Cycle4Climate

Cycle4Climate:
Co-creating Sustainable Cycling Solutions for Reducing CO2 Emissions in the Central Baltic Region

To reduce CO2 emissions from urban transport, planning authorities need knowledge about effective and feasible ways of promoting bike travel over car travel. Cycle4Climate (C4C) aims to implement and evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of physical and social behavioural interventions to make people switch from car travel to bike travel. These interventions are carried out in four city transport areas (Espoo, Finland; Gävle, Sweden; Pärnu, Estonia; Riga, Latvia). Continuous traffic volume measurements and pre- and post-intervention travel surveys will be used to estimate the CO2 emission impacts from the behavioural interventions.

The project will result in three outputs:

  • Implementation of behavioural interventions in the transport areas,
  • Estimations of travel-related CO2 emissions over time in the transport areas and the impact of the interventions on these and
  • Cross-border knowledge co-creation, synthesised in the form of an intervention toolbox.

City officials, policymakers, and decision-makers in the Central Baltic region seek to reduce CO2 emissions from traffic by increasing the share of bicycles in their cities. C4C fills an important gap by focusing on combined physical and social behavioural interventions in a structured and systematic way. The resulting CO2 impact estimations across four transport areas will create a broad evidence base for the effectiveness of interventions. At the same time, the toolbox format enables flexibility in adapting to contextual factors that differ between cities, thereby enabling an accelerated uptake in planning practice.

Deliverables and publications

  • Mooses, V., Samuelsson, K. (2025). WP1: Report on Results from the First Wave of the Travel Survey. Cycle4Climate project report. University of Tartu, University of Gävle.
  • Saidla, K., Willberg, E., Vallejo, B., Silm, S., Poom, A. (2025). Policy for bike share success in cities big and small: Bike share as public transport in Helsinki, Finland, and Tartu, Estonia. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 34, 101673. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2025.101673

Public presentations and media coverage

  • Cycle4Climate Partner Meeting at Riga Cycling Cultures Conference. Blog post, 3.10.2025.
  • Mooses, V., Samuellson, K. (2025). Cycling behaviour in the C4C partner cities: Travel survey insights. Cycle4Climate: Riga Cycling Conference, Riga, 22.09.2025
  • Our team in the Cycle4Climate project. Blog post, 29.11.2024.
  • Project name: Cycle4Climate: Co-creating Sustainable Cycling Solutions for Reducing CO2 Emissions in the Central Baltic Region
  • Duration: 01.06.2024 – 31.11.2027
  • Funding: EU Central Baltic Programme
  • Lead partner: Högskolan i Gävle, Sweden; PI: Dr Karl Samuelsson
  • Principal Investigator at the Mobility Lab: Age Poom
  • Team members at the Mobility Lab: Veronika Mooses, Elise Jalonen,
    Liisa Pihus
  • Collaboration partners in Estonia: City of Pärnu
  • Co-funding in Estonia: Keskkonnainvesteeringutekeskus
  • Project webpage: https://centralbaltic.eu/project/cycle4climate/