IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v32y2014icp180-185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘No bicycle lanes!’ Shouted the cyclists. A controversial bicycle project in Curitiba, Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Duarte, Fábio
  • Procopiuck, Mario
  • Fujioka, Kelli

Abstract

After many years without any substantial improvement in bicycle infrastructure in Curitiba, a 4-km Leisure Bicycle Lane was implemented in the central area of the city in 2011. The project was one of several that City Hall hurriedly implemented following pressure from bike activists. On the Sunday the project was launched, more than three thousand cyclists are estimated to have used the bicycle lane; of these, 300 cycled alongside the lane, outside it, against it. They made the front pages of newspapers, disrupted the sociotechnical framework of bicycle policy in the city and put bicycles on the political agenda of the municipal elections. This paper discusses why, in a city renowned worldwide for its public transportation system and for having more than a 100km of bicycle lanes, a bicycle project failed after being sabotaged by cyclists and was definitively abandoned in February 2013. Based on interviews with key actors, including public officials, journalists, and bicycle activists, this paper concludes that the failed bicycle lane unveils the profound and urgent social and political dimensions embedded in what had been presented by municipal authorities as a neutral technical solution.

Suggested Citation

  • Duarte, Fábio & Procopiuck, Mario & Fujioka, Kelli, 2014. "‘No bicycle lanes!’ Shouted the cyclists. A controversial bicycle project in Curitiba, Brazil," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 180-185.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:32:y:2014:i:c:p:180-185
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2014.01.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X14000250
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tranpol.2014.01.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Broach, Joseph & Dill, Jennifer & Gliebe, John, 2012. "Where do cyclists ride? A route choice model developed with revealed preference GPS data," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1730-1740.
    2. Miranda, Hellem de Freitas & Rodrigues da Silva, Antônio Nélson, 2012. "Benchmarking sustainable urban mobility: The case of Curitiba, Brazil," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 141-151.
    3. Pucher, John & Buehler, Ralph & Seinen, Mark, 2011. "Bicycling renaissance in North America? An update and re-appraisal of cycling trends and policies," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 45(6), pages 451-475, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kwiatkowski Michał Adam, 2024. "Bicycle critical mass events 30 years on – are they an urban mobility movement or a bicycle festival?," Environmental & Socio-economic Studies, Sciendo, vol. 12(2), pages 28-39.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Chih-Hao & Akar, Gulsah & Guldmann, Jean-Michel, 2015. "Do your neighbors affect your bicycling choice? A spatial probit model for bicycling to The Ohio State University," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 122-130.
    2. Fitch, Dillon T. & Handy, Susan L., 2020. "Road environments and bicyclist route choice: The cases of Davis and San Francisco, CA," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    3. Bhat, Chandra R. & Dubey, Subodh K. & Nagel, Kai, 2015. "Introducing non-normality of latent psychological constructs in choice modeling with an application to bicyclist route choice," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 341-363.
    4. Burke, Charles M. & Scott, Darren M., 2016. "The space race: A framework to evaluate the potential travel-time impacts of reallocating road space to bicycle facilities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 110-119.
    5. Houde, Maxime & Apparicio, Philippe & Séguin, Anne-Marie, 2018. "A ride for whom: Has cycling network expansion reduced inequities in accessibility in Montreal, Canada?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 9-21.
    6. Seungkyu Ryu, 2020. "A Bicycle Origin–Destination Matrix Estimation Based on a Two-Stage Procedure," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-14, April.
    7. Yeran Sun & Yunyan Du & Yu Wang & Liyuan Zhuang, 2017. "Examining Associations of Environmental Characteristics with Recreational Cycling Behaviour by Street-Level Strava Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-12, June.
    8. Milakis, Dimitris & Athanasopoulos, Konstantinos, 2014. "What about people in cycle network planning? applying participative multicriteria GIS analysis in the case of the Athens metropolitan cycle network," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 120-129.
    9. Bagloee, Saeed Asadi & Sarvi, Majid & Wallace, Mark, 2016. "Bicycle lane priority: Promoting bicycle as a green mode even in congested urban area," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 102-121.
    10. Ma, Liang & Ettema, Dick & Ye, Runing, 2021. "Determinants of bicycling for transportation in disadvantaged neighbourhoods: Evidence from Xi’an, China," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 103-117.
    11. Zhao, Chunli & Carstensen, Trine Agervig & Nielsen, Thomas Alexander Sick & Olafsson, Anton Stahl, 2018. "Bicycle-friendly infrastructure planning in Beijing and Copenhagen - between adapting design solutions and learning local planning cultures," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 149-159.
    12. Sanders, Rebecca L, 2013. "Examining the Cycle: How Perceived and Actual Bicycling Risk Influence Cylcing Frequency, Roadway Design Preferences, and Support for Cycling Among Bay Area Residents," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt1tf5v738, University of California Transportation Center.
    13. Sanders, Rebecca L., 2016. "We can all get along: The alignment of driver and bicyclist roadway design preferences in the San Francisco Bay Area," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 120-133.
    14. Weber, Johann, 2017. "Policy entrepreneurs and opportunities: Establishing a model of policy change through bicycle infrastructure at the municipal level," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 252-263.
    15. Sanders, Rebecca Lauren, 2013. "Examining the Cycle: How Perceived and Actual Bicycling Risk Influence Cycling Frequency, Roadway Design Preferences, and Support for Cycling Among Bay Area Residents," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt6ct7x8hp, University of California Transportation Center.
    16. Ziwen Ling & Christopher R. Cherry & John H. MacArthur & Jonathan X. Weinert, 2017. "Differences of Cycling Experiences and Perceptions between E-Bike and Bicycle Users in the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-18, September.
    17. Stefan Flügel & Nina Hulleberg & Aslak Fyhri & Christian Weber & Gretar Ævarsson, 2019. "Empirical speed models for cycling in the Oslo road network," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 1395-1419, August.
    18. Levy, Nadav & Golani, Chen & Ben-Elia, Eran, 2019. "An exploratory study of spatial patterns of cycling in Tel Aviv using passively generated bike-sharing data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 325-334.
    19. Anowar, Sabreena & Eluru, Naveen & Hatzopoulou, Marianne, 2017. "Quantifying the value of a clean ride: How far would you bicycle to avoid exposure to traffic-related air pollution?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 66-78.
    20. John Stehlin, 2015. "Cycles of Investment: Bicycle Infrastructure, Gentrification, and the Restructuring of the San Francisco Bay Area," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 47(1), pages 121-137, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:32:y:2014:i:c:p:180-185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.