Impact of cycle lanes and public bike parking on bicycle commuting: How to achieve France’s cycling mode share target?

Despite its well-documented benefits, cycling accounts for only 5% of home-to-work journeys of less than 5 km in France. Towards sustainable transportation, the French government is embarking on a national target of 12% modal share by 2030. However, the limited knowledge of the quantitative impact of additional bicycle infrastructure on bicycle commuting and heterogeneity in municipalities makes it difficult to achieve an equitable nationwide distribution of bicycle infrastructure. To fill these gaps, this study investigates the impact of additional cycle lanes and public parking spaces on bicycle commuting in mainland France. Census data with 6.7 million observations are enriched with spatial information to build four correlated random error Logit models. The results show that a one-unit increase in the rate of cycle lanes increases bicycle commuting by approximately 21% and 15% in the municipality of residence and work, respectively. A one-unit increase in public parking space increases bicycle commuting by 5% and 1% in the municipality of residence and work, respectively. From a policy perspective, there are several conclusions: (1) there is potential for cycling in high-density areas given additional cycle lanes and parking spaces in the municipality of work; (2) medium and low-density areas would require more infrastructure in the municipality of residence; (3) reaching the national target would require jointly increasing the supply of cycle lanes and parking spaces by twofold. If treated as mutually exclusive, the target is achievable by increasing the length of the cycle lane 2.3 times or the parking spaces 17 times. These findings provide a strong policy basis for funding and allocating additional national bicycle infrastructure according to population density and cycling patterns. • Evaluated the impact of cycle lanes and parking spaces on bicycle commuting. • Used clustered standard error logit models with municipality correlated random-effects. • A unit increase in cycle lanes increases bike commuting by 21% at home and 15% at workplaces. • A unit increase in public parking space increases bicycle commuting by 5% at home and 1% at workplaces. • Bicycle infrastructure should increase twofold to achieve the national modal share target.