More and more people are walking and cycling in cities around the World – the trend was there already, but the COVID pandemic boosted both the need for and political focus on walking and cycling as a way of getting around our cities in our everyday lives achieving greener, more climate friendly, healthier, safer and more space efficient cities around the world. 

Data on pedestrians and cyclists is not systematically collected, has limitations and can be difficult to compare and benchmark. Data on walking and cycling is important for cities to set goals and targets, create the policies needed to reach these goals, to track progress and make decisions about investments in infrastructure and planning measures that support walking and cycling. Lack of data also means that walking and cycling is often missing or overlooked in the transport and mobility ecosystem – because what is not measured does not count. 

To find the gaps and needs for walking and cycling data a so-called Green Paper was carried out by Ramboll with selected partners in 2022. The questions to find out challenges, needs and future opportunities were elaborated by interviewing a selection of international walking and cycling data experts, partners and supporters of the project. Addition to interviewing and workshopping with the selected project stakeholders, an online survey, called “global survey” was made for about 50 public authorities to help qualify our findings – on a global level. The project partnered with eleven public authorities of different geography, size and level of walking and cycling as well as the two leading NGO’s for walking and cycling in Europe. In addition to partners and to reach out to public authorities outside partners’ primarily Northern Europe geography, project got support from the 9 international cities and regions by participating in our survey and following in-depth interviews alongside our partners.