Conflicts of interest in the street space : A qualitative study in bicycle planning and a selection of municipalities’ handling conflicts of interest in a Swedish context

Sammanfattning: To enable a sustainable transport system and achieve a changed distribution of means of transport, there are national objectives to increase the proportion of passenger transport by foot, bicycle and public transport to at least 25 percent by 2025. An investment in these means of transport is also in line with Sweden's environmental goals and the milestone goal of reducing the transport sector's climate emissions by 70 percent by 2030 compared to the emission level in 2010. Many municipalities therefore aim to increase journeys with sustainable modes of transport. In order to make this possible, increased planning and expansion of the infrastructure for these means of transport is important, and in several municipalities’ street reconstruction is currently being done to create more space for the sustainable modes of transport. When measures to improve the infrastructure are being implemented, different interests and needs are placed against each other, and priorities must be defined. This results in a conflict of interest between the different means of transport, but also between the different means of transport and other interests. The purpose of the essay is to investigate what conflicts of interest exist between bicycle traffic and other interests in the street space, what happens if the need for space for bicycle traffic ends up in conflict with other needs and interests, and how this is handled by a number of municipalities. This has been investigated through a combination of methods consisting of a survey and interviews. Both the respondents and the interview participants work at municipalities that are part of the association Svenska Cykelstäder, an association that works for increased, better and safer cycling. The interviews form the basis of the study, while the survey has been a way of creating an understanding of whether, and if so in what way, different municipalities feel that there are conflicts of interest between bicycle traffic and other needs and interests and how these are usually handled. The results of the survey show that all respondents feel that there are conflicts of interest between bicycle traffic and other interests. The study shows that there are conflicts of interest between bicycle traffic and car traffic, public transport and pedestrian traffic. There are also conflicts of interest between bicycle traffic and other interests such as urban life, green spaces, surface for stormwater management and urban development. The study also shows that despite national goals that deal with prioritizing the sustainable modes of transport, the step from strategy or ambition to implementation is not obvious. The car norm is still strong, which means that it is difficult to implement measures that improve bicycle traffic at the expense of car traffic. The study shows that bicycle traffic has difficulty asserting itself against car traffic and public transport, which results in bicycle traffic being deprioritized in the street space which is already crowded. This is explained using the theories of path dependence and urban space wars. The study also shows that the basis that the municipalities have for handling conflicts of interest are usually the municipalities' guidelines for how the bicycle traffic infrastructure should be designed. It specifies the standards and widths that the bicycle road network should have, which means that the guidelines available for handling conflicts of interest are limited.