Best Practice

1. Active Travel Series

The Active Travel Series shared knowledge on the planning, design and delivery of walking and cycling schemes. The webinars were delivered by the National Transport Authority in collaboration with the Engineers Ireland Roads and Transportation Society. Topics included active travel project appraisal and approval, planning and statutory processes, cycle design and urban design, quick-build measures, and communications.

The Active Travel Series is relevant to engineers, planners, local authority staff and all those with an interest in active travel. The webinars are all available at the link above.

2. Interreg Europe

Interreg Europe helps regional and local governments across Europe to develop and deliver better policy by creating an environment and opportunities for sharing solutions and policy learning. 

1. Interregional Cooperation Projects

Interreg Europe will co-finance up to 85% of project activities that you carry out in partnership with other policy organisations based in different countries in Europe.

2. Policy Learning Platform

This provides expert services, such as peer reviews, thematic workshops, capacity building events, learning activities are available for registered members. 

2.1 The Cycling Cities Webinar Series

This series of webinars showcases inspiring experiences and good practices from Interreg Europe and to provide guidance and recommendations backed by real-life solutions from cities and regions across the continent on the following topics:

Strategic Planning for Cycling

Infrastructure Development

Getting more People to Cycle

Cargo Bikes for the Last Mile

Cost Benefit Analysis of Bicycles versus cars

Behaviour Change for Sustainable Mobility

A policy brief can be found here.

2.2 Cycle Walk 

Sharing best practices and experience on data collecting and processing and involvement of users in order to improve planning of cycling and walking as modes of transport in urban and functional urban areas:

2.3 Cycling for development, growth and quality of life in European regions

EU CYCLE aims at improving performance of 4 policy instruments addressed through interregional learning and regional action planning. It will thereby contribute to better quality cycling projects, to raise share of cycling in target regions via improved policies and state-of-the art solutions, with a higher impact on decarbonizing transport.

3. Civitas 

CIVITAS is one of the flagship programmes helping the European Commission achieve its ambitious mobility and transport goals, and in turn those in the European Green Deal.

It does this by acting as a network of cities, for cities, dedicated to sustainable urban mobility. Through peer exchange, networking and training, CIVITAS fosters political commitment and boosts collective expertise, equipping cities to put mobility at the centre of decarbonisation.

The Handshake Project

The design of cycling facilities can often be a weakness – even where there is the political will and funding to implement improvements. The introduction of new sub-standard routes can be frustrating to users, and potentially damage the reputation and value of cycling investments. Good practice is increasingly commonplace, with particularly well known examples from our Cycling Capitals. Amsterdam and Copenhagen will work together in Handshake  to bring contrasting approaches from the Netherlands and Denmark together for the first time in a project, advising a number of cities what is most appropriate and deliverable in their own context.  Our cities will learn about using innovative engineering solutions to tackle the challenges of intersections and segregating routes, whilst providing enough capacity to comfortably cater for future increases in cycling numbers.

4. Dutch Cycling Embassy

The Dutch Cycling Embassy is a vast network of public and private organisations from the Netherlands who wish to share their expertise on building what supports the Dutch cycling culture to those interested.  They offer Study visits, Think-Bike workshops, Mentoring and Consultants and E-Courses and Keynotes.

This is a link to their knowledge clips:

5. European Local Transport Information Service (ELTIS)

Eltis is a non-profit European portal for local transport news and events, transport measures, policies and practices implemented in cities and regions in Europe. It facilitates the exchange of information, knowledge and experience in the field of sustainable urban mobility in Europe. Created more than 20 years ago, Eltis is now Europe’s main observatory on urban mobility. It is financed by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport.  One of the thematic areas is the development of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans.  Eltis provides a learning platforms with tools, resources and a learning centre for sustainable mobility.  Some of the tools that may be of interest include:

SUMI – Implementation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators

6. Coursera (free) courses on Dutch cycling

Unravelling the Cycling City bundles the state-of-the-art knowledge that emerges from research and practice on the Dutch cycling system. As such, it provides an easily accessible platform to learn about important causes and effects, to open minds for the complexity of the entire system and to support group deliberations around the world. It comprises videos, readings and quizzes.

7. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

Each neighbourhood or “cell” is a group of residential streets, bordered by main or “distributor” roads (the places where buses, lorries, lots of traffic passing through should be), or by features in the landscape that form barriers to motor traffic – rivers, train lines etcGroups of cells or neighbourhoods should be clustered around key amenities and transport interchanges in a 6-10km radius (with 1-2km walking journeys key).  Only allow access traffic and prevent through traffic by the use of filtered mobility.

Guide to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

Formerly Cyclist.ie