Everyday cycling in urban environments: Understanding behaviors and constraints in space-time

Abstract

Cycling in British cities is increasing but at a slow rate nationally. The ultimate realizations of cycling benefits in urban areas, such as cities in North East England, are hampered by lack of appropriate data to aid in our understanding of cycling behaviors to inform policy strategies and improve cycling uptake as well as data processing methodologies. Several efforts are being made to enhance data availability to understand cycling behaviors to inform policy strategies for which this research aims to contribute by providing evidence on the use of the area’s cycling infrastructure by utility cyclists. A proposed corridor space analytical approach was used to analyze the newly collected 7-day GPS data from 79 utility cyclists to estimate the extent to which respondents used the area’s cycling infrastructure. The data was used together with the area cycling infrastructure data from Newcastle City Council. Findings from the corridor space analysis suggest that 57.4 % of cyclists from sample prefer cycling on the cycle network, while 33.8 % cycle outside the cycle network with 8.8 % near the cycle network. Also, for all cycle trips, men tend to dominate in cycling on and near the cycle network. Both the males and females tend to use the cycle network more than off the network for utility trips. With 42.6 % of cyclists still cycling outside the designated cycle network, it is imperative that policy initiatives are aimed towards investing in cycling research and infrastructure to further deepen our understanding to encourage cycling around the study area. It was also suggested that the captured detailed actual route choice preferences could serve as input to the development of agent-based models towards understanding cycling behaviors around the study area.