Share: Essential Evidence
Top line: News media coverage can shape public understandings of issues and influence policy and behaviours. Research into newspaper coverage in different cities shows that where there are significant increases in cycling, newspaper articles are more likely to be positive than negative.
Top line: Public bicycle sharing schemes can deliver highly significant reductions in avoidable deaths as a result of people starting to cycle. Such schemes aimed at encouraging commuters to cycle are worth implementing in other cities, not only for the health benefits but also for potential co-benefits such as a reduction in air pollution and greenhouse gases.
Top line: As the appetite for foreign policy lessons increases greater understanding about policy transfer in the transport arena might offer new opportunities for accelerating progress towards more sustainable policies that are appropriate to specific contexts.
Top line: Positive changes in self-reported performance outcomes of white-collar employees are mostly linked to the mood changes brought about by exercise.
Top line: There are people for whom cycling is attractive and possible due to bicycle ownership but who have yet to take up this mode or with any regularity. Targeting young adults and those in higher social income groups appears to offer an effective means, in the short-term, to attract new cyclists. Some of these will previously have travelled by car.
Top line: Government has recognised the evidence that pedestrians, cycle and public transport users provide as much if not more spending power than car users in town centres. This supports the case for investment in active and low carbon travel in retail areas and corrects a common misconception.
West of England
