The E-Bike City. Designing Sustainable Streets

Kay W. Axhausen, Catherine Elliot (ed.)
2025
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The E-Bike City project’s design is anchored in shifting away from private car use, particularly for daily commuting. It does so by ensuring access to shared vehicle hubs within 200 meters (or another designated distance) of every residence, promoting convenience and accessibility.

EBC also inherently supports an intermodal transportation system, encouraging seamless integration between public transport and shared vehicles – both cars and micromobility options. Transitioning away from the convenience and perceived luxury of private automobiles presents financial challenges for the automobile industry and disrupts the routines of individuals accustomed to car ownership. In exchange, it gives rise to financial benefits for the households and fully supports offers by public transportation providers. Next to this shift in industry supply and demand, we must critically assess the human and environmental costs we are willing to bear to maintain the status quo. Equally all social costs in terms of infrastructure and accessibility need to be considered. “Business as usual” is simply no longer sustainable. Business as usual is damaging our climate and potentially making some environments unlivable. As extreme weather events intensify, driven by climate change, even the use of cars will become impractical or impossible in many cases.

A group of chairs at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (ETH Zurich) coalesced around this idea in 2021, when the department was searching for lighthouse projects highlighting its abilities. Later, one chair at ENAC (EPFL) joined them. The chairs contributed their own resources, which were supplemented with departmental funds and contributions by the Federal Office of Energy and Energy Switzerland. The chairs are:

• Prof. Dr. Bryan Adey Institute of Construction & Infrastructure Management
• Prof. Dr. Kay Axhausen Institute for Transport Planning and Systems
• Prof. Dr. Michel Bierlaire Transportation and Mobility Laboratory, EPFL
• Prof. Dr. Francesco Corman Institute for Transport Planning and Systems
• Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development
• Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas Institute for Transport Planning and Systems
• Prof. Dr. Stephan Pfister Institute of Environmental Engineering
• Prof. Dr. Martin Raubal Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation

This brochure highlights key results of our work that are especially policy relevant, but all elements are present.

The city of Zurich was our case study, as we had previous work on which we could build. Here, the simulation models implemented and calibrated in the MATSim and Sumo frameworks were important given the three-year timeframe of our project. Access to the existing Swiss Mobility Panel1 was also important for the work on the public acceptance of the idea. The earlier EBIS (E-Bikes in Switzerland) and MOBIS (Mobility in Switzerland) GPS tracking and survey studies provided further insights and data.

We are looking forward to the discussion of this promising idea. We are aware that our project was not able to explore all issues such a dramatic shift would raise. The lack of integration of suburbia is the most obvious one. The possible longer-term disinvestment in cars and suburban real estate is the other one. Equally, the shifts in retail and other customer services needs further attention. We also would need to study the resorting of workers and their households by their home and work locations. Inside the transport modelling frameworks more attention is needed on the rescheduling of the days and weeks of the agents. Equally the acquisition of cycles and the other mobility tools in the medium term and of their use over the course of the year will be important to understand the possible acceptance of the EBC.

We hope that our work will become an important starting point in the achievement of the climate goals to which Switzerland has committed itself.