How good is the cycling policy in your town, city or region?
Is it effective and efficient?
How can you improve it?

The tool for this purpose is called BYPAD (Bicycle Policy Audit) and was developed by an international consortium of bicycle experts as part of an EU-funded project.

The two follow-up projects have since that time widened not only the spatial coverage (new EU countries joined such as Spain, Greece, Hungary, Estonia, Poland) but also the methodology.
BYPAD is not limited anymore to cities and agglomerations; towns and regions can also ask for an audit. For each target group there exists a different method with an adapted questionnaire.

The entire quality chain consists of 9 modules which together ensure a balanced cycling policy. Every module obtains a separate quality score. Together they reflect the quality level of the cycling policy in a town, city or region. Based on this quality score a bicycle action plan is prepared.
BYPAD considers cycling policy as a dynamic process, a whole of 9 fields, in permanent development, influencing each other (see figure below).

More than 100 cities and regions in 20 countries have already been convinced of the advantages of BYPAD and have started improving the quality of their cycling policy with simple, fast-working and above all cost-efficient measures.

The BYPAD site includes case studies/best practices reports of cities of varying sizes and with different levels of bicycle use, which can be useful even in non-European contexts.