Everyday Cycling in Urban Environments: Understanding Behaviors and Constraints in Space-Time - Computational Approaches for Urban Environments - page 179

8.1 Introduction

There is demand for sustainable ways of living due to problems such as traffic
congestion, population growth, climate change, low physical activity, sedentary
lifestyles, and health-related issues (e.g., obesity & noncommunicable diseases) to
name a few (GAPA 2010a , b ). Motorized transport contributes to greenhouse gas
emissions which also impacts on climate change. Cycling as a means of transport
has the potential to contribute to sustainable way of living, thereby ameliorating
these problems; hence, understanding cycling as means of transport is paramount.
This research is partly a response to calls from UK National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence 2012 recommendations as well as urban transport literature for
further research to incorporate the investigation and discovery of cyclists' perception
and experiences (Forsyth and Krizek 2011 ; Skinner and Rose 2007 ;NICE 2012 ), to
support urban designers as well as cycling policy interventions and transportation
engineers, and thereby to increase cycling uptake to ensure sustainable means of
transport with low impact on environment. The ultimate realizations of cycling
benefits by cities - such as cities in North East England - are hampered by lack of
appropriate data to inform policy strategies to improve cycling uptake as well as data
processing methodologies. Moreover, 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. Utility cycling is defined as any cycling
not done primarily for fitness, recreation (such as cycle touring), or sport (such as
cycle racing) but as a means of transport and covers activities such as traveling to
work and to shops, running errands, seeing friends and family, and going to locations
of other social activities. This definition extends Skinner and Rose's ( 2007 , p. 84)
definition which suggests that utility cycling can be defined as “day-to-day cycling
for mundane trips to local shops, to work or to school.” In this chapter, the term
utility is viewed as “practical, day to day” purposeful trips (LTSA 2004 , p. 10) and
encompasses cycling for commuting purposes.
The purpose of this research is to provide evidence on the use of the area's
cycling infrastructure by experienced utility cyclists. This research has for the
first time facilitated the collection and analysis of detailed adult utility bicyclists'
route choice preferences in the UK, bringing substantive empirical evidence for
understanding daily cycling behaviors. Sener et al. ( 2009 , p. 513) argue that
bicyclists' demographics such as gender, among other bicyclist characteristics,
influence bicyclists' route choice. Dill and Voros ( 2007 ) in their literature review
also point out gender as one of the main demographic factors to consider in un-
derstanding cycling behavior. Since the main intent is to demonstrate how corridor
space analytical approach could be used to understand such variables, gender is
conveniently selected as an explanatory variable for the practical demonstration of
implementing the proposed technique.
The chapter is divided into six parts including this introductory part. The next
two parts give contextualized background to the research and brief description of
the study area. The third part discusses the approaches used in data collection and