Central government efforts to improve conditions for cyclists

Cycling infrastructure features inadequate connectivity, road safety and direct routes – in other words, major shortcomings in accessibility. The central government is accountable, much more frequently than municipalities, for poor road conditions, both between commuter areas and within urban areas. The Swedish National Audit Office has found several fundamental obstacles that make the planning of central government cycling infrastructure more ineffective and complex than need be.

The identified shortcomings are due, in part, to legal obstacles. The requirement for a functional link between road and cycle path, that follows from the Swedish Transport Administration’s interpretation of the preparatory works for the Road Act (1971:948), means that the central government considers that it cannot lay detached cycle paths. Instead, the Swedish Transport Administration is obliged to lay cycle paths in the vicinity of national roads from which cyclists need to be offloaded. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that this impairs the possibility of building attractive, directly routed and accessible cycling infrastructure. It also likely reduces the cost-effectiveness of implementing national road measures.

The Swedish National Audit Office also finds that it is probable that a broader interpretation of the preparatory works for the Road Act can be made. Neither the Road Act nor its preparatory works include any explicit requirement for a certain distance between the roadway and the cycle path. The Swedish Transport Administration’s mandate should therefore allow it to lay certain detached cycle paths. At the same time, the Swedish National Audit Office considers that, based on the preparatory works, other obstacles persist. All in all, the current situation poses a clear risk of no actor claiming responsibility for cyclists’ accessibility, since planning and financing responsibilities are being shunted between central and local government.

The Swedish National Audit Office also considers that sufficiently clear requirements for accessibility are lacking both within the Swedish Transport Administration and in the governance of the agency. Furthermore, there are conflicting goals between accessibility and road safety on the one hand, and public economic benefit on the other, with a need for more concrete standards in the trade-off. In addition, the Swedish Transport Administration does not have a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of where accessibility falls short. There is no tool for cost-benefit analysis regarding cycling measures to facilitate making investments where the greatest benefit would be generated. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that this may explain why the central government is the road manager of a disproportionately large number of road sections on which cyclists are limited by inadequate road safety.

The shortcomings described above lead the Swedish National Audit Office to determine that there is no comprehensive picture of the measures that are needed within cycling. Concurrently, there are several reasons why the goals to improve cycling conditions have not had a clear effect in the national multi-modal plan for transport infrastructure. In this instance, the main problem is that the Swedish Transport Administration is not using the funds earmarked for cycling measures in the national plan and county plans at the intended pace. Only about half of the earmarked funds will be used by 2025, which will subsequently be replaced by new plans. Neither has the Government prioritised large-scale cycling measures in its instructions to the Swedish Transport Administration to develop a proposal for a national plan, nor in its own decision on which measures should be included.

The Government’s management has contributed to positive awareness-raising measures, such as the establishment of a national cycling council that produces a national cycling report every two years. However, the Swedish National Audit Office notes that there is a lack of focus on concrete measures to achieve the goal of more and safer cycling, and to realise the Riksdag’s intentions for interconnected cycling infrastructure.

Although the Government has issued numerous sets of instructions for amended traffic regulations aimed at improving conditions for cyclists, they have not led to any significant change. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that a primary reason for this is inadequate impact assessments in the Swedish Transport Agency’s investigations. The common denominator is that the impact assessments are based on rationale without any reference to an empirical basis, such as research or evaluations. The Swedish Transport Agency has assessed that United Nations conventions on road traffic and road signs and signals prevent certain regulatory amendments. The Swedish National Audit Office notes that this should have prompted the Swedish Transport Agency or the Government to take part in the United Nations expert group responsible for drawing up proposals for common definitions of cycling infrastructure among the convention countries.

The National Audit Office assesses that the quality of the cycling infrastructure built by the Swedish Transport Administration could be significantly improved. This is because the Swedish Transport Administration does not sufficiently consider all the relevant quality components, such as how well cycle paths are interconnected. The Swedish National Audit Office notes that planning and implementation processes for cycling measures (and other minor measures) are unnecessarily cumbersome and costly. As a result, planning costs sometimes account for more than half of total costs.