The European Commission spent a year doing something that sounds straightforward but apparently nobody had actually done before: counting Europe’s cycling infrastructure. Not just roughly, not just in the countries that already love cycling, but all 27 member states, the same way, with the same definitions. The project is called Cycling Counts, and the final report just dropped in June 2026.

The headline finding is that Europe has more than 340,000 kilometres of dedicated cycling network when you apply a strict, consistent definition, and closer to 900,000 kilometres when you count all infrastructure that cyclists can use in some capacity. That’s a lot.

The reason this project exists at all is that the EU made a commitment in 2021 to double cycling kilometres across the bloc by 2030. Which is an ambitious goal, and also one that’s quite hard to track if you don’t actually know how many cycling kilometres you have to begin with! Different countries were measuring their networks differently, counting different things, using different definitions of what a cycle lane even is. Germany’s data looked nothing like Romania’s data, not because Germany necessarily has more lanes but because they were counting in completely different ways. So before anyone could measure progress, someone had to agree on what progress meant and establish a baseline. That’s what this report does.

The project is structured around four dimensions: the cycle network itself, how much people actually use it, safety, and services like bike parking, bike sharing, and cycle logistics.

The regional differences are, to put it politely, significant. Preliminary results reveal significant regional differences that highlight areas requiring further investment and development. The Netherlands and Denmark, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, have cycling infrastructure woven into basically every aspect of how their cities and towns work. Parts of Eastern and Southern Europe are starting from a much lower base, both in terms of physical infrastructure and in terms of the data systems needed to even track what exists.

What’s useful, or hopeful, about this from a cyclist’s perspective is that it represents the EU putting serious institutional weight behind the idea that cycling infrastructure should be treated like road infrastructure, something that gets measured, tracked, funded systematically, and improved over time. From 2021 to 2027, €4.5 billion is earmarked for cycling infrastructure and initiatives, including €3.2 billion from EU funds, which will deliver over 12,000 km of new or upgraded cycle paths across Europe.

For those of us riding in Europe, the cross-border dimension is the part that’s of course directly relevant. If you’ve ever tried to plan a multi-day cycling route that crosses from Belgium into France or from Germany into the Netherlands, you’ll know that the experience of going from one country’s cycling infrastructure to another can be quite abrupt. In fact, here in Belgium simply going from one region into another region can be shockingly bad 🙂 Lanes disappear. Signage changes. Language changes..

Someone had to do the counting before the building could happen in any coordinated way, and now at least that part is done.

The full report can be seen here: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/814b0cf3-5e2b-11f1-aa6d-01aa75ed71a1