The SPICYCLES project aims at increasing the modal share of cycling through a combination of measures of both technical and political nature. Four  types of actions will be carried out and tested in six sample cities (Barcelona, Berlin, Bucharest, Goteborg, Ploiesti, Rome), with the further aim of extending such systems to other important European cities.

The main objectives of the evaluation process are:

• to evaluate, at European level, the overall performances of actions demonstrated within the project and to draw conclusions on their transferability;
• to evaluate, at local level, the performances of the actions in each site (minor differences or different contexts could lead to differences of results) and to identify reasons for possible gaps.
  

Both objectives will need a common and integrated evaluation approach, to cross-compare the results of each city and to identify overall performances and differences of performances.

The adoption of a real common evaluation approach will also permit comparison of the performances of each application with one another and with the performances achieved in other similar European projects.

This is why impacts, evaluation categories, indicators and assessment methods are presented in a common way, without regard to the local sites. More operational details on each city will be given in the Final Evaluation Plan.

The MAESTRO guidelines have been taken as reference for methodological and formal aspects.

CONVERGE guidelines have also been taken into account.
The evaluation process has been subdivided into three tasks (see section 7.1 for further details):

   1.   evaluation planning;
   2.   data collection and measurement activities;
   3.   evaluation reporting.

In the first phase the key activity is to identify the project’s expected impacts and their indicators. The impacts must correlate with the objectives of the project, and the evaluation methods must be defined. In addition, a preliminary evaluation of the project results, based on existing knowledge and expert opinion, is carried out (“initial evaluation”).

In the second phase, data will be collected, through several measurement methods both before and after the implementation of the project actions.

An analysis of the real impacts of the project and a comparison of the real vs expected results and identification of causes of possible gaps and differences will be carried out in the third phase.

The analysis of the real project results will be carried out by comparing the situation before and after the implementation of the proposed actions. Particular attention will be paid to the possible effects of external factors (e.g. the effects of other measures implemented outside the SPICYCLES project and affecting the transport pattern in the study area) that could lead to incorrect conclusions about the project measures’ results.

1.1    The evaluation management structure    

The SPICYCLES evaluation process is managed by an Evaluation Working Group (EWG), composed by:

• an Overall Evaluation Manager (OEM) – WP 7 leader;
• six Local Evaluation Managers (LEM), one for each city, each one appointed by the respective Local Site Leader.

The OEM has the overall responsibility of the workpackage. He is more directly involved in the evaluation planning (production of Draft and Final Evaluation Plan) and reporting (production of the Mid-term and Final Evaluation Report). He reports to the Project Management Group/Steering Committee meetings on progress of activities, thus helping the project management to detect any delay in time or any other failure in order to intervene immediately.

The LEMs participate pro-actively in the evaluation plan definition, defining local plans, co-ordinating the site evaluation processes, gathering data and analysing the local results.

The members of the EWG, where needed, can meet in “evaluation workshops” held together with PMG and Steering Committee meetings. Separate additional workshops will be held if  necessary.
The members of the EWG are listed in Table 4 1.

Table 4 1    SPICYCLES Evaluation Working Group

Role	Partner	Responsible persons
Overall Evaluation Manager	DITS	Luca Persia
Barcelona LEM	DSD	Simon Hayes
Berlin LEM	Senat Berlin	Hermann Bluemel
Bucharest LEM	RATB	Razvan Fronescu
Goteborg LEM	Goteborg Municipality	Jenny Siira
Ploiesti LEM	Ploiesti Municipality	Radu Visan
Rome LEM	ATAC	Marco Contadini

Local structures for each site, with teams and responsibilities, will be specified in the Final Evaluation Plan.