Edinburgh Napier University

  The impact of “softer” measures to improve cycling mode share are often difficult to quantify and
assess. The CHAMP project is an Intelligent Energy Europe funded project which brings together a
range of cycling cities across Europe which are all cycling “champions” in their local context;
Groningen (NL), Orebro (Sweden), Bolzano (Italy), Edinburgh (UK), Burgos (Spain), Kaunas
(Lithuania), Ljubljana (Slovenia). All cities have developed an updated cycling strategy after
conducting a self-assessment and engaging in peer reviews and as part of the strategy each city
selected two innovative cycling measures to be implemented within the CHAMP project. The
implementation phase for the measures ended in January 2014 and this paper presents the evaluation
and assessment of these measures.
A range of evaluation indicators were developed with the city partners and customised where
necessary to the individual measures implemented. The measures include the creation of bicycle
accounts; marketing to improve co-existence of pedestrians and cyclists; route promotion marketing,
innovative parking solutions, healthy cyclist campaign, cycle website improvements and safety
strategy improvements. The impact of such “softer” measures is difficult to analyse and assess and
hence the evaluation indicators include media exposure, user awareness and satisfaction, political
engagement and stakeholder feedback in addition to cycle usage figures and cycle mode-share
figures.
This paper will present and discuss all the measures chosen by the cities and will review the outcomes
of the evaluation undertaken. The City of Edinburgh route promotion campaign will be presented as a
case study and will be discussed in more detail. The relative impact of the measures undertaken will
be assessed and presented in the context of the city in which they were implemented with
commonality and differences experienced by cities engaged in implementing similar measures being
highlighted. Finally the usefulness and usability of the evaluation indicators developed for the project
will be assessed.