The role of the bicycle in designing sustainable urban mobility and contributing to the transition to post-carbon societies has been recognized worldwide, gaining an increased policy and academic interest, even in places without such tradition. In contexts such as the Portuguese one, where cycling modal split is residual, governments are implementing ambitious targets to reach the next level of bicycle use. Research on cycling has grown rapidly, but focusing mainly on matured cycling contexts, the so-called ‘champion’ or ‘climber’ cities’. Extended research and tools considering the specificities of starter cities is yet to be developed. Within this context, project ‘BooST – Boosting Starter Cycling Cities’ is an applied research project analysing and providing specific technical know-how on starter cycling cities. It draws on existing fundamental research on the factors influencing cycling, notably natural and built environment characteristics, socioeconomic factors, attitudes and perceptions, and their integration into an overall analysis model, focused on the needs of starter cycling cities. The project is developing a Starter City Roadmap comprising three main tools: an assessment framework of the Gross Potential for Cycling (GPC); an assessment framework of the Economic Value for Cycling (EVC); and a Cycling Measures Selector (CMB) for supporting the process of identifying and packaging the mobility management measures best suited for starter cycling cities. In this paper, we will focus on the Gross Potential for Cycling (GPC) tool which allows to reveal the potential for cycling of a starter city. Existing cycling assessment methods and tools, for supporting policies and planning, have shortcomings if applied to starter cycling cities, where there is no previous level of cycling habits and/or infrastructure to assess and the availability of data on travel patterns is often limited. Some methods require large amounts of data, making it impossible to assess large areas, such as in the case of street-by-street analysis tools, which, in addition, disregard important factors such as the socioeconomic context. Other methods only provide city wide averages and do not allow disaggregated analyses, of crucial importance to support planning in starter cities, as these need to identify areas with the highest cycling potential to decide where to start building their cycling network. Other intermediate tools have been developed, which are able to develop both aggregated and disaggregated analyses, but they rely heavily on origin-destination (OD) data which can be scarce for more disaggregated analyses, limiting the scope of the results. Starter cities firstly have to understand their potential and constraints to increase cycling modal share as a relevant mode of everyday transport. As such, the developed tool focuses on the gross potential, based on a two-dimensional approach. It assesses the target-population with higher potential for cycling (based on socioeconomic factors) and the target-areas more suitable for cycling (categorised by their geographical and built environment characteristics). The tool provides spatial visualisation of cycling potential through detailed maps. It identifies areas with cycling potential, even within cities with an overall low gross cycling potential, allowing targeted and customised policies for areas with different potential within the same city. In addition, it provides an average GPC, allowing to compare cities in a ranking of starter cycling cities (regarding their gross potential). Through this novel method the research expects to empower local authorities and urban planners and support the transition to a cyclable city.

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Urban planning,Starter cycling cities,Cycling potential,Planning support system,Bikeability