LAUSR

Abstract Despite the fact that the bicycle is increasingly recognised to play a significant role in the sustainable development of many cities worldwide, it remains a marginalized mode for many transportation and mobility planners (Koglin and Rye, 2014) particularly in the context of starter cycling cities. In fact, although the political discourse is in favour of a modal change towards cycling, political and technical scepticism around change are still dominant in these cities, resulting in merely symbolic interventions. In this paper, we explore if creating awareness on the potential for cycling of a starter cycling city may change the attitudes of planners towards cycling and overcome scepticism. We study the ability of the ‘Potential for Cycling Assessment Method’ to work as a persuasion technique. For the assessment of changes in attitudes, we involved a number of local practitioners from four starter cycling cities in a series of workshops. Attitudinal surveys were implemented prior to the first workshop and after the last one. The Potential for Cycling Assessment Method showed significant potential in changing planning practitioners’ perceptions and attitudes towards cycling. Roughly half of the planners involved showed more positive attitudes towards cycling after the workshops. As such, the tool also revealed to hold promise as a persuasion technique in the context of attitude change literature, in addition to the planning support qualities for which it was designed.