A challenge for a more sustainable urban mobility in Europe

As cities worldwide endeavor to make their transport portfolio more sustainable, cycling is increasingly relied on as an essential component. In Europe, especially in countries such as Netherlands or Denmark, this interest is not recent at all but, on the contrary, in other countries as Italy it is recent. The major consequence is that the infrastructural system must be gradually performed to the changing mobility and the integration of cycling paths must be outlined in urban mobility plans. To obtain these results, is very important to know where and when cyclists ride in the city and to have a detailed feedback about cyclists' real needs. Cyclists, in fact, while relatively small in numbers in proportion to motorized vehicles, have a high level of vulnerability, creating a significant need to better understand the specific features of this users group. For this reason, the city of Bologna promotes every year the European Cycling Challenge, a friendly city team competition among urban cyclists. At the end of the European Cycling Challenge, all GPS data collected through the app provide a very detailed and big amount of information on the behaviors of cyclists in the city. These data are very important for city planners, because they can check the efficacy of the existing cycle-lane network and they can plan the future of the mobility in their city based on the real needs of citizens.