Good practice:

Bus&Bike Service – Promoting innovative intermodality solutions in Madeira

The city of Funchal is characterized by hilly land and narrow street and this situation does not make simple bicycles usage. Therefore, the public transport (PT) operator strived to assemble a solution for cyclists by integrating bicycles within its PT daily operation.
The practice consists of promoting intermodality between transport modes by facilitating the bike use where possible and provide car independent access solutions to reach other destinations. Hence, in 2010 under CIVITAS MIMOSA project, Horários do Funchal (HF) launched the Bus&Bike service, an innovative pilot test aimed to integrate the PT service with the bicycle’s transportation.
The PT operator implemented specific infrastructures for PT users to promote the use of the existing PT network and bikes, linking steep areas to flatter ones. The solution required the installation of bike racks in the back of the buses and the installation of bike parking facilities next to specific interchange bus stations. PT users were able to hang their bicycles on the back of the bus. Clear instructions were provided at the bus and it was set a communication strategy using posters, brochures, roll-ups, to disseminate such solution. In addition, to encourage cyclists to use PT buses, the service was launched free of charge.
In overall, this initiative intended to raise users ́ awareness and acceptance for the Bus&Bike concept as to promote sustainable modes by increasing the number of cyclists in the inner-city.

The solution installed had a total cost of around 17.000,00 €. The investment costs for setting-up the measure included: 14 Bike racks on buses, 10 Bike racks for bicycle parking on the street, a communication campaign and staff efforts.

Despite the serious difficulties encountered, this initiative had a positive acceptance between users, who considered the solution as a facilitating service. Despite the number of bicycles transported was fairly low (only 56 a year), increased bike usage share 0.7 percentage points.
This initiative was an excellent opportunity to promote intermodality and the modal split towards sustainable modes. It was also considered an easily replicable measure.

The service encountered barriers related with the landscape of the city, which is predominantly hilly and it make difficult the use of such transport mode. Also, few data about cycling, and low availability and the conditions of safe cycling infrastructures hampered the success of such measure.

The measure can be easily replicated in other areas, considering that it was developed with a small budget, given the low costs equipment’s installed. It can easily be upscaled for hilly cities which have policy focused on cycling or that still lack a widespread cycling culture.
In addition, Bus&Bike is a very interesting solution as it definitely contributes to raise awareness towards sustainable transport modes, despite all the physical barriers of the city and landscape, as it also promotes inner-city inter-modality between public transport and cycling.