By the time the economy recovered in 2018, Madrid implemented a much more comprehensive pollution reduction program that including
banning non-resident car traffic from the city center — but proponents stress that most of the cycling wins
prior to 2018 may be attributable to the slow lane model.
Who is the Madrid Model for?
What proponents of the Madrid Model lack, though, is the kind of comprehensive data that could
prove the unconventional strategy is serving all of the city’s citizens — or even improving matters much on key safety baselines.
Much like
most U.S. cities, Madrid relies heavily on
manual cyclist counts occurring on just one day of the year at a few fixed points throughout the urban grid. There’s also a paucity of easily accessible data on cycling fatalities from any year, because the country’s otherwise
voluminous crash statistics are not disaggregated by transportation mode at the city level.
So aside from a handful of occasional snapshot studies commissioned by international groups like Greenpeace, advocate groups like Madrid Ciclista have struggled to make the case with data that cycling safety in the city has improved at
all — just that it was pretty good
in 2018, after five years of the slow lanes program, in addition to the implementation of e-bike share and other possible interventions that have not been the subject of rigorous analysis.
Nor does the scarce data address the crucial question of
who is using the new lanes, aside from able-bodied, fearless, disproportionately male and white cyclists who are
more often willing to bike while surrounded by traffic. As impressive as Madrid’s rise in biking mode share number might seem, that actually has more to do with declines in car use than rises in biking: cycling adoption
on the whole has only risen by about one percent citywide since 2013.
Amsterdam vs. Madrid
Both these facts might seem like a blow to vehicular cyclists, who have long faced criticism from street safety advocates —
including some in the Streetsblog network. And the hard truth is, most data — scant though it is, at least when compared to the endless traffic studies we commission in the name of driver safety — simply doesn’t support the idea that cyclists are somehow safer when sharing the lane with drivers. One U.S. study even showed that streets with protected lanes have lower crash rates for both
cyclists and motorists— a huge score for team Scandinavia.
But proponents stress that the Madrid Model is not exactly the hardcore, anti-bikeway model lauded by controversial vehicular cycling advocates like the late
John Forester — because slower modes still have a dedicated lane, albeit an unprotected one riders have to enter by passing through a driving lane first, as they do at traditional intersections. And these same advocates argue that putting bikes in car traffic is the
only way to send a clear message that bikes, themselves,
are a part of traffic — and deserve all the privileges and legal protections afforded to drivers.
Regardless of how the debate shakes out, the all-but-certain impending global recession might decide the matter for us. That’s because the Madrid model is so inexpensive, some advocates predict that cities who want to build a comprehensive network of designated cycling spaces may soon have no choice but to choose it, or else do nothing at all.
“The [Scandinavian] models…made sense in the era of automobile expansion, when it implied progress,” says Madrid Ciclista in its
incendiary description of the Madrid Model, translated here by Streetsblog. “Now society has realized how impractical this conception of mobility is, and therefore this scheme is becoming obsolete. Cities like Amsterdam are… slaves of their past and cannot renounce the model that defines them, that is why they will be the last to join the trend that Madrid is setting and which will be the majority in Europe in a few years.”
It’s up to Americans to decide whether such a future would be a dream, a nightmare, or, more likely, simply better than what we have now — which is next to nothing.
