This is a four-country investigation into faulty cycling infrastructure built using EU structural and cohesion funds. By \u2018faulty\u2019 we mean unsafe, disjointed, or harmful to other environmental causes, such as protection of biodiversity. The journalistic investigation, supported by Journalismfund.eu, later turned into my fellowship project at the European University Institute.<\/p>\n
How it started<\/b><\/p>\n
The idea to investigate EU investment being used for faulty infrastructure was born when I shared some of the most absurd solutions developed in Malta with my Lithuanian friends, and they said there were plenty of unusable cycling tracks and lanes in Lithuania, too. Is this an international trend?<\/p>\n
Cycling is indispensable in the European Union\u2019s efforts to reduce emissions<\/b> \u2013 this was clear from the European Urban Mobility Framework a year ago. But as policymakers set ambitious targets, transport is emitting more than before<\/a>, using a third of the EU’s energy, and keeping Europe dependent on Russian oil<\/a>. EU\u2019s structural and cohesion funds are supposed to help. But when cyclists roll onto cycle paths built with these funds, they find an obstacle course: patchy, poorly maintained, sometimes too narrow paths leading nowhere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I pitched the idea to look into this at the Media4Change and European Dialogue Mediathon in Slovakia in 2021. Two people joined my idea, one eventually dropped out, but Czech journalist Barbora Janauerov\u00e1<\/strong><\/b> stayed. I later invited Romanian journalist Zolt\u00e1n Sipos<\/strong>\u00a0to join our team, and together we applied for a Journalismfund.eu<\/b> environmental journalism grant. In spring we were awarded the funding \u2014 I was in charge of coordinating the project and also covered two countries. To our delight, Staffan Dahll\u00f6f<\/b> agreed to be our mentor.<\/p>\n What we did<\/b><\/p>\n Over the months we talked to experts, officials, NGOs, and dozens of cyclists<\/b> in four countries. We also reviewed tendering documents<\/b>, a sample of EU-funded projects, and some of the actual cycle paths and lanes.<\/p>\n Obviously, our countries are very differerent, among other things, also in terms of access to data and government responsiveness. But the trends were clear. From tiny Malta, which benefited from three EU instruments to produce a basic transport wishlist, to Romania \u2013 one of the largest<\/a> beneficiaries of EU spending on cycling and pedestrian infrastructure \u2013 our team found vague standards and opportunistic planning, driven not by cyclists\u2019 needs but by administrations\u2019 convenience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our key publications in English appeared in the EUobserver<\/b>:<\/p>\n The first publication of the project aired in October on LRT, the Lithuanian public radio<\/b>. I am grateful to Vaida Pilibaityt\u0117, the show\u2019s host, for her kind mentorship in all things audio. Lithuanian speakers can hear the story on the Vienkartin\u0117 planeta show<\/a>.<\/p>\n Barbora Janauerov\u00e1\u2019s article\u00a0on cycling safety issues in Czechia<\/a> was published by A2larm magazine. Zolt\u00e1n Sipos wrote an article<\/a> in Hungarian for \u00c1tl\u00e1tszo Erd\u00e9ly<\/i>. It was also translated into Romanian<\/a>.<\/p>\n For those who are interested in Lithuania, I also have a somewhat primitive map, which I used to organise project selection and analyse the overlap (or lack thereof) of cyclists\u2019 needs and authorities\u2019 responses. The skulls and bones signify cyclists death \u2014 big thanks to the Lithuanian Police spokespersons for the data, which I converted to the Google Maps format myself. The drawn coloured strips are my sample of EU-funded projects. If you click on them, you will find some public procurement data. The axes stand for environmental sacrifices for the sake of cycling paths \u2014 this information was crowdsourced. If you build upon this map or information contained here, please let me know!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n