What is it about?
What difference does bicycle infrastructure make? Does it encourage people to bike more? Using a large dataset of GPS trajectories of bicycle trips and fine-grained network data covering the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, we find a large effect of infrastructure provision on the volume of bicycle traffic. We find that it does make quite a lot of difference. The extensive Copenhagen bicycle lane network has caused the number of bicycle trips and the bicycle kilometers traveled to increase by 60% and 90%. This translates into an annual benefit of €0.4M per km of bicycle lane owing to changes in generalized travel cost, health, and accidents. Our results thus strongly support the provision of bicycle infrastructure. It matters a lot, which bicycle infrastructure cities provide. We find a difference in the generalized cost of cycling of more than a factor eight between the best and the worst infrastructure types. Thus, the type and the location of infrastructure are very important.
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Why is it important?
If more bike travel by bicycle rather than by car, it will help to improve public health and reduce traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution as well as the climate impact of urban transportation. Provision of bicycle-friendly infrastructure is a primary means to achieving this.
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This page is a summary of: Bikeability and the induced demand for cycling, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220515120.
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