Page 273 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 3

Cihan Erçetin

were started to be manufactured, it was regarded as an instrument for
outdoor sports and leisure activities. Nowadays, bicycle is considered as a
modern type of urban transportation for daily access to education, health or
shopping, rather than just an instrument of entertainment (Kılınçaslan, 2012).
It is a fact, accepted in modern urban movement approaches today, that the
cycling is widely adopted as a clean and sustainable urban transport mode
for journeys in the cities. Cycling is a potential alternative to the use of cars in
cities, especially for short-distance trips. As an efficient urban transport mode,
the cycling, which means the use of bicycles for traveling from one point to
another, will be discussed together with the examples of best practices and
lessons learned, in the following sections of the research.

4. Best Practices

Many countries in different parts of the world fully embrace the importance
of cycling as a type of urban transport. According to Pucher and Buehler (2012)
central and local governments, in recent years, have been preparing some
urban policies and plans to realize the potential of bicycle use in order to
improve the sustainability of transportation systems and increase the livability
of cities. Programs and investments on bicycles have been highly developed
and become widespread in many cities of Europe, North America, Asia and
Australia. In the last two decades, the use of bicycles for transportation
purposes has become quite widespread in cities that can be called car-
oriented in Australia and the USA. Northern European countries, especially
Netherlands and Denmark, have a historical cycling culture and significantly
improve existing cycling infrastructures and policies that can boost bicycle
use. In addition, despite cycling was previously unpopular as a type of urban
transportation in some prominent cities of countries such as France and Spain,
policies that will increase the use of bicycles are being adopted more and
more every day, especially in major cities in these countries.
European cities are recognized with their high bicycle usage rates despite
various fluctuations in transportation from past to the present. Due to the
economic problems that arose after World War II, the lack of access to energy
and fossil fuels, disruptions in public transportation systems, the usage rate
of bicycles as a means of transportation among other modes has increased
significantly. The reason behind the decline in private vehicle use along with
the economic crises was the high fuel prices and the failing to repair the
damages on the road infrastructure caused during the war in a short time. Since
this fact restricted the use of private vehicles as required by the mentioned
circumstances, cycling emerged as the most payable and easy transportation
option for urban mobility. Along with the decrease in the impact of economic
crises, there have been significant drop in bicycle use in parallel with this.

258 Journal of Environment, Urbanization and Climate