Mistake to avoid: mix up road and cycling infrastructure projects

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Narative

Road and cycling infrastructure are often strongly connected, especially when cycling paths are not physically seperated from roads. In these cases it is important to clearly separate investments into cycling infrastructure and safety from investments into road renewal and expansion in order to avoid the greenwashing of EU funds. One illustrative example for such combined investment comes from the municipality of Litija in Slovenia, where a local road was renewed and also widened in some parts. Then bike lanes were drawn on the road. While the bulk of the financing went into road infrastructure, the overall investment was labelled "Arrangement of the cycling path from the town Litija to the settlement Pogonik". The investment was entirely placed in the priority area "Sustainable energy use" with the code of intervention "Cycle tracks and footpaths", which - considering the nature of the investment - is misleading.

Financial data

For the example mentioned above: EUR 1.2 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of an overall investment of ca. EUR 3 million

Recommendations

Actual invesments in sustainable modes of transport are needed for the sustainable mobility transition, rather than investments into conventional infrastructure that only carry a green label. In order to avoid greenwashing of EU funds a stricter regulation and monitoring of the labelling and categorization of (mixed) cycling and road infrastructure projects is needed.