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23/09/00: Michel de Brébisson sends us an article published in Le Monde on 13/09/2000

In "Le Monde", 13 September 2000: Cycling is serious business

Cycling allows people to get around town freely and over distances of several kilometres; it can be used by a large proportion of the population; it's good for your health; it takes up little space on the road; it doesn't make any noise; it doesn't pollute; it's not responsible for serious accidents; it doesn't consume oil; it doesn't contribute to the greenhouse effect... There's no end to the list of individual and collective advantages that explain the good image it enjoys in public opinion.

Yet cycling is still the poor relation when it comes to urban transport. With the notable exception of Strasbourg, cycling has gradually been marginalised in French towns and cities. Admittedly, some cities have recently introduced cycling facilities, but this effort, which sometimes borders on the DIY approach, has barely halted the decline.

The outlook for the future is hardly encouraging. Of the twenty-seven urban transport plans adopted by the deadline of 30 June 2000 (out of the sixty-five made compulsory by the law on air pollution), many envisage measures favourable to cycling, but only ten provide for specific funding, which is very modest indeed: from 4 million francs, or nothing at all, to 100 million, barely the price of one kilometre of tramway.

This situation is paradoxical, because investment in cycling is the most cost-effective way of reducing car traffic. One urban car journey in two is less than three kilometres: cycling can therefore become mass transport, and the financial resources required for an ambitious cycling policy are derisory when compared with the funds allocated to public transport or swallowed up in incessant (and pointless) roadworks.

How do you explain the paradox? In France, most elected representatives talk about urban cycling with a smile on their lips.

Some see it as a mere accessory, good for poor students and autophobic outcasts, an archaism in the age of the motor car, or even a fashionable gadget to be sacrificed once a year by getting on a brand new bike for a few minutes during the Fête du vélo: a bit of cycle path here and there will do the trick.

The others are sceptical: cycling is good for leisure, not for commuting; it's good for the Dutch, but it'll never catch on in France. So there's no need to embark on a coherent policy encompassing safe routes with no deterrent detours, well signposted and maintained, safe parking too, complementarity with public transport, hire and repair services, company bicycles, promotion of cycling, hiring competent technicians...

But it wasn't so long ago that the saying went: trams are good for the Swiss. The same applies to cycling as to public transport. Its use is not a matter of chromosomes or cultural particularities: changes in behaviour are directly linked to the efforts of planners. In Freiburg im Breisgau, a prosperous medium-sized town in the Black Forest, in the space of twenty years, the proportion of mechanised journeys made by bicycle has risen from 16 to 29 %, that made by bus and tram from 22 to 29 %, and that made by car from 60 to 43 %! In Geneva, cycling has doubled in ten years because the elected representatives had the political will to do so.

It's high time our politicians changed tack and considered cycling as a mode of transport in its own right.This is because it can contribute, in the same way as public transport, to reducing car traffic, improving the quality of urban life and combating the greenhouse effect.

The role of local elected representatives will be decisive, but the government must not remain inactive. For example, it could speed up the reform of the highway code, which has a number of rules that penalise cyclists. As for abolishing VAT on the purchase and repair of bicycles, this would cost the state less than the demagogic abolition of the car tax sticker. And above all, beyond its own usefulness, it would have a strong psychological impact: in these times of international conference on the greenhouse effect, it would demonstrate that cycling is serious business.

Jean SivardièrePresident of the Fédération nationale des associations d'usagers des transports (Fnaut).