Bicycle Planning Research Articles

Shifting Gears: A case study of bicycle planning and decision-making in Tucson, Arizona

Planners face a complex process from planning projects to final construction and evaluation in cycle planning. Planners tend to coordinate with peers in neighboring cities, advocates, politicians, other policymakers, and researchers to implement cycling plans. Documenting this decision-making process and the sources of information that guide decisions can provide insight into creating better cycling planning research and fostering stronger collaborations. We first provide a brief history of cycle planning in Tucson, Arizona, to demonstrate the current issues and efforts. Then, we present findings from interviews with Tucson planners and an advocate to explore information sources, collaboration, barriers, and opportunities for action for bicycle planning. Our results highlight the need for research presented in consumable ways, particularly through professional networks, and the potential for university outreach offices to assist in public participation and outreach, professional education, and collaboration on data collection and analysis on cycling projects. Focusing on these avenues can strengthen the science to decision-making pipeline. These lessons can also help improve bicycle planning in other communities.

Evaluation of Bicycle Transportation Experiences and Bicycle Planning in Turkey, Land Use – Praxis Based Model Proposal

Evaluation of Bicycle Transportation Experiences and Bicycle Planning in Turkey, Land Use – Praxis Based Model Proposal

Assessing the equity impact of cycling infrastructure allocation: Implications for planning practice

Despite the general political efforts to normalise bicycle use in cities, empirical evidence indicates that cycling investments tend to prioritise central and wealthy neighbourhoods rather than economically disadvantaged and peripheral areas. Among the potential causes, scholars claim that the lack of awareness about the social impacts of cycling and the general absence of equity-oriented appraisal methods during planning and decision-making processes may perpetuate the uneven distribution of bicycle-related investments.In response, this paper introduces a novel planning support tool for assessing the relative equity impact of bicycle planning (TIRE), which provides a micro-scale spatial assessment of the effects of cycling network allocation on the accessibility levels of distinct socioeconomic groups, allowing a vertical equity assessment with high spatial detail.In order to apply the tool to a real-case scenario, the cycling strategy under implementation in Lisbon, Portugal, was assessed as a testbed. The results were presented to local planning practitioners in an experiential workshop, enabling participants to define strategies supported by the tool and evaluate its user-friendliness and usefulness for planning practice.TIRE revealed hotspots in the city where the cycling network distribution is equitable and areas where disadvantaged representatives have levels of accessibility below the municipality average, thus requiring special attention during the bicycle planning process. In addition, the tool supported local planning practitioners in identifying target areas and equity-oriented strategies, increasing awareness about the equity impacts of cycling infrastructure allocation.

Where to improve cycling infrastructure? Assessing bicycle suitability and bikeability with open data in the city of Paris

This study proposes a method that can help in identifying potential locations for improvements of cycling infrastructures. It addresses the need for simple and effective methods to support decision-making in bicycle planning. The city of Paris is used as a case study area because it has made considerable efforts to improve cycling infrastructures and to become more bicycle-friendly in recent years. The method (1) identifies potential locations for improvements of bicycle infrastructures on a street level and (2) on a city level considering accessibility to important destinations. The main data used in this project is street data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and cycling infrastructure data from the Atelier parisien d’urbanisme (Apur). The proposed method can be applied with commonly available data, has clear outcomes, is reproducible, and can be applied to different case study areas. We produced a map of bicycle suitability across all of Paris, and validated it for the 30 longest segments in the city with lower bike suitability. Our validation showed that combining OSM and Apur data led to a reliable dataset, with which we modelled bikeability using the underlying network overlain on a 250 m resolution grid and destinations representing leisure activities, education, shopping, city functions and public transport. The resulting map identifies regions of the city with poor bikeability, where improvements to cycling infrastructure should be investigated.

Challenges and Opportunities of Emerging Data Sources to Estimate Network-Wide Bike Counts

Emerging sources of mobile location data such as Strava and other phone-based apps may provide useful information for assessing bicycle activity on each link of a network. Despite their potential to complement traditional bike count programs, the representativeness and suitability of these emerging sources for producing bicycle volume estimates remain unclear. This study investigates the challenges and opportunities by fusing Strava data with short-term and permanent conventional count program data to produce bicycle volume estimations using clustering and nonparametric modeling. Analysis indicates that the concentration of permanent counters at high bicycle volume locations presents a significant challenge to produce network-wide daily volume estimations even though Strava data demonstrate potential in mitigating the estimation bias at lower-volume sites. Despite the contribution of Strava to develop reliable and spatially and temporally transferable bicycle volume estimations, significant challenges remain to rely on Strava counts alone to characterize network-level activities due to sampling bias and spatial representations. This study will help planners discern and assess the challenges and opportunities of using emerging data in bicycle planning.

Pedestrian Facilities as the Core of Sustainable Public Transport: A Case Study of Kuta-Bali Tourism Destinations

A tourist destination should be designed to make walking more enjoyable and sustainable. Many tourist destinations fail to provide pedestrian facilities to support sustainable tourism. Recognizing the important role that walking has in creating attractive, accessible, safe, and healthy destinations, it is necessary to develop these pedestrian facilities as a core in designing and evaluating Public Transport systems in terms of mobility and sustainability. The purpose of this study is to improve pedestrian facilities based on walkability indexes. This study uses a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data and further information on the topic. The results of this research are in the form of a guide, covering all aspects of pedestrian and bicycle planning in the tourist destination area of ​​Kuta-Bali in the form of basic and up-to-date information about various planning and design concepts.

Measuring the Equity Gap in Bicycle Planning in Starter and Climber Cycling Cities

Measuring the Equity Gap in Bicycle Planning in Starter and Climber Cycling Cities

What makes bicyclists comfortable? Insights from a visual preference survey of casual and prospective bicyclists

• Comfort in different bicycling environments measured using a visual preference survey. • Bike infrastructure and low traffic speeds generate higher comfort ratings. • People without a predisposition to bicycle are unlikely to feel comfortable with even the best-designed on-road facilities. • Planning for a “design person” and setting a minimum infrastructure standard could increase comfort for all. Understanding what environments are comfortable (and perceived as safe) for bicyclists is essential for increasing bicycling, particularly for non-experienced riders. Surveys probing people’s qualitative perceptions about bicycling environments can inform bicycle planning in important ways. In this study we use survey data from an on-line video experiment to analyze bicycling comfort and its relationship with person-level and road-level variables. We use an existing survey of students, faculty, and staff at UC Davis (n = 3089) who rated video clips of bicycling facilities in different environments based on their perceived comfort as a part of the annual UC Davis Campus Travel Survey (CTS). The video clips come from a variety of urban and semi-rural roads around the San Francisco Bay Area where bicycling rates vary. Our results indicate considerable effects of socio-demographics and attitudes on absolute video ratings, but we find relative agreement about which videos are most comfortable and uncomfortable across our sample population segments. Presence of bike infrastructure and low speed roads are especially important in generating higher comfort ratings. However, our results suggest that even the best designed on-road bike facilities (according to attributes in our data) are unlikely to provide a comfortable bicycling environment for those without a predisposition to bicycle. Nonetheless, our results provide guidance for improving roads with on-street bike facilities where protected or separated facilities may not be suitable. We discuss these results in the context of design standards for bicycling and methods for prioritizing bike infrastructure investments.

“Cycling … is Not Going to Occur Naturally”: A View on the Research Agenda for Bicycle Mobility in Urban South Africa

Although drafting might be an effective bicycle racing practice, closely following someone else’s lead is not necessarily the best course of action when it comes to bicycle planning – particularly in emerging or starter cycling cities that have dramatically different complexities, contexts, and urban forms, to the exemplars of the literature. This contribution reflects on the knowledge gaps, policy transfer concerns, and most pressing research needs in South African cities, if the institutional and activist promotion of everyday cycling is to achieve its objectives. From the outset, a better understanding of the role played by past and current inequity on cycling acceptability is required. A mindful examination of who promotes cycling, to whom, and how, is key: a narrative that seems shaming, coercive, or a knowing better, is an unwise basis from which to redirect our automobile trajectory.

Understanding Plum Rain’s Effects on Urban Public Bicycle Unavailability Considering Both Place Semantics and Riding Distance

The effect of the plum rain weather event on cycling trips reflects the climate resilience of the public bicycle system. However, quantitative studies regarding the impact of plum rain on public bicycle users and corresponding spatial heterogeneity have not been paid much attention. This paper explores the spatial pattern of affected levels from the perspective of cyclist number, place semantics and riding distance. Corresponding public bicycle trips in normal weather are predicted by spatial-temporal random forest prediction. GIS neighborhood statistics and clustering algorithms are adapted to analyze and visualize the affected levels using origin-destination data of public bicycle trips and point of interest data of city public facilities. It is proved that there is an obvious spatial difference in affected levels by plum rain from three dimensions. In the dimension of the number of cyclists, the docking stations with different affected levels are distributed across the whole urban area. In the place semantic dimension, the docking stations with high affected levels show a clustered zonal distribution in the city center. In the dimension of cycling distance, the docking stations with high affected levels are mainly distributed in the periphery of the central urban area. The study theoretically expands the impact mechanism of environment and active transport. It is beneficial for the early monitoring, warning and assessment of climate change risks for public bicycle planning and management.

Regional Bicycle Network Evaluation and Strategic Planning: A Quantitative Methodological Approach Despite Limited Data Sources for Cycling

In cases where budgets and space are limited, the realization of new bicycle infrastructure is often hard, as an evaluation of the existing network or the benefits of new investments is rarely possible. Travel demand models can offer a tool to support decision makers, but because of limited data availability for cycling, the validity of the demand estimation and trip assignment are often questionable. This paper presents a quantitative method to evaluate a bicycle network and plan strategic improvements, despite limited data sources for cycling. The proposed method is based on a multimodal aggregate travel demand model. Instead of evaluating the effects of network improvements on the modal split as well as link and flow volumes, this method works the other way around. A desired modal share for cycling is set, and the resulting link and flow volumes are the basis for a hypothetical bicycle network that is able to satisfy this demand. The current bicycle network is compared with the hypothetical network, resulting in preferable actions and a ranking based on the importance and potentials to improve the modal share for cycling. Necessary accompanying measures for other transport modes can also be derived using this method. For example, our test case, a city in Austria with 300,000 inhabitants, showed that a shift of short trips in the inner city toward cycling would, without countermeasures, provide capacity for new longer car trips. The proposed method can be applied to existing travel models that already contain a mode choice model.

Collaboration, experimentation, continuous improvement: Exploring an iterative way of working in the Municipality of Amsterdam’s Bicycle Program

As demand for cycling rises, cities are scaling up their bicycle planning and infrastructure efforts. There is not only a knowledge gap to building this infrastructure, but also an organizational learning gap, as planning organizations are stepping into new waters. This research investigates how well an agile (an iterative, collaborative) way of working may be well-suited to address this through the case of the Municipality of Amsterdam’s Bicycle Program. We explore what this way of working looks like in the bicycle planning context through the stories of Amsterdam practitioners. This is done through 12 semi-structured interviews and 2 narrative interviews with process mapping exercises, the latter of which explore one project in more detail: an intervention at the Alexanderplein intersection. In the Alexanderplein project, collaboration, experimentation, and analysis were tightly connected and enabled learning by the municipality. We present how the way of working in this project and in the Bicycle Program as a whole relate to agile characteristics, practices, and barriers, and we discuss the implications for planning for cycling.

Comparing Spatial Associations of Commuting versus Recreational Ridership Captured by the Strava Fitness App

Strava Metro data are used in bicycle planning, but there are concerns it overrepresents fitness activity. The data include a commute label, but spatial patterns of commuting versus recreational ridership are underexplored. Using spatial regression, we compare associations of Strava ridership by trip type. Commuting was associated with areas with more on-street infrastructure, universities, and higher bicycle crash density. Recreational ridership was higher in areas with older populations, more hills and major roads, and lower intersection density. Both trip purposes tended to be in areas with regional trails, off-street infrastructure, higher bicycle mode share, bridges, and proximity to the ocean.

Planning for cycling in a growing megacity: Exploring planners' perceptions and shared values

Cycling has long been marginalized in Chinese modern transport planning. With increasing attention being paid to cycling in recent years, it is important to have a better understanding of how local planners make practical judgments for cycling and the underlying considerations. This study examines practicing planners' perceptions and shared values of bicycle planning in Wuhan, a growing Chinese city. An exploratory sequential study design was employed by combining in-depth interviews and a questionnaire survey. A theoretical framework, the culturized planning model, was applied to guide the exploration of the planners' perceptions and shared values. The results indicate that planners generally have a positive attitude towards cycling, particularly regarding environmental and health benefits. They think a suitable role of cycling in commuting is to solve the first and last mile problem by complementing public transport, rather than cycling alone. Most planners are not satisfied with existing cycling conditions; however, they can only improve the cycling infrastructure selectively in a project-oriented way. A variety of challenges of improving the cycling condition are identified. In the changing and growing context, informal rules often play a role in planners' judgment-making.

Social (in)equity in access to cycling infrastructure: Cross-sectional associations between bike lanes and area-level sociodemographic characteristics in 22 large U.S. cities

Cycling advocates have recently argued that low-income and minority communities across the U.S. have disproportionately low access to bike lanes. To date, however, quantitative evidence of disparities in access to bike lanes has been limited to a small number of cities. We addressed this research gap by examining cross-sectional associations between bike lanes and sociodemographic characteristics at the block group level for 22 large U.S. cities (n = 21,843 block groups). Dependent variables included the presence (yes/no), coverage, connectivity, and proximity of bike lanes, measured using secondary GIS data collected by each of the 22 cities between 2012 and 2016. Primary independent variables included indicators of race, ethnicity, educational attainment, income, poverty, and a composite socioeconomic status (SES) index, all measured using data from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey. We used linear and logistic multilevel mixed-effects regression models to estimate associations between these sociodemographic characteristics and each bike lane dependent variable, before and after adjusting for traditional indicators of cycling demand (population and employment density, distance to downtown, population age structure, bicycle commuting levels). In unadjusted associations, disadvantaged block groups (i.e. lower SES, higher proportions of minority residents) had significantly lower access to bike lanes. After adjusting for indicators of cycling demand, access to bike lanes was lower in block groups with particular types of disadvantage (lower educational attainment, higher proportions of Hispanic residents, lower composite SES) but not in those with other types of disadvantage (higher proportions of black residents, lower income, higher poverty). These results provide empirical support for advocates' claims of disparities in bike lane access, suggesting the importance of more closely considering social equity in bicycle planning and advocacy.

Research and Suggestions on the Present Situation of Shared Bicycle Parking Spot on University Campus

As an important means of short-distance travel for college students, sharing bicycle parking and planning is particularly noteworthy. This requires not only considering the layout of buildings and environment on campus, but also systematically improving and designing with the combination of behavior characteristics and human factors. Based on the research and analysis of the current situation of sharing bicycles among college students, this paper puts forward some suggestions for improving the design of parking spaces in College campuses.

2397 - Social (in)Equity in Access to Cycling Infrastructure: Examining the Distribution of Bike Lanes with Respect to Area-Level Sociodemographic Characteristics in 23 Large U.S. Cities

Background Cycling advocates have recently argued that low-income and minority communities across the U.S. have disproportionately low access to bike lanes. To date, however, quantitative evidence of disparities in access to bike lanes is limited to a small number of cities. Methods We address this research gap by examining cross-sectional associations between bike lanes and sociodemographic characteristics at the block group level for 23 large U.S. cities (n=22,164 block groups). Dependent variables include the presence (yes/no), density, connectivity, and proximity of bike lanes, measured using secondary GIS data collected by each of the 23 cities between 2012 and 2016. Primary independent variables include indicators of race, ethnicity, educational attainment, income, poverty, and a composite socioeconomic status (SES) index, measured using data from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey. We use linear and logistic multilevel mixed-effects regression models to estimate associations between these sociodemographic characteristics and each bike lane dependent variable, before and after adjusting for traditional indicators of cycling demand (population and employment density, distance to downtown, percent of population between ages 18 and 34, percent of workers commuting by bicycle). Results In unadjusted associations, disadvantaged block groups (i.e. lower SES, higher proportions of minority residents) had significantly lower access to bike lanes. After adjusting for traditional indicators of cycling demand, access to bike lanes remained lower for block groups with particular types of disadvantage (lower educational attainment, higher proportions of Hispanic residents, lower composite SES) but not with other types of disadvantage (lower proportions of black residents, lower income, higher poverty). Conclusions These results provide empirical support for advocates’ claims of distributional inequalities in bike lane access, suggesting the importance of more closely considering social equity in the bicycle planning and advocacy process.

Motivations and Strategies for Bicycle Planning in Rural, Suburban, and Low-Density Communities: The Need for New Best Practices

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Many planners view bicycles as a critical component of sustainable urban transportation, but assumptions about cycling derived from urban places may not translate to the social, political, and built environment contexts outside of cities. Our study focuses on the motivations and strategies that rural, small, and low-density (RSLD) communities have for investing in bicycle systems; our goal was to learn what kind of technical assistance such communities might need to realize their cycling goals. We conducted in-depth interviews in 10 communities that received grants from a Kaiser Permanente program in Colorado to increase cycling.Takeaway for practice: These 10 cases present a conflict between a recreational or quality-of-life approach to increasing cycling in RSLD communities and a transportation approach more common in urban areas, which stresses the use of cycling to supplement or replace auto travel for purposive trips. Most RSLD cities did not have the political or cultural support to plan for and begin constructing major cycling infrastructure for either recreational or transportation cycling. Most need best practices to educate local stakeholders on the value of cycling to support economic development, increase tourism, and improve property values without significantly reducing auto access. Planners in RSLD places also need special guidance for addressing the needs of riders with diverse environmental values and those from disadvantaged communities.

Modelling speed–flow relationships for bicycle traffic flow

Speed–flow relationships used to describe speed characteristics are very useful, especially as they can be utilised to analyse capacity and level of service. Speed–flow relationships for motorised vehicles have been widely studied, but those for heterogeneous bicycle flow have yet to be examined. This research thus aimed to develop speed–flow relationships for heterogeneous bicycle traffic flow, incorporating the factors of bicycle type and characteristics of cyclists such as percentages of electric bicycles (EBs), male cyclists, elderly cyclists and cyclists carrying loads. On the basis of field bicycle traffic data from 11 cycleway sections, three speed–flow relationships for different numbers of cycleway lanes were developed. The three models were further validated and used to examine the effects of bicycle type and characteristics of cyclists on the speed–flow relationships for bicycle traffic. The results showed that bicycle speed increases with the percentage of EBs on the cycleway, while the proportion of elderly cyclists has no significant effect on bicycle speed. Cyclists carrying loads and male cyclists have negative impacts on bicycle speed for a narrow width of cycleway. The findings of this study provide some countermeasures for bicycle planning and management.

Emotional mapping and its participatory potential: Opinions about cycling conditions in Reykjavík, Iceland

Many cities have prioritised the provision of bicycle infrastructure, as part of a transition to more sustainable transport. Information from the users of bicycle facilities is crucial for successful bicycle planning. The article presents a case study of Reykjavík, Iceland, where a simple ‘emotional mapping’ platform was used to enable cyclists to express their emotional reactions to routes and places. A sample of 100 users identified some 541 features - lines and points - on a map of the city, associated them with either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotions and wrote textual comments to elaborate on the reasons for their judgement. The results indicate clearly the importance of the natural environment for cyclists, as well as the negative feeling engendered by cycling close to car traffic or in the street with the cars. These data support the emphases found in the present bicycling plan of Reykjavík city. In general, volunteered geographical information and crowdsourcing has much potential for increasing citizen participation in urban planning. A flexible software platform for participatory mapping, such as the one used in the study, can be a valuable addition to the planner‘s toolbox.