 |
| Cycling can be profitable |
His work, published in the journal Land Use Policy, is one of the first long-term economic assessments that are made on the adoption of these policies by a Spanish city.
On the one hand, according to the Sinc Agency, they considered both the construction and maintenance costs of cycling infrastructures and those derived from possible increased road accidents due to accidents between cyclists with pedestrians and motorists.
They also quantified benefits such as savings in the costs of use and maintenance of motor vehicles; the monetary value of time savings in commuting by bicycle, especially vis-a-vis public transport users; the decrease in mortality as a result of greater physical exercise, and lower costs associated with the reduction of pollutant emissions, which have been estimated for each of them separately (HC, NOx, CO2, SO2 and particulates).
Spanish researchers estimated that the social profitability that is being achieved with the public investment of a network of bicycles for Seville is 130% on average (in a range that would go from 116% to 144 %), giving an estimated positive return of about 550 million euros for the city.
"We are talking about an extraordinary social rate of return, compared to what has been obtained in investments in transport infrastructures in general," said Professor José Ignacio Castillo Manzano, lead author of the study.