The Current State of Cycling Infrastructure in Dublin and Copenhagen; A Comparison of Cycling Infrastructure in 8 Radial Routes into the City Centre of Dublin and Copenhagen
The World Health Organization developed the Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) to estimate the value of reductions in mortality resulting from specified amounts of cycling 1. From a recent meta-analysis of studies investigating the effect of cycling on all-cause mortality, the reduction in mortality risk for cycling 100 minutes per week is estimated to be 10.0% (95% confidence interval = 6.0 – 13.0%) 2. This risk reduction is controlled for other forms of physical activity, e.g. leisure-time or occupational physical activity, and other health behaviours such as smoking 3. At the average journey time for the Irish commuter (28 minutes in 2016) 4, a commuter would be cycling for 280 minutes per week.
Much of this benefit has been lost in Ireland, where the proportion of the commuting population travelling to work, school or college by bicycle has fallen from 7.3% in 1986 to 4.4% in 1996, to 2.2% in 2011 5.