Travel Time Competitiveness of Cycling in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

A key issue for both sustainable transport and public health is the viability of cycling as an alternative to the car, particularly for short trips. This study assessed the travel time implications of hypothetically substituting actual car trips with cycling. The car trips were captured over several weeks for 178 motorists in Sydney, Australia, through Global Positioning System technology. The cycling trips were generated with reverse geocoding processes in geographic information system software. This process took into account the impacts of terrain on cycling travel times. Both individual trips and trip chains were considered. Results suggested that for an inexperienced adult cyclist more than 90% of car trips of up to 5 km (58% of trips) could be cycled within 10 min of the time taken by car. As the level of cycling experience increased, the bikeable distance increased: the majority of commuter adults could cycle the median commuting distance in Sydney of 11 km with little additional travel time compared with a car. For trip chains, although the competitiveness of cycling decreased as more legs were included, the total distance of the chain emerged as a more crucial issue. Cycling was found to be as competitive for trip chains shorter than 10 km as for individual shorter trips. Finally, results showed that in the context of daily travel time budgets, approximately 20% of people could switch totally from cars to bicycles without incurring more than a 20-min additional increase in travel time on average per day.