Bicycle Access to Public Transportation: Learning from Abroad

w bile the United States has been investing in costly park-and-ride systems that have made transit increasingly dependent on the automobile, European and Japanese communities have been strengthening the potential for people to walk and bicycle to and from transit, boosting ridership at a far lower cost. In Japan and much of Europe, the fastest-growing and often predominant access mode to suburban express transit services is the bicycle.’ Despite rapid growth in the number of motor vehicles, suburbanization, and the emergence of polycentric metropolitan areas, bicycle access to most European and Japanese railways has gained market share at the same time that bus and walk access has declined. Access to and from public transportation is one of the most important roles for the bicycle in the late twentieth century, especially in larger cities. Bike-andride services expand the potential market area of express public transportation at low cost without the very high air pollution emission and energy use rates per VMT, excessive space requirements, and high capital costs of automobile parkand-ride systems. While park-and-ride enables those living in lower density areas to travel from home-to-transit stop, bike-and-ride systems providing secure overnight bicycle parking can facilitate both access and egress to transit, enabling travelers to get from transit stops to nearby workplaces and schools that are otherwise unreachable by transit. Bicycle access can be inwluable in adapting transit systems to the emergent suburbanized polycentric metropolitan land use patterns found in Europe, Japan, and North America.