Moving Towards an Active Living Society: Policy Interventions for Promoting Cycling as a Sustainable and Healthy Means of Travel in West Midlands

Over the last years, cycling has received significant attention at policy level. Recognizing its contribution to both the adaption of an active living lifestyle but also on decongestion of traffic as an active mean of travel, in 2014, in Paris Declaration, the ministers agreed on a ‘an-European Master Plan for Cycling Promotion, supported by guidelines and tools to assist in the development of cycling promotion policies at the national level’. This paper aims to define policy directions to achieve a paradigm shift by stimulating a further cycling uptake through local and regional support and promotional schemes. This paper reports secondary research from a mapping exercise on the current schemes and marketing tools being implemented in the region of West Midlands, UK for the adaption of cycling by the citizens as well as the main European policies in the field. Primary research was also conducted through a survey to identify the main promotional tools but also schemes that can contribute to a boost on cycling, from the lens of citizens.
In order to achieve the research objectives, the policy schemes were compared and contrasted with the tools revealed by the research to actually suggest policy directions that can incentivize the creation of a cycling culture. The results showed that the European directions are aligned with the regional schemes in West Midlands but also with the preferences of the citizens, with infrastructure investment to increase cycling safety appearing as first priority. The policy directions were discussed and validated by a focus group consisted of the main cycling stakeholders and authorities of the region.