Evaluating the influence of cyclists’ route choices incorporation into travel demand modelling: A case study in greater Helsinki

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Cycling is a sustainable transport mode that endorses an active lifestyle. While cycling shows great potential, it is essential for urban planning to consider attributes influencing the choices that cyclists act upon. Cyclists’ route choices have been studied since the Eighties with knowledge being applied in cycling network planning. Yet, the role of cycling as a sustainable transportation mode has been largely absent from travel demand modelling. This paper researches cyclists’ route choice preferences and evaluates the opportunity of incorporating route choice modelling into travel demand modelling to improve the accuracy of cycling route choice. To this end, a route choice framework is developed in which a stated preference survey for data collection is conducted, a multinomial Logit model is applied to the data to identify the factors that significantly influence cyclists’ route choice behaviour. The generated route choice utility models are further integrated into an existing regional travel demand model to evaluate the performance of cyclists’ route choice modelling in the presence of additional factors. Then, the route choice model outputs are validated against two sets of external data. The results show that bike facilities, traffic volume, and trip length are the key factors influencing cyclists’ route choice preferences, and the generated route choice models can be an applicable improvement in incorporating the influences of cyclists’ preferences into travel demand modelling.