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Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917

Transport Research Arena (TRA) Conference

Transport Research Arena (TRA) Conference
“Bike trains” to school to increase cycling adoption and bikeability:
“Bike trains” to school to increase cycling adoption and bikeability:
Results from the Lisbon city program
Results from the Lisbon city program
João Bernardinoa, Ricardo Sobrala,b, Luís Vieiraa,b, Inês Castro Henriquesc, Sofia Knapicc,
João Bernardinoa, Ricardo Sobrala,b, Miguel
Luís Vieira Cambão
a,b
, Inês
c Castro Henriquesc, Sofia Knapicc,
Miguel Cambãoc
Bicicultura CRL, Lisbon, Portugal
a
b
CERIS - Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability, Lisbon, Portugal
c
Direção Municipal de Mobilidade
a
Bicicultura- Câmara Municipal
CRL, Lisbon, de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Portugal
b
CERIS - Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability, Lisbon, Portugal
c
Direção Municipal de Mobilidade - Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
Abstract
Travel to school is often a major car trip generator and a cause of traffic congestion in the surroundings of schools. To tackle this,
the municipality of Lisbon launched in 2020 a bike train to school scheme with 16 lines operated in 12 schools. This work describes
Travel
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builtwork describes
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when cycling process
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is possible resultsupobtained
to scale from the
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while of the
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levels and a
adherence
parental
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satisfaction of participating children.
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changesshow consistent
indicated demandinfor
an increase thethe service across
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and parents, infrastructure
yet further is absent,
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Keywords: under
Active responsibility
travel; of the Parental
Cycling to school; scientific committee
attitudes; of the change;
Behavioral Transport Research
Local Arena
government; (TRA) planning
Transport Conference
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Transport Research Arena (TRA) Conference
Keywords: Active travel; Cycling to school; Parental attitudes; Behavioral change; Local government; Transport planning

1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Cycling to school has been identified as an effective way of tackling car congestion at peak hours in schools’
surroundings, reducing
Cycling to school has air
beenpollution, increasing
identified physical activity
as an effective way of levels (Chillón
tackling et al., 2012)atand
car congestion improving
peak hours inchildren’s
schools’
physical and mental health. Among the programs aimed at increasing bike-to-school in student population
surroundings, reducing air pollution, increasing physical activity levels (Chillón et al., 2012) and improving children’s are bike
trains
physical and mental health. Among the programs aimed at increasing bike-to-school in student population are their
(also called bike buses), which can be generally described as an adult guided caravan of children riding bike
bicycles
trains to school.
(also Previous
called bike buses),research provides
which can information
be generally on implementation
described processes
as an adult guided andofoperational
caravan results
children riding of
their
these programs, although they are scarce in the literature and limited in scope, especially for starting
bicycles to school. Previous research provides information on implementation processes and operational results of cities where
bicycleprograms,
these modal share is around
although 1%.scarce
they are This in
document describes
the literature and the results
limited of the especially
in scope, post-intervention assessment
for starting of the
cities where
bicycle modal author.
* Corresponding share Tel.:
is around 1%. This document describes the results of the post-intervention assessment of the
+351-917-837-992.
E-mail address: ricardosobral@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +351-917-837-992.
E-mail address: ricardosobral@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
2352-1465 © 2022 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review
2352-1465 ©under
2022responsibility
The Authors.of Published
the scientific
bycommittee
ELSEVIERofB.V.
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This is anResearch Arenaarticle
open access (TRA)under
Conference
the CC BY-NC-ND license
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Transport Research Arena (TRA) Conference

2352-1465 © 2023 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Transport Research Arena (TRA) Conference
10.1016/j.trpro.2023.11.670
 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917 1911
2 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

these programs, although they are scarce in the literature and limited in scope, especially for starting cities where
bicycle modal share is around 1%. This document describes the results of the post-intervention assessment of the
“Bike Trains” Municipal Program in Lisbon, Portugal. A first research question referred to whether such an initiative
would find adherence by users in a context (Lisbon) of yet very low cycling use, with a cycling modal share of 1,7%
in 2021 (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 2021), limited dedicated cycling infrastructure and hilly areas. The second
research question referred to whether the initiative promoted a behavior change towards more cycling in the target
population.

1.1. Background

Recognizing the need to reduce the number of trips to school by car to achieve a global reduction of car use in the
city, the municipality of Lisbon launched in 2018 a School Mobility Program comprising different strategies aimed at
increasing the levels of public transport use, walking and biking to school in both public and private institutions. The
program also includes the creation of kiss & ride lanes for cars, weekly no car traffic zones around schools and the
yearly survey Mãos ao Ar, adapted from Sustrans’ Hands Up Scotland survey. The results show that close to half of
children’s trips to school are passively made by car as passengers. Only a tiny fraction of children travel by bicycle to
school (1,5%).
Table 1. Mãos ao Ar survey results in Lisbon (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 2022).
Year 2019 2020 2021
Respondents 47141 39883 38078
Schools (total) 188 159 179
Private schools 71 52 56
Public schools 117 107 123
Modal split
Car as passenger 48,6% 51,4% 48,2%
Walking (exclusively) 23,4% 24,2% 25,8%
Bus 15,5% 13,1% 14,1%
Underground 5,1% 3,5% 4,9%
Train 2,5% 2,0% 2,2%
School bus 1,3% 1,5% 1,4%
Cycling (inc. scooter, rollerblades, 1,0% 1,5% 1,5%
skate)
Motorcycle 1,0% 0,8% 0,9%
Tram 0,5% 0,4% 0,4%
Other (boat, taxi, ride hailing, etc.) 1,1% 1,6% 0,6%

The percentage of students who walk or bike to school has declined in recent decades (Nalmpantis, 2021), a trend
that is strongly associated with increased distance to school over time (McDonald, 2007). However, many children
would prefer to cycle instead of being driven to school (Larouche et al., 2016). Strategies designed to promote active
travel to school were found to be associated with higher percentages of students walking or biking (Jones and Sliwa,
2016), which indicates a potential demand for programs such as bike trains that can encourage both children and
parents to try cycling to school.

1.2. Bicycle train interventions

Examples of bicycle train interventions (BTI) can be found in Europe and North America, although few studies are
available in the literature (Hidalgo et al., 2016). One possible explanation might be the more recent nature of BTIs,
which have been developed as a natural extension of Walking School Buses interventions (Larouche and Mendonza,
2018). Previous research offers descriptions of the planning, implementing and monitoring stages of BTIs (Hidalgo
et al., 2016) and evidence of increased mean percentage of cycling daily commutes made by intervention participants
(Mendoza et al., 2017) and positive changes in self-efficacy of children, parents and parent outcome expectations
1912 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917
João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000 3

(Huang et al., 2018). Mendonza et al. (2017) and Huang et al. (2018) studies are based on the same pilot cluster
Randomized Control Trial of a BTI in two schools that primarily serve a racially/ethnically diverse population of low
socioeconomic status families.
The built environment and availability of cycling infrastructure have been shown to influence the decision to use
the bicycle, however it remains unclear how BTIs are affected by these factors. In Mendonza et al. (2017), measures
to characterize the bike-related environment of participant’s home address were used as covariate in analyses.

1.3. The setup of the bike trains program in Lisbon

As an extension of a successful pilot program conducted in 2019, which was inspired by a citizen initiative carried
out since 2015, the Lisbon Municipality decided to officially launch a city program for developing bike trains to
school, which was operated professionally by Bicicultura CRL. The initial project scope for the school year 2020-21
was to create bike trains in five schools from distinct geographical settings, and targeting children between 5 and 12
years-old.
Resulting from previous pilot indications, in each school, the program would run once a week, with regular
schedules. The program would entail the full range of the development of this new mobility service, including
implementation, operation and assessment of the initiative. The initial approach of the municipality of Lisbon for a
model of operation was based on that each circulation of a bike train would be led by a professional marshal, trained
for bicycle train operations, who would be responsible for guaranteeing the safety and reliability of the bike train
service. However, a participation of the local community (particularly parents) was envisaged to support the guidance
of the children caravan in safety. The program was expanded beyond the five schools initially planned and, in some
schools where the local community was found to be particularly committed (either by parents or the local boroughs),
the implementation team tested models of operation which passed more responsibilities to members of the community
in the bike train guidance and operational communication of the service to parents. The distinct approaches to different
bike train lines were made in the spirit of testing and learning to develop the service to become more efficient,
impactful and scalable, a process that is ongoing.
The choice of schools for the intervention followed two main criteria. The first one was that the context of the
school should reveal a good potential for a bike train initiative, particularly that it would result in a relevant demand
for the service. For that purpose, a preliminary study was made to assess the demand potential of schools which
considered multiple criteria like the existing infrastructure, the orography of the area, the population density of the
area, the size of the school and the pre-existence of some bicycle use. The demand potencial criterion therefore
intended to maximize the chances that the first steps of the initiative would be successful in terms of generating
interest.
The second criterion of school choice was partially contrary to the first one: the choice of schools should be diverse
in terms of geographical and social setting. The underlying goals of this criterion were both the promotion of diversity
of access and the ability to test the initiative across different contexts. This implied selecting schools with a sub-
optimal potential for adhesion to the service. In terms of cycling infrastructure, the first schools of the program
included bike train lines with almost 100% of the routes done in dedicated cycling infrastructure and also bike train
lines along routes with no bicycle paths at all.
While the beginning of the program in school year 2020/21 had the goal of introducing bike trains in 5 schools, the
program could be expanded throughout the year and ended covering 12 schools and 16 bike train lines.
 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917 1913
4 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

Fig. 1. Spatial distribution of schools with bicycle train programs in Lisbon, school year 2020-2021.

2. Methodology

The methodology of evaluation of the program was inspired by the MaxSumo approach (Hyllenius, 2009), which
is specially focused on the assessment of new mobility services. Its main concept consists of evaluating not only end
results but also intermediate results, as well as actions and project components which are crucial for achieving success.
Through this approach, a fine mapping of the action-result flows is undertaken, so that it can be used to identify
precisely (i) which are the key constraints for obtaining positive end results and (ii) what actions or processes
contribute the most for delivering the end goals. This mapping relied on the Customer Journey analysis, which is
applied in product management to understand the motivations and behavior of service of clients within the
“acquisition” phase. Typically, it consists of a direct consultation of clients (e.g. through surveys and interviews) and
is centered on the evaluation of the touchpoints of the user journey concerning the actions, emotions, motivations and
barriers to adoption. According to these concepts, the assessment was divided into two main stages - process and
results - for which some main objectives and indicators were selected. For synthesis purposes, a subset of the most
relevant is presented in Table 2.
Table 2. Stages, objectives and main indicators for evaluation of the initiative.
Stage Objectives Main indicators
And an ent1. Process
Service acquisition Parents register their children for # (number) of children that are registered for participation
participation
Interaction with service customers Parents and children effectively # of children participating in bike-train circulations
adhere to the service provided
Service use Parents and children use the level of satisfaction with the service
service with satisfaction % of school population participating in bike-train circulations
2. Results
Service execution Operate the bike-train trips # bike-train circulations
Service use Maximize service use # and % of children that participate frequently (5 or more times)
# of children participants
# of passengers-trip
# of passengers/trip
Capacity building Develop children and parents’ % of children whose autonomy in bicycling increased
autonomy in using the bicycle for
mobility
Sustainable mobility Reduce private car use # of private car trips averted by transporting children by bicycle
# of passengers-kilometer
Indirect effects Promote bicycle use by % of children that increased their bicycling frequency
participants and non-participants
1914 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917
João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000 5

% of parents that used bicycle for mobility for the first time

Data was collected according to the following sources:

● Sign-up sheets through an online platform hosted in Lisbon’s municipal website;

● Bike train trip logs, including record of effective number of participants in each trip;
● Survey delivered to children’s legal guardians;
● Qualitative feedback of adult marshals (including parents participating in bike-train trips).

For the purpose of this study, the results presented are related to the two research questions introduced: 1) Would
the bike train initiative find adhesion by the target group in a context of very low cycling use and limited dedicated
infrastructure? And 2) would the initiative contribute to cycling adoption.

3. Results

During the course of the program, 211 children registered for participating, with circa 87% (183) effectively
participating in bike train trips. Most (62%) were between ages 7 and 9. The percentage of female participants was
46%, which compares to 26% of female bicyclists in Lisbon (Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, 2021). The children
registered in the activity correspond to 5,6% of the total student population in the selected schools (N=3710).
A total number of 298 circulations was secured, with a growing monthly trend throughout the school year, except
for February/March 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Fig. 2. Evolution of monthly bike-train circulations in the school year 2020-2021, with decomposition per school (CB).

Fig. 3. Evolution of monthly bike-train passengers transported in the school year 2020-2021, with decomposition per school (CB).
 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917 1915
6 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

The number of passengers transported also trended upwards, reaching more than 600 children-trips by June 2021
and traveling a total of more than 3200 kilometers combined. The average number of participants per trip is shown in
Table 3. Data shows high variability across schools.
Table 3. Average number of participants per circulation, aggregated and per school, and in percentage of participants.
CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 CB6 CB7 CB8 CB9+CB10+CB1 Aggregated
(2 schools) 1
8.2 8.9 4.0 3.11 6.0 2.1 7.3 17.9 15.7 5.8
(34%) (36%) (63%) (60%) (50%) (70%) (66%) (69%) (54%) (52%)

Table 4 showcases the number of participants that have joined in at least five trips, which intends to establish a
reference framework for regular attendances, also in proportion with the number of participants per line. Note however
that percentages are skewed due to some lines having a far lower number of total circulations (CB8 and CB9 had,
respectively, only 7 and 6 circulations).
Table 4. Number and percentage of participants that joined five or more times.
CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 CB6 CB7 CB8 CB9+CB10+CB11 Aggregated
(2 schools)
20 16 25 11 13 3 8 17 7 120
(83%) (64%) (78%) (100%) (59%) (100%) (73%) (66%) (24%) (66%)

The satisfaction and behavior questionnaire delivered to parents at the end of the school year received a total of
115 replies, corresponding to more than half of the children registered in the program. Results polled indicated that
with the bike train solution, 63% of children’s rides to school shifted from private car to bicycling (see Table 5).
Table 5. Mode of transport most often used in trips replaced by bike-train trips
Private car Walking Cycling Public Transport Motorcycle
63% 26% 7% 3% 1%

Regarding their assessment of behavior change, parents were asked to state on a scale from 1 to 10, how strongly
they agreed with some statements focused on cycling for both mobility and leisure purposes. The results are shown in
Fig 4.

Fig. 4. Results from the behavior change section of the questionnaire delivered to parents.
1916 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917
João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000 7

Parents were also asked to rank, on a scale from 1 to 10, their likelihood of recommending the initiative to someone
else (see Fig.6). 97% of respondents considered a value equal or greater than 8, and 85% assigned the maximum score.

Fig. 5. Parent satisfaction scores concerning the initiative

4. Discussion and next steps

The implementation of bike trains serving schools in the city of Lisbon has been a test to the interest of parents,
children and schools in such an initiative in a context with a yet very low adoption of the bicycle for mobility and in
a built environment with limited bicycle friendly options. Apart from a single community based experience in a
neighborhood with above the average conditions for cycling, it was to be proven that such a service would be adhered
to by the population and relevant institutions. The first year of the bike trains program has shown a relevant adhesion
in almost all targeted schools. An average of 6% of the target school population engaged in cycling to school (in most
cases, for the first time) with the bike train lines that were created. Each circulation of a bike train had on average 6
children participating; while this is not a very large number, it demonstrates that the train is seeked by a share of the
community. Also, it was observed that most participating children have done so on a regular basis (65% of participants
have joined five or more times). A very high satisfaction score was registered among parents that replied to a
satisfaction and behavior questionnaire, with 85% of the respondents attributing the maximum satisfaction score (10
out of 10 points). This happened in schools with some diversity of geographical, social, orographic and mobility
infrastructure contexts. The immediate conclusion was that it is possible to launch and obtain a positive adherence to
bike train services in a starting city context, with an underdeveloped mobility cycling culture.
Parent-reported behavior changes indicated an increase in the utilitarian use of the bicycle among both children
and parents. 63% of the respondents used the car to take their children to school and 77% declared that their children
used the bicycle more often in other activities after participating in the bike train. 9 out of 10 respondents felt that their
child became more capable of autonomously using the bicycle. Regarding parents’ use of the bicycle, 10% have stated
that they tried using the bicycle for mobility purposes for the first time after the bike train, 35% had already used the
bicycle for mobility and 55% have yet not done so. Therefore, 15% of the respondent parents who had never used the
bicycle for mobility trips before the bike train initiative, did it for the first time after the program. 46% of respondents
stated that since their child started participating in the bike train program, they themselves used the bicycle more often
for travel purposes. Finally, 75% stated that the bike train initiative increased the chances that they would use the
bicycle as a mode of transport in the future. Even if these results are based on declared (rather than observed) behavior
and potentially biased by a self selecting sample (of parents who decided to reply to the survey), they strongly suggest
that there are significant effects of the initiative in triggering a short-term adoption of the bicycle by parents and a
strengthening of the cycling culture among children that will increase the likelihood that they will choose the bicycle
for their travels in the future.
Future research should consider the comparability and validation of these results with similar studies. Additional
topics of future research may examine the effects of socioeconomic status and community engagement in the
adherence to the bike trains program and the long term effects of participation in mobility patterns of children and
 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 72 (2023) 1910–1917 1917
8 João Bernardino et al. / Transportation Research Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

parents. The role of caretakers in encouraging or deterring children to autonomously cycle to school may also be
considered.

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