Explore the Evolution of Urban Mobility

“Os 10 mandamentos fundamentais de toda a circulação”, Boletim Oficial do Automóvel Club de Portugal 15, 1930: 9, 10

“The public road belongs to everyone. The public road is only for transport purposes. It is not a place of conversation, not a place of play, not a kennel, not a chicken coop.”

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Explore Lisbon’s Cycling History at Hi-BicLab

Hi-BicLab has an interdisciplinary team with prior and on-going research on the history and the present of Lisbon’s urban mobility and socio-territorial inequalities, and will promote cross-fertilisations between academic disciplines such as history of technology and mobility, geography, transport economics, public policies, societal engagement, architecture and urban planning. Furthermore, it partners with policymakers, activists, and citizens. It counts on two leading historians as consultants who have prior research and called for further investigations into mobilising a “usable past” to foster future sustainable urban mobilities (Di10; Oz16), and with whom we have closely worked with.

Explore Our Urban Mobility Insights

Despite Portugal being the largest bicycle producer in the European Union (Eurostat data for 2019), Lisbon’s cycling modal share is still rather low (below 1% in 2017) when compared to the European average (8%) (Fé20). By applying transition measures to encourage cycling – such as implementing cycling infrastructure and bicycle-sharing systems (Fé20) – Lisbon’s Municipality has engaged with pro-cycling agendas during the last decade. In fact, was hosted the European Cycling Federation’s Velo-City Conference in September,2021.

Transport studies have shown that the “hilliness” of the city doesn’t explain its low cycling modal share: 54% of the streets are almost flat, while 75% are “good enough for cycling” (below 5% grade) (Fé19; Fé20). Besides Lisbon’s perceived hilliness, other factors that might currently hinder the cycling modal share increase are starting to be identified, such as types of pavement, sense of unsafe bicycling or car drivers’ behaviour (Fé19). Identifying these barriers aims at supporting the design of policies to increase cycling levels in cities such as Lisbon with “low cycling maturity” (i.e., cities with low cycling modal share and little cycling infrastructure) (Fé19).

These alleged low “matured” cities are usually considered to have no historical experience with cycling (Fé19). But is this really so? History evidence that cycling mobilities were part of the past in cities like Lisbon. Furthermore, it also shows that the factors that have limited its use are historically rooted processes.