Will a bicycle friendly policy make passenger travel more sustainably?

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the possibility to transfer a larger part of the short car trips to walking or bicycling in order to obtain environmental and health benefits. The project contains a logistic choice model used to explain which circumstances are particularly important for choosing walking and bicycling, and how very different instruments can promote walking and bicycling at the expense of short car trips. Furthermore, the paper describes the most important factors when choosing between bicycling and walking and car driving, respectively, in case of trips of up to 22 km. Hills and temperature differences appear to be particularly impor-tant, apart from car ownership. Regarding the socio-economy, particularly the number of children is of importance. Furthermore, the paper elucidates the effect of various instruments to promote the transfer of short car trips to walking and bicycling. The study shows that instruments that improve the cyclists’ speed and increase the car drivers’ time consumption and costs will influence the competition conditions significantly. The total transfer potential will be between 12 and 16 % of the car trips in case of short tours, equivalent to 1½-2½ % of the total car traffic. The health effects will be a bit larger resulting in a reduced mortality, because more people will cycle – especially on the daily trips to work. However, such positive results will require comprehen-sive efforts to change the traffic areas of the cities.