Contradictions and double standards in Helsinki’s cycling infrastructure policy: temporal street construction vs. top-down tactical urbanism

Increasing the modal share of cycling is a common urban transport policy goal and expanding cycling infrastructure is its key policy instrument. During COVID-19, temporal bike lanes raised in prominence globally, as many cities adopted top-down versions of tactical urbanism (e.g., “coronapistes” in Paris). Yet in Helsinki, a Nordic capital recognized otherwise for its urban policy innovations, cycling policy remained unchanged despite the city lagging in its ambitious goals for modal shift. To explain this lack of policy transfer, the article explores stakeholders’ discourses and reveals a political contradiction and a technical double standard within the municipal organization. Together with a visual in-situ analysis of temporal street arrangements, these discourses reveal the paradoxical role of temporal street construction in Helsinki. The article concludes that in Helsinki the mainstreamed version of tactical urbanism did not yet represent a real opportunity to reorient cycling policy, despite the pandemic shock. On the contrary, in a policy context based on conflict avoidance and a non-zero-sum political space, temporal street arrangements are a fundamental part of maintaining the status quo of automobility. The study suggests that a way to break policy path dependency could be the reframing of existing expertise in institutions and stakeholders to give it new political meaning.