A Motorized Paradise?
During the 1990-2000 decade, Poland witnessed an unparalleled motorisation boom: a rapid growth in passenger car volume (from 135 up to ca. 240 cars per 1000 inhabitants) and their mileage. The fuel consumption figures in Poland grew from 3.7 to 5.4 million tons of petrol and from 4.7 to 6 million tons of diesel these years. This rapid growth was matched by an inadequate road infrastructure - which is particularly visible in cities - and no realistic and integral policy on both national and local levels. What was happening in 1990-2000 can be roughly described as chaotic attempts at implementing the "Predict and Provide" methodology, weakened by poor financing and low planning and organisational capacities or culture of the adequate authorities.

The real state of transport in Poland is rather influenced by highly stimulated consumerist appetites, aggressive media ad campaigns of the car producers and economic split of the society - rather than conscious and coherent actions of the decision makers. The developed Poland means lots of new cars, often purchased with bank loans, while the underdeveloped Poland B (small cities, countryside, many underprivileged people in large cities) is forced to use more and more expensive (and less and less frequent) public transport or the bicycle, with less and less possibilities to use them safely and conveniently.

The Poles and the bicycle
The Cities for Bicycles Project commissioned two nationwide polls on the attitudes towards utilitarian cycling in Poland. It turned out that the bicycle in Poland is used primarily as a commuter vehicle. It happens mostly in small villages and countryside. Moreover, as many as 12% of respondents said they cycled in winter (countryside dwellers).

The research shows that the bicycle potential in Poland in very large, if unexplored. First, the bicycle ownership is very widespread in Poland (52% say they own a bicycle, OBOP 1999), and 24.1% of the 8 largest cities inhabitants say that the bicycle is their "ideal" means of getting to work, school etc., only second to the car (BBS Obserwator, 2000). There is a vast support for the cycleway expenditure, even at the expense of road funding (60% of responses in both polls). This is a vivid contrast to very low use of bicycles in large cities (ca. 1.5% of all traffic) and extremely poor cycling infrastructure.

What is more, the lack of appropriate infrastructure (especially cycleways) seems to be the basic reason why people do not take up cycling (ca. 25% of the OBOP poll). The same poll shows that only 19% of Poles would not cycle under any circumstances!

We can thus assume that a suppressed potential for urban cycling exists. It is particularly strong in medium- and large size cities, where high housing densities support non-motorized transport. This is also an important factor: most of Polish cities is very compact and occupy little space, which again helps bicycle use.

There also is a huge potential for integrating bicycles with public transport, including railway lines in conurbations where dwelling patterns currently do not match the rail stations system by walking distances and the bicycle can be the cheapest connection in the transport chain.

Problems ahead...
Attempts at introducing cycling infrastructure to Polish cities date back to early 90's. Unfortunately, in most cases these attempts failed due to poor experience, lack of organizational and administrative capacities, legal barriers and low social and political awareness. An important factor - however in opinion of many NGOs only secondary to the aforementioned ones - was lack of financial resources. This argument is often raised by many decision makers.

It is however important to notice here that Polish cities spend hundreds of millions of zlotys on infrastructure investment that significantly increase (!) costs of cycling infrastructure implementation. It is worth noticing that the same investment budgets - if properly managed -could improve the cycling conditions in cities without significantly changing the currently planned outputs. Simultaneously, many of the existing examples of cycling infrastructure in Poland are just waste of money. The primary reason in poor quality: despite conforming with the official regulations many cycleways are uncomfortable and even pose danger to cyclists' health or even life!

Standardize, you fool!
The key to solve these problems is standardization and the quality management. Design and construction standards based upon the CROW "Sign Up for the Bike" manual (1993, Polish edition "Postaw na rower", PKE 1999) were adopted by the Municipality of Gdańsk and already led to implementation of high quality infrastructure (Hallera street segregated facility, Gdańsk, 2001).

Beside standards that must guarantee meeting the CROW criteria (coherence, directness, safety, comfort, attractiveness) - which means the design speed requirements, profiles, bends, surface quality, lightning, signposting etc.), appropriate structural and procedural solutions must be implemented. An official municipal transport policy document, including cycling policy is an example. Other include cycling officer that co-ordinates pro-cycling activities and the cycling audit procedure - or revising all investment and alteration planned by the municipality to find and eliminate possible contradictions with cycling policy and develop synergies.

Investment programs
When institutional solutions become implemented, local authorities may (or should) develop an investment programme aimed at increasing the bicycle transport in city. A good example may be the two-year investment program in Gdańsk, co-financed by the Global Environment Facility (1 million US dollars) and the municipality (1.5 million USD).

The Gdańsk program uses the design standards and the economic efficiency principles (minimization of financial inputs, maximization of expected social and environmental benefits). The latter forces limiting the costly segregated facilities investment, calls for precise locations implied by the present journey matrix and demands bicycle friendly integration of car and bicycle traffic where possible (traffic-calmed streets, contra-flow bicycle lanes, etc.). Simultaneously, the newly built segregated facilities must be fully integrated with the whole transport network, and the design speed for cycling system should be 30-40 km/h. Here again the question of quality requirements and standardization arises.

More information on bicycle infrastructure in cities, polls and a web resources library may be found at the Cities for Bicycles website or inquired from the author (see website address and phonenumber above).