Key take-aways from Velo-city 2024

1. Two worlds colliding

When CIE Board member April Marshke from Specialized cycled away from her first Velo-city in Ghent she described “two bike industries that rarely consider each other”, highlighting that many companies in the design, supply and retail sectors of the industry attend events such as Eurobike, while the sharing, digital, infrastructure and parking sectors have another world where they discuss with NGOs, planners and politicians how behaviour change and infrastructure create the conditions for more people to ride.

April’s presence in Ghent was part of an important trend where CIE has encouraged more and more product managers and innovators in the product side of our ecosystem to recognize that the best way to understand and grow their future customer base is to engage with the change-makers when future investments and services are being designed and planned.

There is no doubt that CIE members are benefiting from this collision between worlds, which has been part of our DNA since we were founded. Every year more companies who have stepped into CIE’s networks find that better intelligence, market insights and new business models come from knowing how and where the next generation of cyclists and cycling services will be created, enabling them to plan with greater confidence in the future. 

Thanks again to the increasing group of members who were with us at Velo-city and our regular supporters – see you next year!
 

2. Sneak preview into the new edition of Benchmarking Bike Sharing in 148 cities

It was a full house at the Benchmarking Bike Sharing in 148 cities session where CIE’s bike share experts gave a sneak preview into the new edition of the study. Which are the best ranking bike share cities in 2024 and why? What are the features of a successful bike share scheme? How to improve your city’s bike share scheme’s performance? Ten roundtable discussions took place focusing on selected cities with a wrap up with recommendations from each table. The summary of these discussions has been added as an annex to the report which will be launched in September.

Last year Cycling Industries Europe published a first of its kind study ranking bike sharing services in 148 European cities revealing major gaps in performance between front-runners and late-adopters. CIE’s “Shared Ambition” study gives cities key insights into how to improve their bike sharing offer, generate more trips and make cities greener and more liveable. Now this study has been updated with additional indicators and figures. 

The report is incredibly powerful, because it shows exactly how every city in Europe can set ambitious targets and measure results for improvements in sustainable mobility through bike sharing. With more than 70% of Europeans living in cities and transport accounting for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, bike sharing services offer an inclusive, affordable and healthy solution towards slashing transport-related emissions by 90% by 2050, a key objective of the EU’s Green Deal.

Benchmarking Bike Sharing in 148 cities 2024 edition will be launched by webinar in September – watch this space for more information and registrations! 

Interested in joining CIE’s Bike Share Expert Group – contact us to learn more.

3. Bike registration schemes are raising attention across Europe

We were very proud to see our member Velopass make the Smart pedal Pitch final with the bike registration scheme deployed in Belgium. And we also saw that they are one company among many in Europe to be developing digital tools to register the ownership of bicycles. Fighting bicycle theft may be bike registration’s initial raison d’être, but there are strong reasons to see anti-theft as a the tip of the iceberg of what bike registration enables, from facilitating second-hand sales, bike maintenance to providing an inroad to industry digitalisation and bicycle product passports.

Bike registration schemes are also catching the European Commission’s attention. As with any pan-European trand the European Commission will be keen to assess to which extent and how it should seek to harmonise initiatives. There is a strong case to do so: national bike registration schemes have been designed to work in a given national territory – and their capacity to fight bike theft ends as soon a stolen bike crosses a national border.

European harmonisation raises the question about what needs to be harmonised: the way data is captured and collected, or the way it is exchanged? It is clear to see that there are many options to track, register and identify a bicycle stemming different business models and options, which is a good thing. But there is a clear need to ensure that data collected across various countries is understood across various countries, so that bike stolen in France can be tracked back in Germany for example. This is thus likely to launch a new discussion with the European Commission to which Cycling Industries Europe will be actively shaping.

4. The importance of cycling data continues to grow

In conversations across the four-day event, I was constantly reminded about the lack of cycling data available to inform better policy making for cycling. Whether this be for safer infrastructure or better services such as cycle logistics operations, it was clear that the lack of data is impeding more and better cycling. CIE organised two sessions with the aim to address exactly this, the first focussing on “Floating Bike Data”, and the second on the growing part of cycle logistics in last mile delivery.

For those wondering what “Floating Bike Data” is, I think it can best be summed up by data that provides information on the actual GPS trace of a cycling trip. When aggregated with the data from many other cyclists, this information can be used by policy makers to plan out better cycling infrastructure and networks within a city or region. This data set is ubiquitous in the automotive sector, being essential for traffic management services, however in cycling it is a piece of the data puzzle that is sorely missing. CIE’s session brought together partners from the MegaBITS project (including the project coordinators Mobycon and the implementing partner the City of Enschede), Vianova and Strava to elaborate on what Floating Bike Data is (Mobycon), how it is being collected (in the city of Enschede) and how it can not only be analysed, but how insights could be drawn from this data for better cycling infrastructure, community development and urban planning and infrastructure policy (Vianova and Strava).

In a similar vein, CIE held a cycle logistics session bringing together the cycle logistics associations from Belgium (BCLF), Germany (RLDV) and Urbike, a cycle logistics operator active in Brussels, Gent and Leuven. Here too the role of data was highlighted as being a crucial element in measuring and building the case for more cycle logistics operations throughout Europe. A key figure in all of this is the BCLF’s aim to achieve a 33 percent share of trips for goods and service delivery by bike by 2030, and how much more efficient cargo bikes can be in urban environments in comparison to vans and cars. The growing body of data here shows the crucial role cycle logistics can play in improving the carbon footprint of last mile delivery and how the cargo bikes can help the logistics sector meet the numerous challenges it’s facing right now.