What Lisbon’s Bike Lanes Teach Us About Urban Mobility

Over the last few years, Lisbon has transformed itself into a living laboratory for active mobility. Cycling has become part of political discussions, mobility plans, and increasingly, the daily lives of people moving around the city. Today, we are no longer talking about “just a handful of bike lanes,” but rather a network with scale, a robust bike-sharing system, and a clear expansion strategy.

According to the municipality’s Cycling Network Plan, Lisbon currently has approximately 173 km (107 miles) of cycling infrastructure and aims to reach 263 km (163 miles) by the end of 2025. This means adding:

• More than 90 km (56 miles) of new bike lanes, representing approximately 50% growth.

• 56 new connections to “stitch together” the existing network.

• An investment of approximately €13 million, including a dedicated maintenance budget of €1.7 million.

Lisbon’s Main Cycling Corridors

Lisbon’s cycling network is no longer a collection of isolated segments. Today, it is possible to talk about strategic cycling corridors that support daily commuting rather than just weekend rides.

Riverside Corridor

• Approximately 20 km (12 miles) of mostly flat cycling infrastructure along the Tagus River, connecting Belém, Cais do Sodré/downtown, and Parque das Nações.

• It is currently one of the most heavily used routes, both for commuters and recreational cyclists.

Central Corridor / Avenidas Novas – Saldanha – Alameda

• Supports a significant share of commuting trips between homes, workplaces, and universities.

• Connects dense employment, service, and higher education districts.

Connections to Monsanto and Residential Areas

• Cycling corridors that connect residential neighborhoods to Lisbon’s largest urban park.

• Important for leisure activities, but also for residents looking for alternatives to private vehicles.

GIRA: Lisbon’s Bike-Sharing Network

It is impossible to talk about cycling infrastructure in Lisbon without mentioning GIRA, the city’s bike-sharing system.

GIRA’s open data platform provides station locations, available bicycles, available docks, station characteristics, and operating schedules. This data allows analysts to understand which stations are underutilized or overloaded and simulate the impact of adding new stations in terms of population coverage.

Recent figures reported by Jornal de Notícias include:

• 195 stations distributed throughout the city, with more than 2,000 bicycles, including both conventional and electric bikes.

• The network now covers all 24 parishes of Lisbon, with Ajuda becoming the latest parish to receive stations in 2025.

• Since 2017, more than 12 million trips have been completed, totaling over 40 million kilometers traveled.

With the expansion into Ajuda, the GIRA network is now present in all 24 parishes. However, serving every parish is not the same as providing the same level of service everywhere.

Analysis of GIRA’s own data shows that some areas are very well served, with stations located within a short walking distance, while in others, despite the presence of docking stations, residents still need to walk several minutes before finding an available bicycle.

A similar situation exists with cycling infrastructure itself. Some sections are continuous and intuitive, while others “disappear” at complex intersections or lose quality precisely where motor vehicle traffic is most intense.

This discrepancy becomes particularly evident when looking at a recent risk assessment conducted by the Automobile Club of Portugal (ACP). According to the study, more than 75% of Lisbon’s cycling network requires urgent improvements:

• 24.38% classified as low risk

• 53.53% classified as medium risk

• 14.91% classified as high risk

• 7.18% classified as extreme risk

In other words, Lisbon has made significant quantitative progress, but there is still considerable work to do in terms of quality, especially at intersections, interfaces with motorized traffic, and connections to schools and universities.

Lisbon demonstrates in practice why the discussion can no longer focus solely on “how many kilometers” of bike lanes exist, but rather on what data is used to plan, prioritize, and improve them.

This is where Urban Management Platforms come into play.

The Benefits of Connecting This Data Through City as a Platform

If we combine geospatial data from existing and planned bike lanes, GIRA station locations, population distribution, schools, universities, and transportation hubs within a single platform, we gain a much richer understanding of the city.

We can begin answering questions such as:

• How many people live within a five-minute walk of a bike lane?

• Which parishes have strong GIRA coverage but weak cycling infrastructure connections?

• Where are cyclist and pedestrian incidents most frequently reported?

These are exactly the types of questions that City as a Platform helps answer.

In practice, it functions as a geospatial brain for municipalities: integrating cycling network data, GIRA information, construction projects, traffic, incidents, and citizen participation into dashboards and applications that technical teams can create and adapt without custom software development.

To see this in action, we invite you to explore the application developed for the Lisbon City Council, where users can view GIRA stations and bicycles on a map, along with their real-time availability.

It is a practical example of how City as a Platform transforms scattered data into useful information for city executives, technical teams, and citizens.

Explore the application: https://lisboa.city-platform.com/app/?a=redeciclavel

From a political perspective, this is invaluable. When city leadership commits to adding 90 kilometers of bike lanes, it must be able to demonstrate that investments are being made in the right locations, reducing risks in problematic areas and extending the network to those who benefit most: students, workers, and residents in neighborhoods with limited public transportation options.

From a technical perspective, it is the difference between managing a complex network “by sight” based on perceptions and managing it through evidence and models that can be updated almost in real time.

Key Lessons from Lisbon’s Bike Lane Network

The Lisbon cycling network teaches three important lessons to any municipality looking to follow a similar path.

First, expanding the number of kilometers is important, but it is not enough. The network must be continuous, intuitive, and safe, otherwise people simply will not use it.

Second, without data on risk, usage, and coverage by district, it is very easy to create a network that looks impressive on a map but fails in practice.

Third, physical infrastructure requires digital infrastructure on top of it: an urban platform capable of connecting everything, from bike lanes and shared bicycles to incidents and planning processes, and transforming that information into actionable decisions.

If you are planning to strengthen active mobility in your territory, perhaps the right question is not only:

“How many kilometers are we going to build?”

but also:

“What data will we use to make decisions, and on which platform will we connect it?”

This is where Lisbon and City as a Platform have much to teach.