The health risks and benefits of cycling in urban environments compared with car use: health impact assessment study

David Rojas-Rueda, Audrey de Nazelle, Marko Tainio, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen, David Rojas-Rueda, Audrey de Nazelle, Marko Tainio, Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the risks and benefits to health of travel by bicycle, using a bicycle sharing scheme, compared with travel by car in an urban environment.

Design: Health impact assessment study.

Setting: Public bicycle sharing initiative, Bicing, in Barcelona, Spain.

Participants: 181,982 Bicing subscribers. Main outcomes measures The primary outcome measure was all cause mortality for the three domains of physical activity, air pollution (exposure to particulate matter <2.5 µm), and road traffic incidents. The secondary outcome was change in levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

Results: Compared with car users the estimated annual change in mortality of the Barcelona residents using Bicing (n = 181,982) was 0.03 deaths from road traffic incidents and 0.13 deaths from air pollution. As a result of physical activity, 12.46 deaths were avoided (benefit:risk ratio 77). The annual number of deaths avoided was 12.28. As a result of journeys by Bicing, annual carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by an estimated 9,062,344 kg.

Conclusions: Public bicycle sharing initiatives such as Bicing in Barcelona have greater benefits than risks to health and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/4788080/bin/rojd852889.f1_default.jpg
Sensitivity analysis tornado plot. Centiles for relative risk (RR) for all cause mortality associated with physical activity refer to arithmetic increase of confidence intervals

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Source: PubMed

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