Cycling Through the Pandemic

Front matter

The Urban Book Series

Patrick Rerat Editors

Cycling Through the Pandemic

Contents

Nathalie Ortar and Patrick Rérat

2 ‘School Streets’ and the Adaptation of London’s State-Led Asa Thomas

3 Public Action in Times of Crisis: Trajectories of Cycling Mariane Thébert, Manon Eskenazi, Matthieu Adam, Guy Baudelle, Laurent Chapelon, Adrien Lammoglia, Patricia Lejoux, Sébastien Marrec, Adrien Poisson, and Michaël Zimmermann

Chapter 1 A) Introduction: Has Cycling Got a Boost ga from the Pandemic? Nathalie Ortar® and Patrick Rerat®

Abstract As the COVID-19 pandemic surged around the world at the beginning of 2020, all aspects of life were disrupted. This book looks back to spring 2020 and the end of the first lockdown, when many cities around the globe took measures to give cycling more space. It scrutinises the political and material responses to increase cycling during the pandemic. The introduction presents the 9 chapters as well as some of the lessons learned.

Keywords Tactical urbanism - Cycling - Infrastructure - Policy + COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic surged around the world at the beginning of 2020, all aspects of life were disrupted. Since the virus spreads by passing from person to person, measures were taken to reduce mobility and social contact: border closures, limits on indoor gatherings, distance learning, and the requirement to work from home, among others. In the first stages of the pandemic, lockdowns led to a massive reduction in travel demand and showed how “authorities develop crisis regimes of (im)mobility to (re)define what is considered essential mobility” (Salazar 2021).

In parallel, people turned to individual modes of transport as these, unlike collective modes, guarantee physical distancing (Tirachini and Cats 2020; Basbas et al. 2021; Molloy et al. 2021). Cycling soon came to be portrayed as “benefitting” from the pandemic, and in spring 2020 it was debated whether COVID-19 would be “a turning point for active travel in cities” (Nurse and Dunning 2020).

Translated by Cadenza Academic Translations.

N. Ortar (œ)

Laboratoire Aménagement Economie Transports, ENTPE— University of Lyon, 3 rue Maurice Audin, Vaulx-en-Velin, France

e-mail: nathalie.ortar @entpe.fr

P. Rérat Observatory for Cycling and Active Mobilities (OUVEMA) & Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

© The Author(s) 2024 1 N. Ortar and P. Rérat (eds.), Cycling Through the Pandemic, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45308-3_1

As one crisis succeeds another, war in Ukraine and the extreme temperatures of summer 2022 have replaced the pandemic—though it continues its insidious spread—as the focus of public attention. Soaring energy prices, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and floods have crystalised our dependence on energy and the devastating impacts of climate change, as well as the need for societies to implement strategies for adaptation (to existing and future climate change) and mitigation (reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions). As transport is an important source of CO; emissions, it is necessary to transition to low-carbon mobility (Givoni and Banister 2013) while taking into account the diversity of uses (Abram et al. 2022). A key measure of this transition is to foster cycling as it has a very small ecological footprint, even when electrically assisted (International Transport Forum 2020).

This book looks back to spring 2020 and the end of the first lockdown, when many cities around the globe took measures to give cycling more space. It scrutinises the political and material responses to increase cycling during the pandemic. The book’s nine chapters, allbased on empirical evidence, analyse the implementation of pop-up cycle lanes or “Covid cycle lanes” by examining public policies (the role of actors, governance processes, opposition) and the effect on cycling practices. Benefitting from a multidisciplinary approach and a variety of methodologies and fieldwork, the book identifies the main lessons learned across these nine chapters and outlines a future research agenda.

In doing so, the book not only sheds light on a specific, memorable period but also on the challenges of implementing a sustainable and low-carbon mobility. It provides important suggestions about how local authorities can act in a quicker and more agile way. While some decisions are specific to the context of the beginning of the pandemic, the analysis offers lessons on methods for implementing the transition towards a low-carbon mobility, on the importance of processes based on trial and error, and on the political stakes of reallocating road space.

1.1 The Disruptive Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic!

The pandemic provoked a crisis in our everyday lives and our relationship to the world, adding alayer to the existing ecological, economic, and political crisis that has been part of our lives for several decades now and that is characterised by indecision, or even undecidability (Revault d’Allonnes 2012, 10). The crisis produced by the pandemic was unique in our recent collective history in being amoment of suspended time for those who had to stay at home, but a time of intensive action for the public authorities, who were forced to overcome their indecision. The urgent nature of the crisis required them to fast-track processes and create shortcuts (Caduff 2022), actions that seemed necessary and legitimate in the circumstances. The pandemic

! Some parts of this chapter were previously discussed in Rérat et al. (2022).

was thus a time in which new arrangements (Balandier 1960, 461) emerged, on either a temporary or permanent basis, making it the testing ground for a transition towards new ways of designing and doing urban planning, as well as new ways of life.

In crisis, the hegemonic framework is weakened, impacting what Taylor (2002, 106) has called the social imaginary, which “incorporates a sense of the normal expectations we have of each other, the kind of common understanding that enables us to carry out the collective practices that make up our social life.” In other words, by altering representations of the world, practices, and society—such as it is or has been normalised in the hegemonic view—crisis reveals some of their contradictions. The disruption to the established order of family, education, and the world of work has made explicit what was previously seen as natural and inevitable.

By weakening our social imaginary, the pandemic has changed our relationship with our immediate environment and with other people. This is reflected in a set of public policies introduced in response to the new social context and by a change in our social practices and the way in which we travel, all of which have helped cycling take centre stage, as a mode of transport promoted for its health benefits (Götschi et al. 2016; Bourne et al. 2018; Buehler and Pucher 202 1a) and as a way of ensuring social distancing.

Yet interest in cycling had been renewed prior to the surge that followed lockdowns in March 2020. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, cycling in Western countries has gradually evolved from a leisure or sport activity into a utilitarian means of transport (Aldred and Jungnickel 2012). It has become (once more) both an increasingly legitimate practice and a credible alternative to driving, public transport, and walking, particularly in metropolitan areas (Rérat 2019; Buehler and Pucher 202 1a; Adam and Ortar 2022). Starting from generally very low levels, its modal share has risen sharply in many large cities (Buehler and Pucher 202 1a).

Cycling is also a mode of transport that is presented by its advocates—who include elected officials, professionals from the public and private sectors, nonprofit and nongovernmental organisations, and academics—as a key solution to the environmental challenges of everyday mobility (Buehler and Pucher 202 1a; Nikolaeva et al. 2019). Its small carbon footprint, absence of contribution to traffic congestion, and light, relatively inexpensive infrastructure put cycling in a strong position to embody the energy transition in the transport sector.

Several statistics reflect the increase in cycling during the pandemic, including the rise in bike sales, the shortage of spare parts, and the increased demand for repairs. Bike sales in the European Union (EU) reached 22 million units in 2020, up from 20 million in 2019 (Statista 2021). Data from automatic bicycle counters and bicycle sharing schemes enable the evolution of traffic to be analysed and usually highlight the resilience of cycling, which rebounded quickly after the first lockdowns (Bucsky 2020; Heydari et al. 2021; Teixeira et al. 2021; Kraus and Koch 2021).

A comparison of cycling traffic across time and space gives clues as to the factors behind this trend. Bicycle counters in eleven EU countries showed an 8% increase overall in cycling between 2019 and 2020 (Buehler and Pucher 2021b); this was much larger on weekends (+ 23%) than on weekdays (+ 8%). A similar trend was observed in the United States (+ 29% on weekends, + 10% on weekdays), although in Canada there was a decline of 3% on weekdays (+ 28% on weekends). The much smaller increase (or decline) in weekday cycling is due to the overall decline (all modes) in travel to work, university, school, and shops, due to closures and travel restrictions. Many daily trips were cancelled as people worked, learned, and shopped from home. At the same time, there was an increase in cycling for exercise and recreation, as shown by weekend figures. This is also highlighted by changes according to the time of day—an increase in the afternoon and early evening; a smaller increase or decline on weekday mornings—and location—a larger increase on offroad recreational greenways and a (relative) decline within and to/from commercial areas and university campuses (Buehler and Pucher 2021b).

Research has addressed more directly individuals’ reasons for changing their cycling practices during the early stages of the pandemic. Some cycled less as they had less need to travel due to home working and distance learning. Others cycled more for a variety of reasons. First, the fear of infection and the need for social distancing led to a strong decline in ridership on public transport that benefited partly to cycling (Tirachini and Cats 2020). Second, active mobilities such as cycling were promoted as a means of staying fit and getting exercise when swimming pools, indoor gyms, and playgrounds were closed (Budd and Ison 2020). Cycling was also seen as a safe recreational physical activity; social distancing may have resulted in more ““undirected travel’, i.e., trips without a destination” (De Vos 2020). The strongest increase was on weekends and in the afternoon (in comparison with weekdays and the morning rush hour), and this is in line with the rise of cycling as a leisure activity (Buehler and Pucher 2021b).

1.2 Covid Cycle Lanes: Making Room for Cycling

In the field of transport, the most emblematic measure taken by cities after the first lockdowns was pop-up cycle lanes, referred to as “provisional COVID-19 infrastructure” by Kraus and Koch (2021) and “COVID-19 cycling infrastructure” by Lin et al. (2021). In this introduction we use the term “Covid cycle lanes,” echoing the French catchword “coronapiste” (corona + lane) that has become part of everyday French language and entered the Larousse dictionary.

Bogota was the first city to expand its cycle lane network and give up road space to bikes (see Chap. 9). It was followed by other cities, mostly in Europe, including Barcelona (which increased its network by 21 km), Brussels (27 km), Milan (67 km), Paris (80 km), and London (100 km). In North America, Chicago increased its network by 48 km, Montreal by 88 km, and New York City by 102 km (Buehler and Pucher 2021b). These cities, among others, reconfigured their built environment, at a relatively low cost, to facilitate safer and better connected journeys for cycling as well as walking (shared streets, pedestrianised streets, expansion of sidewalks areas, etc.). Depending on the contexts, these new infrastructures were removed (e.g. Montreal and Vienna, see Chaps. 6 and 7) or made permanent (e.g. Lausanne and Geneva, see Chap. 5).

Covid cycle lanes appeared to be a simple and inexpensive way to meet health requirements—social distancing—while avoiding the negative consequences of a modal shift towards cars. As this book shows, additional rationales were found according to the contexts: to guarantee the safety of cyclists, to make people active (for physical and psychological reasons), to cope with the reduction in public transport services, or to support patronage of local businesses.

These pop-up infrastructures were installed during or soon after the first lockdowns (spring/summer 2020) and implemented very rapidly. They therefore differ from “classic” cycle lanes in terms of the planning processes and materials used and their intended duration. Faced with the crisis, municipalities took a number of such shortcuts: rapid and unbureaucratic actions that can be classed as tactical urbanism.

Tactical urbanism is a type of urban planning, usually involving temporary and low-cost interventions, that aims to introduce rapid changes to urban spaces with a broader purpose in mind (Lydon and Garcia 2015). It can be seen as a practical approach to urban change, where many small actions implemented at the hyper-local level can achieve, in aggregate, the longer-term goals of a liveable, walkable, sustainable community.

Tactical urbanism is often associated with grassroot initiatives, but it can also be used by authorities. A famous example of top-down tactical urbanism is Ciclovia in Bogota, Colombia, where streets are temporarily closed to cars on a regular basis. In Chap. 2 Asa Thomas explores another example, which inverts Michel de Certeau’s (1984) distinction between the strategies of the state and the oppositional tactics of citizens. Thomas refers to Lydon and Garcia (2015, 10), who implore citizens to think more strategically about long-term change and governments to adopt tactics to implement changes immediately.

Tactical urbanism is not only about material changes to the city; it is also about processes. In the pandemic local authorities had to react much more quickly than usual given the urgency of the health situation. They created temporary layouts using bollards and separators easy to install (and remove) to demonstrate possible changes to the layout of a street, intersection, or public space. While some local authorities could use the existing institutional framework—as in Montreal, where authorities used what Florence Paulhiac Scherrer (see Chap. 6) calls “temporary” or “crisis urbanism’’—others adopted new tactics and “played” with existing laws (see Chap. 5).

2 Combs and Pardo (2021) tracked 1109 measures relating to the use of streets in 60 countries between March and August 2020. The measures quantified included: curb space reallocations (27%), full street closures (19%), legal, policy, enforcement, or funding changes (16%), partial street closures (11%), automated walk signals (5%), reallocation of non-street space (3%), and other mobility-related strategies (bicycle parking, bicycle sharing, and subsidies) (19%). Overall, 43% of these measures expanded the street space for walking/cycling.

The various forms taken by tactical urbanism, the political, institutional, and social contexts from which they emerged, and the space granted to trial schemes, raise more fundamental questions about what this episode reveals about the evolution of urban planning. Studies of planning, and in particular cycle planning, have found failures, mismatches, discrepancies, and gaps linked to flawed planning, work stoppages, changes of policy, and shortages of materials (Puchaczewski 2022). Such research highlights the challenges of factoring in the various aspects of the long term and thus of planning for the future.

In their book Elusive Promises: Planning in the Contemporary World, Abram and Weszkalnys (2013) argue that planning is a form of conceptualising space and time. At both the individual and institutional levels, planning involves using a set of tactics, technologies, and institutions that are designed to control the transition to the future while also enabling planners to manage the present: “Plans require a social context in which they can be produced, but they also require institutional structures under which they can be contested or enforced, and these reformulate the relationship between society, the body politic and what has been called civil society” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2013, 12). However, “the relationship between the spatio-temporal orders laid out by the plan and the actualities they engender is always fragile and multivalent; plans both encapsulate and exclude worlds of imagination and practices” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2013, 22).

Anthropological studies have shown that urban planning rarely factors in the diverse range of ways in which the populations categorised will make use ofthe space (Abram 2002). As such, “planning schemes rarely provide an accurate description of current circumstances but rather adopt mechanisms to conjure worlds within their scope of action as promisor, using the conceptual body of the public as a promisee counterpart to its plans” (Abram and Weszkalnys 2013, 13). Tactical urban planning is designed to respond to the immediate nature ofthe contemporary future and promises to implement genuine solutions. But is this truly the case on the ground? How has this way of producing urban planning changed planners’ practices and institutional representations?

Another key issue is the effects of Covid cycle lanes. Between 2019 and 2020, Kraus and Koch (2021) measured levels of cycling in 736 locations across 106 European cities and found that Covid cycle lanes had increased cyclist numbers from 11 to 48% on average. This represents between $1 billion and $7 billion in health benefits per year if cycling habits stick. In their study of cycling in North America and Europe, Buehler and Pucher (2021b) also conclude that the creation of such infrastructure and the policies that have sometimes accompanied it have had a significant impact on cyclist numbers. But significant differences remain between countries and between cities within a country. Ifthe measures put in place in different metropolises seem similar, both in material terms and as regards the communication around them, the reasons for this tactical urbanism, the target audiences, and the expected effects are different, as each city’s response to the health crisis has been shaped by unique spatial, social, and political configurations. Studying tactical urban planning policies therefore not only sheds light on local authorities’ reactions to the health emergency, but also on local dynamics regarding mobility policies and, more broadly, the energy transition.

After an initial period of urgency and broad agreement about Covid cycle lanes, political initiatives returned to a slower pace. Many Covid cycle lanes were the subject of political controversy. The rapid implementation of these measures had left little or no time for public consultation and a top-down decision-making process had been used (Combs and Pardo 2021; see also Chap. 3 in this book). While the lack of public engagement explains some of the controversy, it should be noted that the hosting potential of a space—in this case, its “bikeability,” or suitability for cycling— for the various modes of transport partly depends on power relations, expressed via the allocation of budget and space as well as by planning models. This can be seen, for example, in the allocations and model that consecrated the hegemony of the car and led to the marginalisation of active modes of transport (Koglin and Rye 2014; Cox and Koglin 2020). The car has informally privatised public space, making other users feel illegitimate and that the road has become a dangerous place for them (Lee 2015).

Covid cycle lanes, like any infrastructure, “are not apolitical or neutral technologies. New space carved out for cyclists inevitably represents the disruption of a real or imagined order within the existing streetscape” (Wild et al. 2018, 507). Cycling infrastructures may thus give rise to opposition as they reallocate space, financial resources, and political priority previously dedicated to automobility (Siemiatycki et al. 2016).

1.3 The Political Role of Infrastructure

Cycling infrastructure and policies also have a role to play in mobility justice: the right to mobility is yet to be won, and its restrictions is at the root of many inequalities, at the level of the street and the planet (Sheller 2018). Studies of infrastructure have shown that it can be conceptualised as a socio-technical system (Amin 2014) that, as it “opens up some paths of action, [...] also closes down other possibilities” (Cox 2020), since the very existence of the infrastructure organises and governs the actions it makes possible (Koglin 2017). As such, it has a political power (Cox 2020; Nolte 2016; McFarlane and Rutherford 2008).

As mobility is intertwined with asymmetric power relations (Nikolaeva et al. 2019; Cresswell 2010), gaining a better understanding of the effects of the spatiality of infrastructure and its forms will enable both policymakers and policy implementers to better understand how the spaces dedicated to mobility and the topography of the facilities provided have the power to exacerbate or reduce social inequalities. As Schwanen (2020) argues, mobility justice must be understood “in terms of ongoing process, power relations and struggles over praxis, meaning and values that are actively shaped by the places and spatial configurations as part of which they unfold.”

Like all technical objects, infrastructure comes with a “script” (Akrich 1992); there is one for speed, for example, in the case of cycle lanes. Functional hierarchies are clearly set out in automobile traffic design but poorly conceptualised in relation to cycling, and the dissonance between design scripts and regulatory scripts is a source of conflict (Cox 2019). Thus, “building cycling infrastructures is not just a matter of providing physical spaces, but also of building the skills, competencies and confidences required for moving in public spaces” (Cox 2020, 15). This requires attention to be paid to infrastructure design, its continuity, and the routes it provides, which represent factors of inclusion or exclusion (Cox 2019). These questions about the effects of infrastructure design contribute to exploring how design decisions and interventions determine mobilities (Jensen and Lanng 2019).

Infrastructure thus belongs to the elements of mobility—movement, meaning, and practice—identified by Cresswell (2006), which are always bounded by existing governance structures, histories, power relations, and embodied experiences (see Rérat (2019) for an analysis of this concept in relation to utility cycling). To draw on another conceptual framework, cycling can be conceptualised as a “sociotechnical system in transition” (te Brömmelstroet et al. 2020; Shove et al. 2012; Geels 2004) that reveals the spatial, historical, social, cultural, economic, and political structures of cycling practices in everyday life. These socially integrated structures ensure the stability of cycling as a “system,” but may also get in the way of change. The cycling system can also be seen as an incomplete system that is in the process of redefining and re-exerting itself in a context dominated by the system of automobility (Rerat 2021). The concept of a system of automobility highlights the fact that the car is much more than a vehicle: it refers also to a (dominant) socio-technical order involving practices, infrastructures, social norms, images, rules, industries, etc. (Urry 2004).

This book also contributes to debates about the effects of dominant policy paradigms that promote a “utility” transport model, which prioritises the destruction of distance and the minimisation of time spent travelling (Aldred 2015). Other authors identify current cycling policies, planning, and innovations as having a strong tendency to focus primarily on increasing the appeal of cycling for people who do not currently cycle (Bruno and Nikolaeva 2020). The latter group argue that developing policies that improve the experience of existing cyclists helps to advance a modal shift through social feedback loops (Macmillan and Woodcock 2017; Skov-Petersen et al. 2017), but also facilitates the transition to sustainable mobility by investing in the people who are most likely to lead that transition. In its exploration of the ways in which public policies are implemented and reflected spatially, this book sits at the intersection of these two approaches and encourages a re-examination of the frameworks of production of the mobility transition as well as their localisation, since “locality matters.”

Mobility is therefore always simultaneously spatial, political, and social. We believe that any meaningful consideration of the transition must also look at the politics of mobility transition, which includes interrogating the relationship between an individualised “right to move” (Cresswell 2006) and the way in which collective social needs are mediated by mobility.

1.4 Chapter Summaries

The studies published in this book were designed rapidly in response to the pandemic and the changes that were taking place and to what we felt to be an urgent need to capture ongoing changes that may or may not be temporary. We thus developed situated research protocols, since we were unable to travel outside the cities or even sometimes the neighbourhoods in which we lived, depending on the wave of the pandemic and the lockdown restrictions in place. We worked around the constraints using what was available to us, each of us bringing a point of view with our own disciplinary apparatus, based on what we were able to observe and the changing government restrictions—limitations that had to be taken into consideration. The resulting disciplinary, methodological, and territorial mosaic is both a strength and a limitation of the book.

The work is thus both multi-situated and multidisciplinary. Rather than one-toone comparisons, the multiple fieldwork locations offer diverse portraits that form a panorama of the ways in which tactical urbanism was approached, implemented, and welcomed by cyclists, with the aim of exploring the short- and medium-term effects of the political and social moment represented by the pandemic. The multidisciplinarity of the book favours its exploration— which is also multi-situated—of the effects of tactical urbanism and is reflected in the use of different theoretical apparatuses and complementary methodologies. Geographers, geomatics specialists, urban planners, sociologists, political scientists, and social psychologists thus joined forces on a research project, Vélotactique.? and on the special session on “Tactical urbanism, active mobilities and public space in the Covid pandemic” held at the annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (September 2021).

The book looks at changing bikeability in territories where everyday cycling is still underdeveloped (Grenoble is the only city in which the modal share of cycling is over 10%). The work is unique in addressing this issue by looking at cities of different sizes and with different population densities. While most of the study sites are located in Europe, the Americas are also represented through two contrasting examples: Montreal, Canada and Bogotä, Colombia. Each of the study sites—even those within the same country—also have their own specific characteristics. The studies of the French cities— Grenoble, Lyon, Montpellier, Paris, Rennes, and Saint- Etienne—identify a range of different ways in which measures were implemented during the pandemic and whether or not they were made permanent. The same is true of the two European capitals studied: London and Vienna. Finally, the Swiss study explores two cities thatimplemented Covid cycle lanes (and made them permanent) as well as two cities that refused to do so despite demands from nonprofit organisations and politicians.

3 Project number ANR20-COV7-0007. The ANR is the Agence nationale de la recherche (French National Research Agency).

In each chapter, the authors endeavour to analyse both the political processes that led to the emergence and subsequent preservation or removal of pop-up facilities and their impact on cycling.

Analysis of the political processes focused on the origin of the infrastructure, in terms of whether it developed from pre-existing plans or was instead created on an ad hoc basis in response to the pandemic. In both Vienna and France, the start of the pandemic coincided with municipal elections, and this electoral context had a range of effects on the implementation and removal of infrastructure. More broadly, in their discussion of political processes, all of the authors observe the interplay of actors and the levers that were mobilised to maintain or, conversely, to get rid of the pop-up infrastructure. The various chapters thus highlight the political modalities of the moment represented by the pandemic, the role of “political champions” (Wilson and Mitra 2020), and of actors from the nonprofit sector, but also of the technical services that conditioned both the speed of execution and the capacity to engage with the issue in order to take it forward.

Political processes cannot be observed without also observing the impact on practices. The book also looks at how pop-up infrastructure was received by studying road traffic, the safety of cyclists and other road users, and the ways in which these forms of infrastructure were appropriated, thus revealing both the successes and limitations of this tactical urbanism.

A broad range of different methodologies were used. Political processes were studied using semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders, analysis of grey literature and the press via textometric analysis, and dynamic mapping of the form and development over time of facilities. Practices were observed using data from counters, ad hoc quantitative surveys, interviews, ride-alongs, and video elicitation.

The first case study, in Chap. 2 of the book, looks at tactical urbanism in London. Taking a theoretically grounded approach, Asa Thomas analyses the implementation of “School Streets” policies in the capital. In this initiative, 33 local authorities, as well as higher levels of government, used “tactical” approaches to urban change, both prior to and during the pandemic. Tactical urbanism in this case is both a set of temporary and flexible material approaches to urban change and a wider methodology that can be drawn on by citizens and enterprising governments alike. The chapter considers this hybrid character of tactical urbanism—as a flexible material approach and as a participatory method for urban change—in relation to road closures under the School Streets initiative prior to and during the pandemic.

The next two chapters focus on France, where towns and cities created over 500 km of Covid cycle lanes (coronapistes). In Chap. 3, Mariane Thébert, Manon Eskenazi, Matthieu Adam, Guy Baudelle, Laurent Chapelon, Adrien Lammoglia, Patricia Lejoux, Sébastien Marrec, Adrien Poisson, and Mickaél Zimmermann conduct a comprehensive analysis of local measures associated with Covid cycle lanes in four metropolises—Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, and Rennes—during the first lockdown, the months that followed, and one year later. Thébert et al. pay particular attention to the chronological reconstruction of events and the factors of continuity or interruption between the pre- and post-crisis situations. In the four cities, the engagement of local actors Was rapid and significant in terms of the extent of the new cycling infrastructure. The authors retrace the involvement of the different actors and observe the reactions sparked by these measures, including the opposition they generated. They conclude that the crisis has accelerated local mobility policies rather than produced radical change. However, this tactical urbanism has introduced elements of change for the future by slightly modifying the actors’ interests, representations, and instruments. The experiments in these cities raise questions about the impact of a crisis on public decision-making and its short- and medium-term effects.