Commuters wearing protective masks ride their bicycles in Bogota, Colombia on March 16, 2020. By some measures, over 9percent of trips in the capital are by bicycle, putting it in the top tier globally and a model that other cities in Latin America are trying to emulate.MONTREAL—In the agonies of the virus that upended most of the world, millions of people from Bogota to Berlin saw what life could be like on two wheels instead of four.
Case studies led by global urban planning researchers Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech and John Bucher of Rutgers University track what more than a dozen cities have done in recent decades, and specifically during the pandemic, to improve pedal-powered commutes and recreation. Environmental concerns have also been a motivation for many people to ditch cars for bikes, a choice that researchers say has clear benefits in reducing the carbon emissions that drive global warming and in curbing pollution broadly.
The city’s pro-biking mayor, Valérie Plante, easily won reelection in 2021 on a platform of green initiatives. Underway is a major expansion of a new express bikeway network, Réseau Express Vélo or REV, that would double the city’s already sweeping cycling network in four years.Considered the most pro-cycling large city in the US South, Austin doubled its network of protected on-street bike lanes to around 60 miles in the first two years of Covid.
London more than doubled its protected bike lanes when the virus bore in, bringing the total to 260 km in a year. This, after tripling their length in the decade before. Bucher and Buehler say the pandemic brought about the most rapid transformation of the streetscape in Greater London in decades, resulting in a sharp rise in both walking and cycling.
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