvantaged communities’ experience of and access to mobility. By exploring governance structures, the Ultra Low Emission Zone, and cycling infrastructure in London, it aims to contribute to the development of inclusive strategies that support a just transition toward sustainable and equitable urban mobility.