Good for the health, good for the environment: the shift to more active modes of transport is driving a quiet revolution in our attitudes towards daily travel. Every journey on foot or bicycle helps reduce air and noise pollution, while contributing to the fight against climate change. But if we’re to take up walking and cycling on a wider scale, we need a strategic orientation allowing this expansion to occur. The objectives: to accelerate change, but to offer reassurance too.
Care City | Transforming the way we get around: a winning choice!
Published 10.07.24
5 mins read
Active transport: a natural way to take more exercise
Getting around from day to day by foot or bicycle isn’t just a mobility choice, it’s also an easy way of being more physically active. But, despite repeated reminders from the World Health Organization (WHO) of the need to take regular exercise, it seems old habits die hard. And sometimes it’s difficult, and even impossible in certain situations, to leave the car at home and opt for a more active mode of transport. Yet choosing to walk or cycle is a good way of getting the exercise the WHO recommends, and of preventing certain health problems which reduce the quality and span of our lives: such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and mental illness. Which means making active transport part of our daily lives is a winning strategy!
Breathing new life into our cities and reducing pollution
Cars are a major source of greenhouse gases and other forms of atmospheric pollution which cause a raft of illnesses as well as global warming. In France, some 40,000 deaths a year are linked with air pollution and fine particles. We might think this is all the fault of heavy goods vehicles. In reality, they’re not the only culprits. Cars, too, make a major contribution to the problem. In France, transport is the sector which emits most greenhouse gases (30% of emissions) - and nearly half of these emissions come from private cars. According to figures from INSEE, 60% of journeys of under 5 km are made by car - when bicycle or collective transport would do just as well! By opting to walk or cycle, we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Not only that: we also help reduce urban noise, -another far from negligible factor for our health. Because walking and cycling cause little to zero noise disturbance, they help create a pleasanter, healthier urban environment.
Changing our attitudes towards mobility is a must
The transition to active modes of transport such as walking and cycling has numerous benefits for public health and the environment. Yet their uptake remains limited in the face of an ingrained preference for motorized mobility. It’s a situation which requires political resolve and strategic transformations of public space if it’s to change. These transformations should put the comfort and safety of users first. Anxieties regarding safety are a major obstacle to the wider use of active transport. The challenge, therefore, is to provide active transport infrastructure which ensures safe mobility and reduces conflict with other modes of transport to a minimum.
In practice, this may take the form of designated infrastructure (cycle expressways, cycle lanes separated from other traffic) or any number of “tweaks” to promote more equitable use of the road network (changing traffic circulation plans such as making a street one-way to offer a more direct route for cycle traffic, reducing neighbourhood speed limits, optimizing traffic management at junctions etc.).
All this requires strategic decisions, especially in cities which are not always designed for active transport. Planning policy has to permit the full integration of active modes of transport- in contexts where they are more vulnerable and therefore have been perceived, until recently, as having lower priority -in intermodal traffic management. This is important, because if active modes of transport are to be the perfect alternative to the daily car journey, they have to work in complementarity with collective transport, forming a rational chain of mobility. Outlying urban territories stand to benefit from travel links which offer a safe alternative to the automobile. By promoting active modes of transport we can place them at the heart of our mobility policies. Change in this direction has everywhere been accelerating for some years now, and Egis is making an active contribution to the change.
How? By helping administrations turn their mobility transformation plans into reality, and by working on all kinds of projects such as cycle lanes and pedestrian walkways, traffic circulation plans, collective transport network interfaces, junction management, consulting, and equipment: for parking, services, signals etc.
Pedalling into the future: new approaches to active transport
Egis has worked on three projects designed to promote active transport as a viable and reliable option.
The first, launched by the new municipality of Sèvremoine, was for the design of an integrated cycle-pedestrian mobility network connecting ten different municipalities and their key infrastructure. Egis managed this project from September 2022 to March 2024. Its duties included conducting a diagnostic of existing infrastructure, identifying requirements in terms of structural links, and defining various scenarios for a rollout over several years. These plans will enable the municipality to phase its interventions, with annual monitoring based on scoring criteria.
In the second project, for Île-de-France region, Egis prepared a masterplan for the signage on the RER-Vélo cycle network. The objective: to ensure the coherence and legibility of vertical signage across the whole network. From January to August 2022, Egis worked to prepare a corpus of reference materials defining signage, principles of location, and solutions for temporary routes and special cases.
The third project is for the metropolitan council of Lyon and involves the transformation of Chemin de Crépieux, a 1770-metre road artery in Caluire-et-Cuire municipality. The project includes the construction of a two-way cycle lane and improvements to surface drainage. Egis has been project manager since January 2019 and will continue in this role until December 2024. The project also involves the redesign of junctions and the installation of percolation trenches, both measures which will improve the appearance and setting of the road. All three projects illustrate our commitment to sustainable development and active mobility.
Fanny GuyotDirector of Upstream Studies, Mobility and Urban Planning
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