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• 1. [Article] Do People’s Perceptions of Neighborhood Bikeability Match “Reality”?

  Do people perceive the built environment the same as we objectively measure it? If not, what are the relative roles of the objective versus the perceived environment on bicycling behavior? This study, ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Do People’s Perceptions of Neighborhood Bikeability Match “Reality”? Author: Ma, Liang, Dill, Jennifer Year: 2017 Do people perceive the built environment the same as we objectively measure it? If not, what are the relative roles of the objective versus the perceived environment on bicycling behavior? This study, based on data from Portland, Oregon, explored the match or mismatch between the objective and perceived bicycling environment and how it affects people’s bicycling behavior. The descriptive analysis indicated a fair agreement between perceived and objective measures. Older adults, women having children, less-educated and lower-income persons, and those who bicycle less tended to perceive their high-bikeable environment (measured objectively) as being a low-bikeable environment. In addition to the socio-demographics, this study also found that the social environment can play a role in the relationship between the objective and perceived environment. Finally, results of this study indicated that both the actual and perceived built environment are associated with bicycling behavior, particularly for utilitarian bicycling. For recreational bicycling, the objective environment attributes measured in this study are not significant factors, while perceptions do matter Title: Do People’s Perceptions of Neighborhood Bikeability Match “Reality”? Author: Ma, Liang, Dill, Jennifer Year: 2017 Do people perceive the built environment the same as we objectively measure it? If not, what are the relative roles of the objective versus the perceived environment on bicycling behavior? This study, based on data from Portland, Oregon, explored the match or mismatch between the objective and perceived bicycling environment and how it affects people’s bicycling behavior. The descriptive analysis indicated a fair agreement between perceived and objective measures. Older adults, women having children, less-educated and lower-income persons, and those who bicycle less tended to perceive their high-bikeable environment (measured objectively) as being a low-bikeable environment. In addition to the socio-demographics, this study also found that the social environment can play a role in the relationship between the objective and perceived environment. Finally, results of this study indicated that both the actual and perceived built environment are associated with bicycling behavior, particularly for utilitarian bicycling. For recreational bicycling, the objective environment attributes measured in this study are not significant factors, while perceptions do matter Close

• 2. [Article] Can Protected Bike Lanes Help Close the Gender Gap in Cycling? Lessons from Five Cities

  Even in areas with increased levels of bicycling, there remains a significant “gender gap” in bicycling in the United States, in contrast to many other countries with high rates of bicycling. The primary ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Can Protected Bike Lanes Help Close the Gender Gap in Cycling? Lessons from Five Cities Author: Dill, Jennifer, Goddard, Tara, Monsere, Christopher, McNeil, Nathan Year: 2014 Even in areas with increased levels of bicycling, there remains a significant “gender gap” in bicycling in the United States, in contrast to many other countries with high rates of bicycling. The primary objective of this paper was to explore whether protected bike lanes could help reduce the gender gap. To do so, the authors used survey data from a comprehensive evaluation of protected bike lanes in five large U.S. cities (Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, Portland, OR, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC) that included survey responses of 1,111 intercepted bicyclists and 2,283 residents. Both men and women overwhelmingly felt that the lanes increased their safety while riding in them. On several measures of safety and comfort, women bicyclists using the lanes did have significantly more positive associations with the protected lanes than men. A survey of residents, which included people who do and do not bicycle, revealed that women generally feel less comfortable than men bicycling on roadways, though the addition of some physical separation to a striped bike lane, does increase stated levels of comfort to a level that might increase rates of bicycling. Overall, women were also more likely to indicate that the new protected lane had increased their overall levels of bicycling. Analysis of the demographics of the intercepted bicyclists revealed differences between men and women that point to the challenge of increasing women’s rates of bicycling, primarily that the women intercepted bicycling were much less likely than men to have children. Title: Can Protected Bike Lanes Help Close the Gender Gap in Cycling? Lessons from Five Cities Author: Dill, Jennifer, Goddard, Tara, Monsere, Christopher, McNeil, Nathan Year: 2014 Even in areas with increased levels of bicycling, there remains a significant “gender gap” in bicycling in the United States, in contrast to many other countries with high rates of bicycling. The primary objective of this paper was to explore whether protected bike lanes could help reduce the gender gap. To do so, the authors used survey data from a comprehensive evaluation of protected bike lanes in five large U.S. cities (Austin, TX, Chicago, IL, Portland, OR, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC) that included survey responses of 1,111 intercepted bicyclists and 2,283 residents. Both men and women overwhelmingly felt that the lanes increased their safety while riding in them. On several measures of safety and comfort, women bicyclists using the lanes did have significantly more positive associations with the protected lanes than men. A survey of residents, which included people who do and do not bicycle, revealed that women generally feel less comfortable than men bicycling on roadways, though the addition of some physical separation to a striped bike lane, does increase stated levels of comfort to a level that might increase rates of bicycling. Overall, women were also more likely to indicate that the new protected lane had increased their overall levels of bicycling. Analysis of the demographics of the intercepted bicyclists revealed differences between men and women that point to the challenge of increasing women’s rates of bicycling, primarily that the women intercepted bicycling were much less likely than men to have children. Close

• 3. [Article] Bicycling Is Different: Built Environment Relationships to Nonwork Travel

  There is growing investment in infrastructure to support non-motorized travel modes in the United States, in particular for bicycling. However, there remains a dearth of knowledge on the relationships ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Bicycling Is Different: Built Environment Relationships to Nonwork Travel Author: Muhs, Christopher D. Year: 2014 There is growing investment in infrastructure to support non-motorized travel modes in the United States, in particular for bicycling. However, there remains a dearth of knowledge on the relationships between built environments and bicycling for non-work transportation. This issue is exacerbated by researchers and practitioners continuing to combine walking and bicycling into the category “non-motorized modes,” despite the two having many differences. This paper addresses these shortcomings through a segmented analysis of mode choice and mode share for walking, bicycling, and automobile travel. The data used are from a 2011 establishment intercept survey in the Portland, Oregon region and are destination-based. Results show pronounced differences in the empirical relationships between walking and bicycling and the built environment, when controlling for aspects of the individual, site, and trip. Models for mode choice and mode share indicate that the built environment attributes that influence automobile and walk travel are similar; yet, their influence is in the opposite direction. Empirical relationships with the built environment are altogether different for bicycling trips. Socio-demographic variable results are consistent with much of the non-work mode choice literature, but trip distance is not. Trip distance has the expected relationship with walking, but does not have a significant relationship with bicycling. The findings on the built environment relationships with travel modes support a move away from combining walking and bicycling together as non-motorized transportation for analysis and planning. They also lend insight into additional considerations for future work in non-work transportation research and policy. Title: Bicycling Is Different: Built Environment Relationships to Nonwork Travel Author: Muhs, Christopher D. Year: 2014 There is growing investment in infrastructure to support non-motorized travel modes in the United States, in particular for bicycling. However, there remains a dearth of knowledge on the relationships between built environments and bicycling for non-work transportation. This issue is exacerbated by researchers and practitioners continuing to combine walking and bicycling into the category “non-motorized modes,” despite the two having many differences. This paper addresses these shortcomings through a segmented analysis of mode choice and mode share for walking, bicycling, and automobile travel. The data used are from a 2011 establishment intercept survey in the Portland, Oregon region and are destination-based. Results show pronounced differences in the empirical relationships between walking and bicycling and the built environment, when controlling for aspects of the individual, site, and trip. Models for mode choice and mode share indicate that the built environment attributes that influence automobile and walk travel are similar; yet, their influence is in the opposite direction. Empirical relationships with the built environment are altogether different for bicycling trips. Socio-demographic variable results are consistent with much of the non-work mode choice literature, but trip distance is not. Trip distance has the expected relationship with walking, but does not have a significant relationship with bicycling. The findings on the built environment relationships with travel modes support a move away from combining walking and bicycling together as non-motorized transportation for analysis and planning. They also lend insight into additional considerations for future work in non-work transportation research and policy. Close

• 4. [Article] Rerouting Mode Choice Models: ​H​ow Including Realistic Route Options Can Help Us Understand Decisions to Walk or Bike

  For a number of reasons—congestion, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, demographic shifts, and community livability to name a few—the importance of walking and bicycling as transportation ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Rerouting Mode Choice Models: ​H​ow Including Realistic Route Options Can Help Us Understand Decisions to Walk or Bike Author: Broach, Joseph Paul Year: 2016 For a number of reasons—congestion, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, demographic shifts, and community livability to name a few—the importance of walking and bicycling as transportation options will only continue to increase. Currently, policy interest and infrastructure funding for nonmotorized modes far outstrip our ability to successfully model bike and walk travel. In the past five years, we have learned a lot about where people prefer to bike and walk, but what can that tell us about whether people will bike or walk in the first place? The research presented here is designed to start bridging the gap between choice of route and choice of travel mode (walk, bike, transit, drive, etc.). A mode choice framework is presented that acknowledges the importance of attributes along specific walk and bike routes that travelers are likely to consider for a given trip. Adding route quality as a factor in mode choice decisions is new, and shows promise for: (1) improving prediction of pedestrian and cycling trips, (2) increasing sensitivity of models to finer-grained policy scenarios--testing the impact of a single proposed facility or design change on bike and walk mode shares, and (3) identifying separately the effects of pedestrian and cycling facilities on decisions to walk or ride from which route to take. The proposed framework is applied to revealed preference, GPS travel data collected from 2010-2013 in Portland, Oregon. Key results include: (1) specific walk and bike facilities are significant factors for mode as well as route choice, (2) lower traffic-stress routes may be more important for women than men when choosing whether to bike, (3) available routes on a specific trip may have independent impacts from more traditional measures of land-use and built environment such as density, and (4) the importance of walking and biking environments appears to remain even when controlling for neighborhood self-selection. Title: Rerouting Mode Choice Models: ​H​ow Including Realistic Route Options Can Help Us Understand Decisions to Walk or Bike Author: Broach, Joseph Paul Year: 2016 For a number of reasons—congestion, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, demographic shifts, and community livability to name a few—the importance of walking and bicycling as transportation options will only continue to increase. Currently, policy interest and infrastructure funding for nonmotorized modes far outstrip our ability to successfully model bike and walk travel. In the past five years, we have learned a lot about where people prefer to bike and walk, but what can that tell us about whether people will bike or walk in the first place? The research presented here is designed to start bridging the gap between choice of route and choice of travel mode (walk, bike, transit, drive, etc.). A mode choice framework is presented that acknowledges the importance of attributes along specific walk and bike routes that travelers are likely to consider for a given trip. Adding route quality as a factor in mode choice decisions is new, and shows promise for: (1) improving prediction of pedestrian and cycling trips, (2) increasing sensitivity of models to finer-grained policy scenarios--testing the impact of a single proposed facility or design change on bike and walk mode shares, and (3) identifying separately the effects of pedestrian and cycling facilities on decisions to walk or ride from which route to take. The proposed framework is applied to revealed preference, GPS travel data collected from 2010-2013 in Portland, Oregon. Key results include: (1) specific walk and bike facilities are significant factors for mode as well as route choice, (2) lower traffic-stress routes may be more important for women than men when choosing whether to bike, (3) available routes on a specific trip may have independent impacts from more traditional measures of land-use and built environment such as density, and (4) the importance of walking and biking environments appears to remain even when controlling for neighborhood self-selection. Close