Everyday Cycling in Urban Environments: Understanding Behaviors and Constraints in Space-Time - Computational Approaches for Urban Environments - page 178

Chapter 8
Everyday Cycling in Urban Environments:
Understanding Behaviors and Constraints
in Space-Time
Godwin Yeboah, Seraphim Alvanides, and Emine Mine Thompson
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.
Keywords Cycling behaviors ￿ Corridor space analysis ￿ Built environment ￿
GPS tracking ￿ Time geography ￿ Spatial analysis ￿ Sustainable transport policy