Comments on "City Ranking on Urban Mobility" released by cleancities
Lluis Sanvicens
Urban Mobility Consultant | Helping cities to boost active travel and public transport | Researcher
Clean Cities has released a City Ranking on Urban Mobility based on a technical report which can be found here:
This study was commissioned to provide a robust and transparent benchmark of the performance of cities when it comes to the conditions necessary to achieve zero emission mobility by 2030. So far, all my best for this initiative.
However, I have read this report, and I have seen something strange. For the cyclist safety indicator the better cities were Madrid, Krakow and Marseille and the worst cities were Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Ghent and Antwerp. And if we check out the opportunity for cycling indicator, as mentioned in the Bible the last will be firsts, and some are first who will be last, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Ghent and Antwerp are in the top position and Madrid, Krakow and Marseille in the last ones.
I have gone thoroughly through the report and I found that for the cyclist safety indicator the measure for comparison was fatalities/inhabitants. This parameter could work well when all the cities behave in the same way, for example, the inhabitants of Amsterdam run by bicycle equal than the inhabitants of Marseille. However, this is not true, in Antwerp people travelled more km by bicycle than in Madrid, and the more km travelled the more likelihood to a fatality occur. Then, the fair value to comparison should be the km-travelled by bicycle.
With this in mind, I have tried to recalculate this index.
Firstly, I have transformed fatalities/inhabitants into fatalities/km-travelled by bicycle.
According to Carlier (2022) the average distance by bicycle in 2018 in Netherlands was 3.41 km for men and 3.01 km for woman. We can assume an equal gender distribution, and then the average distance travelled by bike per person per day may be 3.21 km. This distance is in Netherlands where the infrastructures dedicated to the bicycle are larger than in the other countries, then it is possible than in other countries with less infrastructure the average distance were minor. In order to simplify, we count this distance for all the countries, being that a conservative assumption.
If all the people in Madrid was moving by bicycle:
Madrid = (0.03 fatalities/100 000 people) x (1 people/3.21 km-travelled) =
= 0.09 fatalities /1 000 000 km-travelled
But, unfortunately, there is a modal share in Madrid among bycicles, cars, etc… According to GEOSP (2017) the modal share of bicycle on total trips is 0.3% in Madrid, therefore:
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Madrid = (0.09 fatalities/1 000 000 km-travelled) x (100 trips/ 0.3 trips-travelled by bicycle) = 3.11 fatalities / 100 000 km-travelled by bicycle.
The same for Antwerp, which has the worst score. According to CityClock (2022) the modal share of bicycle on total trips was 23 % in 2010. We assume the same modal share.
Antwerp = (0.82 fatalities/100 000 people) x (1 people/3.21 km-travelled) x (100 trips / 23 trips-travelled by bicycle) = 1.11 fatalities/ 100 000 km-travelled by bicycle.
And it seems that Madrid scores almost 3 times worse than Antwerp…
I have calculated and re-scored this indicator and now in the first position with score more than 9 can be found Barcelona, Vienna, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Munich, Brussels and Helsinki. And in the last position with score less than 5 can be found Birmingham, Lisbon, Rome, Lyon, Granada, Liège, Warsaw and Milan. Very different results from the original report.
References
Carlier, M., 2022. Average biking distance per person per day in the Netherlands 2010-2018, by gender. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/620169/average-biking-distance-per-person-per-day-in-the-netherlands-by-gender/
Eurobarometer, 2014. Attitudes on Issues related to EU Transport Policy. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338964165_Development_of_a_biking_index_for_measuring_Mediterranean_cities_mobility
GEOSP, 2017. Barómetro de la bicicleta en Espa?a. Informe de resultados 2017. ?Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338964165_Development_of_a_biking_index_for_measuring_Mediterranean_cities_mobility