Cycling innovation

Thanks to bicycle counters along major cycling routes, AWV is making cycling policy smarter and more accurate. The counters encourage cycling and provide data that AWV uses, for example, to evaluate cycling investments. The number of bicycle counters has increased in recent years from 25 in 2020 to 139 in 2024.

Smart traffic lights fit within the AWV’s Flemish Traffic Lights Action Plan. They are a measure to increase traffic safety for active road users at light-controlled points. AWV takes on at least 125 intersections each year. The aim is to eliminate as many conflicts as possible as well as to equip intersections with additional detection to reduce unnecessary waiting at red lights.

For example, intelligent traffic lights allow cyclists – when they are connected via an app connected to the Mobilidata ecosystem – to:

• get a green light faster and more often because they are ‘recognised’ as approaching cyclists by the intelligent traffic light. Today, there is already detection of cyclists via push buttons and loops in the bike lane, but intelligent traffic control systems will make that detection ‘frictionless’ in the future
• cross in groups during one green phase so that a group of cyclists is not split up. Think, for example, of a group of touring cyclists or bicycle buses with school children
• get priority in bad weather.