Who has access to cycling infrastructure in Canada? A social equity analysis

Abstract

Canadian cities have made significant investments in cycling infrastructure to support uptake in active transportation. Who has spatial access to supportive infrastructure is an important equity question: lack of access to safe infrastructure for cycling may limit who has an option to use a bicycle to meet their transportation needs (to access employment, educational, social, or other essential services) as well as who may achieve the physical and mental health benefits possible through physical activity. Our aim is to measure spatial access to cycling infrastructure in Canadian cities, and to provide a broad, national understanding of inequitable access to cycling infrastructure for equity-deserving populations (children, seniors, recent immigrants, visible minorities, and people with low incomes). Accordingly, we used a national dataset of cycling infrastructure (Can-BICS), which summarizes the quantity of cycling infrastructure for all dissemination areas in Canada, and 2016 Census data to estimate associations between area-level sociodemographic characteristics and access to cycling infrastructure. In unadjusted associations, equity-deserving groups (i.e., recent immigrants and people with low incomes) had better access to cycling infrastructure. Pearson coefficients highlighted variations in the equity of cycling infrastructure across cities. Overall, access was more equitable across equity-deserving groups in large cities, compared to mid-sized and small cities. After adjusting for covariates related to urban form and mode share, access to cycling infrastructure was higher in areas with more seniors, more recent immigrants, more visible minorities, and more people with low incomes, but lower in areas with more children. More importantly, there are still a substantial number of people from equity-deserving groups living in areas with very low levels of cycling infrastructure. For example, ∼ 1.5 million children under the age of 14 (31% of children), 1.5 million older adults (31%), 1.4 million visible minorities, and 0.5 million people with low income (20%) live in dissemination areas with the lowest level of cycling infrastructure. These results highlight the need to understand which populations stand to gain by cycling infrastructure investments and which populations are being left behind. This methodology represents a useful tool for information transport policy initiatives to advance bicycle equity at a national scale.