Development of bicycle safety

Summary

Comprehensive cycling plans and new signposts for cyclists will prevent cycling accidents and encourage citizens of Brescia to use the bicycle.

Implementing sustainable mobility

The first Cycle Mobility Plan of Brescia, approved in 2000 within the 1998 Urban Transport Plan aimed at implementing new bicycle lanes to encourage longer and safer cycling citizens. In recent years renovation and maintenance of existing cycling routes had not been a priority, leading to progressive deterioration of the infrastructure and to lack of route integration routes, which in turn decreases comfort and safety for cyclists. Furthermore, no systematic and targeted dissemination activities related to cycling were carried out by the Municipality, except for publication of info on the Municipality website.

Progress

In this context, the measure aimed at renovating the existing routes in line with the administration policy focused on promoting cycling by improving the comfort, quality and safety of cycling routes.

Three main actions were carried out during the measure implementation: improved signposting (horizontal or vertical signs), renovation of the existing routes, publication and distribution of new cycling maps and implementation of dedicated bicycle parking with lockable racks.

Outcomes

A Cycle Mobility office was launched to coordinate the different Municipal Office Departments (Traffic and Mobility, Urban Planning, Public Spaces, Signing, etc.), creating a point of reference for the local cyclists’ association and cycling management. The other outcomes achieved are the following:

• installation of 170 horizontal and vertical signs were installed;
• renovation of about 95 km of the existing cycling routes during CIVITAS with a slight reduction in road accidents,
• publication and distribution of 5000 cycling maps to disseminate information of possible routes,
• introduction of about 1,100 parking slots.

Road accident data from the Municipal Police and ISTAT reveal that the number of cyclists killed or injured on roads slightly decreased or was stable. It is important to highlight that in general Brescia registered within the 2009-2010 period an increasing number of accidents and injuries, but at the same time a decrease of the number of fatalities.

In the near future, the analysis carried out on some existing cycling routes will be extended to the whole cycling network of Brescia in order to plan the necessary upgrades.