Promotion of transport walking and cycling in Europe

This document is a follow-up of the European Charter on Transport, Environment and Health put forward by WHO Europe and the European Commission in 1999. The Charter states, based on scientific evidence, that physically active forms of transport, such as walking and cycling, offer significant health gains through the reduction of the ill effects of motorised transport and the utilisation of the health benefits of increased physical activity, and that strategies to design and engineer a modal shift from motorised to physically active transport should be effectively pursued.
The European Network for the Promotion of Health-Enhancing Physical Activity, as one of the European Commission’s Health Promotion Networks, has taken the task of furthering the Charter’s principles into strategic directions for the promotion of physically active transport. Thus the purpose of this document is to identify strategic directions that the member states can use in defining their own strategies and actions for the national promotion of transport walking and cycling.