Speaker
Description
Safe cycling infrastructure is vital to achieving higher rates of cycling in cities throughout the world. Cycling is a transport mode which offers wide-ranging health, social, environmental, and economic benefits. However, many cities are dominated by car use and lack safe cycling infrastructure, which reduces the viability of cycling for transport and fails to capitalise on the widespread latent demand for cycling throughout urban areas. Developing a better understanding of the barriers to the implementation of safe cycling infrastructure throughout the transport planning and decision-making process represents the next major frontier in cycling research.
This thesis identifies the institutional barriers to the implementation of safe cycling infrastructure from the perspective of local government staff, using Metropolitan Melbourne as a case study within the Anglo-American context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine local government staff members involved in the cycling infrastructure planning process in different areas across Metropolitan Melbourne. Participants were asked questions across themes of transport planning processes, safe cycling infrastructure perceptions, and institutional barriers to infrastructure implementation. Their responses were subsequently analysed through a theoretical framework of institutional dimensions, derived from Williamson’s 1998 institutional economics theory. These institutional dimensions included informal (e.g. societal norms), formal (e.g. rules/regulations), governance (e.g. government roles/structures), actions within the decision-making environment (e.g. infrastructure choices), and influences on the decision-making environment (e.g. community backlash).
The institutional analysis revealed a complex decision-making environment with an interplay of institutional factors across the institutional dimensions. This interplay between factors causes creation of multi-layered institutional barriers to the implementation of safe cycling infrastructure that require a concerted effort to address. These barriers include a major lack of funding for infrastructure, the societal norm of a strong car culture, transport governance power imbalance between state and local governments, outdated and car-oriented design guidelines relied upon by engineers, and a high burden of proof on cycling as a viable transport mode throughout the decision-making process relative to the dominant transport mode of car use. In addition, this thesis identified a stronger car culture in middle and outer areas of Melbourne relative to inner areas, but a consistent politicisation of the infrastructure decision-making process throughout the metropolitan area.
The findings of this thesis have implications for existing theory. The pervasive impact of the system of automobility (Urry, 2004) is evident in the context of Melbourne. Furthermore, the transport planning decision process in Melbourne presents a systemic bias towards car-oriented infrastructure that links to Walker et al.’s (2022) theory of motonormativity. The findings also provide direction for future policy action. An important focus for governments is to legitimise cycling as a viable transport mode and provide the infrastructure that is needed to allow behavioural change to occur. By providing an enhanced understanding of the institutional environment within transport planning, this thesis will help policymakers to navigate the decision-making environment while attempting to overcome the barriers to implementing safe cycling infrastructure in Melbourne and other similar Anglo-American cities.
References
Urry, J., 2004. The ‘system’ of automobility. Theory, culture & society, 21(4-5), pp.25-39.
Walker, I., Tapp, A. and Davis, A., 2023. Motonormativity: how social norms hide a major public health hazard. International Journal of Environment and Health, 11(1), pp.21-33.
Williamson, O.E., 1998. Transaction cost economics: how it works; where it is headed. De economist, 146, pp.23-58.
| Keywords | cycling; institutional environment; safe cycling infrastructure; implementation barriers; transport planning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
