Cycle City monitoring a challenge, says Sustrans

The DfT may struggle to demonstrate the impact its Cycling City Ambition grant has had on cycling levels in the eight cities because of data limitations, according to a report by Sustrans. 

The DfT appointed Sustrans (and WSP) to review and provide advice on monitoring arrangements in each of the eight Cycle City Ambition areas: Newcastle, Leeds, Greater Manchester, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol and Norwich. 

The DfT has already provided £77m to the cities, which, with match-funding, has seen £148m invested to the end of March 2015. A further £114m was pledged for the cities in November 2014. 

Sustrans says all cities are collecting scheme-specific data largely using user surveys and automatic cycle counters on new pieces of infrastructure.

But it says baseline data is problematic. “There has been little consistency in the manner or extent to which cities have collected baseline data for their Cycle City Ambition (CCA) interventions. In the absence of prescribed measures for monitoring and evaluation, there are few comparable data from these surveys, which all differed vastly in approach and delivery. Therefore, at the 2013/14 baseline, data is too disparate and inconsistent to establish pre-intervention levels of cycling across the cities.

“At present, it seems that it will be challenging to attribute any changes in cycling in the cities to the cycling investment. 

“However, the monitoring data that will be collected by cities might enable a ‘dosage effect’ or quasi-experimental evaluation design in the future. 

“For example, data from the intervention area might be compared with the wider city area and also potentially suitable non-treated areas/cities that have had similar historical trends in cycling to the areas of CCA investment. Through comparing with such areas, this will help to control contextual factors such as a general increase in cycling across the UK as a whole.”

Sustrans recommends that data is collected periodically during the ten-year programme at the location of interventions, and also city-wide to allow a stronger statement about attribution of any observed changes.