For the Portuguese Federation of Cycletourism and Bicycle Users (FPCUB), shared systems, when properly sized and installed, can help boost bicycle use by 1.5 to 3 percentage points.
The Portuguese Federation of Cycletourism and Bicycle Users (FPCUB) believes that, more than subsidizing the purchase of bicycles, the municipalities should invest in the implementation of bicycle sharing networks in their territoriesand the central government should help them through funding. The FPCUB also argues that bike sharing, even from private operators such as Bolt, should be integrated into public transport passes.
The FPCUB has been presenting its ideas to political representatives over the last few months, in a similar effort to the one that MUBi - Associação Pela Mobilidade Urbana Em Bicicleta has also been doing. In March, FPCUB met with the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas; in May, with the Minister of Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro; and in July, with the Secretary of State for Urban Mobility, Jorge Delgado.
According to the FPCUB, the Central government should financially support municipalities large enough to install bike-sharing systems, particularly those with cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants. In a document it presented earlier this year to the parties that were going to participate in the legislative elections, the Federation described that these shared systems should cover a minimum area of 10 km², have 10-16 stations per km², provide 10-30 bicycles per 1000 residents of the catchment area, and have a fleet of at least 51% conventional bicycles.
More recently, in one of the meetings with political decision-makers, Mário Meireles, vice-president of the Federation, reported that shared bicycle systems, when well sized and installed, can help boost bicycle use by 1.5 to 3 percentage points - that is, a city with a 2% modal share of bicycling could reach 5% with a shared network. This boost depends on the infrastructure already being suitable for bicycling, which also requires municipalities to invest in reorganizing streets and avenues. Taking as an example the city of Braga, where the investment in a bicycle system with 70 stations and 1000 bicycles would have an implementation cost of two million eurosMário Meireles believes that this type of system can integrate existing public companies, such as TUB in Braga or STCP in Porto, similar to what happened in Lisbon - where EMEL launched GIRA.
"The city offers a shared system that covers its entire territory, that is integrated, at the ticketing level, with public transport, and that has secure parking in the terminals, are multimodal stimuli that give even greater leverage to stimulate the use of sustainable mobility".points out Mário Meireles to Lisboa Para Pessoas.
The Federation also believes that bike sharing networks should be integrated into public transport passes; and that, for example, the Navegante Municipal or Metropolitan should make it possible to ride both the GIRA bicycles and the MobiCascais network (currently not operational), as well as the future shared system in Oeiras, which should be operational by the end of this year. Ultimately, the FPCUB advocates the inclusion of private systems, such as Bolt's, which some cities have joined, in these multimodal passes as well.
Financing bicycles or other incentives? Or both?
The FPCUB has been reticent to support programs for the acquisition of bicycles, such as the one implemented by the Lisbon City Hall in 2020/21. Even so, the Federation believes that these programs are important, and even considers that the financial allocation from the Environmental Fund for the purchase of city bicycles should be revised upwards, reducing, in turn, the financial allocation for light passenger vehicles.
But, at the same time, the FPCUB believes that the promotion of the use of the bicycle as a means of transportation should be a priority and that this path, in the opinion of this organization representing the interests of bicycle users, should be taken with shared networks, with safe infrastructure and with incentives for use. In the document presented to the legislature, the FPCUB suggested a incentive of 0.24€/km cycled for those who use the bicycle in a home-work or home-school contextwith a maximum value of 600€/year/person.
"People are always looking for the fastest and safest way to get around, and if they can still make some money from it, a lot of people will join. Others will join for other reasons, if only for the simple pleasure of cycling from point A to B safely, quickly, and on the most direct path possible."explains Mário Meireles to Lisboa Para Pessoas, in a short conversation with FPCUB.
But the incentives can be other than immediately financial: they can be "fiscal, labor, and may even have some gaming component". "These incentives, whether they are for purchasing, but especially for bicycling, or even other modes, are good tools that the state can adopt to boost the use of built infrastructure."says Mário. The engineer, who has a PhD in Sustainability of the Built Environment, explains that the promotion of sustainable mobility must be "made in three major strands: infrastructure, behavior, integration between modes". "Certain is that of these three, infrastructure is a necessary and, by itself, sufficient condition for the promotion of sustainable modes."as is the case of the bicycle; and "it has been shown that well-constructed bicycle lanes that produce a network effect increase bicycle use as a mode of transportation".
To Mário Meireles, "it is important to encourage bicycle adoption, with financial incentives for its purchase" as the state has been doing, but "the incentives for circulation, for the use of the bicycle, end up being a more effective stimulus to promote the use of the bicycle, because it doesn't just stimulate the purchase, it stimulates its use. And, therefore, this measure should also be adopted, along with the stimulus of the purchase". In these usage incentives, "it is the behavioral stimulus that comes into play, but with the infrastructure already doing its part. When you work the behavioral axis without the infrastructure, the results don't show up".
"While working on these three axes, it is also important to make it difficult to use the car for those shorter trips below 5 km. And today we still have too many incentives to use the car."he says, giving some examples: "Minimum Parking Requirements in the PDM's should be reviewed by the Government and municipalities, becoming maximums or even ceasing to exist. And the central areas of cities should be made more difficult to access for cars by implementing Reduced Emission Zones or Conditional Motor Access Zones."
National Strategy without a Pedal
In your National Strategy for Active Cycling Mobility 2020-2030 (ENMAC 2020-2030), Portugal has committed to targets for 2025 and 2030. By 2025, 3% of all trips in the national territory should be by bicycle and, by 2030, this figure should rise to 7.5%. In the cities, the modal share of bicycle trips should reach 4% in 2025 and 10% five years later. A ENMAC 2020-2030, which can be found herealso sets infrastructure targets - a total length of bicycle paths in the country of 5,000 km by 2025 and 10,000 km by 2030 - and the reducing road accidents involving cyclists - at 25% by 2025 and in 50% by 2030.
For José Caetano, President of the FPCUB, it is essential that ENMAC be made operational once and for all, and that we work, along with it, on the future National Strategy for Active Pedestrian Mobility (ENMAP), unifying it in the medium term into a single strategy. In the different meetings, Caetano alerted that for the approaching deadlines and reinforced it is essential to accelerate the existing National Strategy. MUBi has a similar position. In a statement on August 2nd, the Association for Urban Bicycle Mobility denounced that ENMAC "continues to run out of resources and no realistic way to meet its interim targets for 2025". "From the government we continue to see an evident lack of political leadership on this dossier and little willingness to allocate resources needed to implement the strategy and finally invest seriously in active mobility."
A National Strategy for Active Cycling Mobility began to be designed in 2019, but after three years, "without human resources and still without having its Action Plan properly budgeted and timetabled, we are now certain that without a rapid and radical change in attitude, the Government will largely miss the Strategy's intermediate targets"MUBi points out. "In a situation of climate emergency and heightened reasons to reduce fossil fuel consumption, the government continues to fail to take seriously policy commitments made three years ago."
