The high investment in the bike lane that broke the borders between Barcelona and Esplugues caused some senior officials to raise their eyebrows even within the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB). The 1.7 million that the work cost – much more than a bike lane, a full-fledged urban transformation – financed by the AMB itself and the town councils involved, it has now become clear that they were justified. What's more, five years later, the investment has already been recovered and the projected benefits are especially relevant, according to a study by the Institut Metròpoli prepared with the universities of Seville and Pablo de Olavide on behalf of the AMB.
The investment recovery period was only three years, today it already exceeds two million in return and is projected to exceed 15 million in the 30 years after its construction, approximately just over half a million annually. This figure includes time savings in travel, the reduction in polluting emissions and the reduction in mortality and the improvement in the health of those who move by bike or walk through this infrastructure.
The definitive data is the internal rate of return (IRR), the most used indicator when prioritizing investments in infrastructure, which in this case reaches a very high 44.5%, far above any of the works included in the Infrastructure Master Plan of the Generalitat, where exceeding 10% is already considered a success.
The report, commissioned by the AMB, makes for the first time in Catalonia a cost-benefit analysis of some section of the cycling network, evaluating the direct and indirect costs of its construction and the subsequent global economic and social impact for both the administration and the population. The experts have taken as an example the case of Diagonal and the connection of Barcelona with the Zona Franca industrial area below the Litoral ring road. In this case, the cost was less than one million euros and that amount has already been generated in positive return after five years, with a projection of nearly ten million in the future.
Between both projects, the return exceeds 25 million euros, according to the analysis of these two emblematic cases of metropolitan infrastructure, which thus receives important support for the AMB to continue advancing in the Bicivia network that seeks to better connect municipalities by bike.
