Rethinking Transport Infrastructure Investment Through the Lens of Bikenomics

It’s no secret that countries across Europe and around the world are facing a period of economic uncertainty. Sudden demands for defence spending, customs tariffs, and replacement of post-war infrastructure at the end of its lifespan are putting new strains on national budgets and forcing many governments to rethink their priorities in the face of a potential recession. If there is any silver lining to this dark cloud on the horizon, it is that these governments might also rethink their transport infrastructure investments; finally taking into consideration their true cost to society from construction to demolition.

These types of societal cost-benefit analyses are now quite common in the Netherlands, legally required by the national government for infrastructure projects of a certain budgetary value. By quantifying the benefits of getting people out of their cars and onto more active, sustainable, and efficient means of travel, they have become a game-changer when it comes to reallocating public funds from auto-focused infrastructure to ones that induce more walking, cycling, and public transport. This emerging field has been dubbed “bikenomics” and is responsible for some eye-catching projects in recent years, including parking facilities, rental schemes, and superhighways.

For example, when Utrecht cut the ribbon on the world’s largest bicycle parking structure, with a total of 12,500 spaces spanning four storeys underneath its central railway station in 2019, critics called the €30-million price tag “crazy”. But when the municipality applied a bikenomics lens to the ambitious project, they found the societal benefits far outweighed the costs and easily justified their contentious decision to reallocate much of the budget from a proposed multi-storey car parking structure elsewhere in the city. To begin, this external analysis put the cost of the parking facility (including amortisation, maintenance, and operation) at around one euro per user per day, whereas the cost of providing bus or tram travel was around three euros per user per day.

As a result, enabling cycling to the train station saved them millions in public transport subsidies each year. The savings were even more dramatic when compared to accommodating the equivalent amount of car travel to the station. The related negative externalities – such as traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, road safety, and public health – were calculated to cost society tens of millions of euros each year, even in the most optimistic scenarios.

Furthermore, it is widely known that a great deal of traffic congestion can be relieved by replacing a small proportion of cars with other modes. The provision of cycling and public transport supports this shift; allowing authorities to postpone or even supersede road expansions – such as widenings and flyovers – that would cost them billions of euros. By executing this type of analysis and considering the full economic impact of alternative scenarios – including doing nothing – cities like Utrecht can justify “extravagant” infrastructure investments, because they know it saves taxpayer money year after year.

A similar analysis was done to justify Dutch railways’ investment in OV-fiets (“public transport bicycle”) as a last-mile solution for its passengers. With over 22,500 bikes available to rent at 300 train stations across the country, the OV-fiets has been called a “blue and yellow miracle”. In a 2011 survey, 54% of OV-fiets users revealed they use the train more often because of its availability. And 8% admitted that, without it, they would drive a car door-to-door instead of using it as part of a bike–train trip. In 2024, researchers at Delft Technical University concluded that every euro invested in OV-fiets returns up to €2,40 in societal benefits, including improved accessibility, congestion, and health and safety outcome; all by inducing more train travel, more cycling, and less driving.

Looking ahead, the next frontier of bike infrastructure in the Netherlands are the doorfietsroutes; continuous cycling routes – enabled by the extended range of the e-bike – designed to cater to trips of five to fifteen kilometres, which cause the biggest traffic problems because they’re too short for the train and too long for the bus or bike. As a result, regions across the country are investing millions to connect residential, commercial, and educational hubs with direct and comfortable cycle paths, which often require bridges and tunnels to reduce the amount of stopping.

Early studies have shown these “cycle highways” create a positive shift in travel behaviour, with a 10% increase in biking probability for adjacent trips. Considering public health, travel times, road safety and maintenance, noise and air pollution and tourism, each euro invested is found to return €8,90 in societal benefits. In one specific case, officials who were skeptical of a €15-million cycling bridge across the Maas River as part of a 12 kilometre-long doorfietsroute between Cuijk and Nijmegen commissioned a cost-benefit analysis in 2020. It was predicted to save €114 million over its lifetime.

The amount of money the Dutch spend on cycling often seems extravagant to outsiders, but it happens because they view each penny as an investment – in a healthier and happier population, a low-congestion and low- maintenance road network, and a public realm where people want to spend time and money. This stretches far beyond a few ‘prestige projects’, and means building cohesive networks of high-quality cycling routes, reducing the speed and volume of cars filtering through the city, and combining cycling with public transport to capture the synergy between these two sustainable modes. Then and only then, when we consider the full cost of our mobility choices, will we stop asking whether we can afford to invest in cycling, and start asking whether we can afford not to.