Bikeability and the induced demand for cycling

TL;DR

This study quantifies how extensive bicycle infrastructure in Copenhagen significantly increases bicycle trips and kilometers traveled, demonstrating substantial benefits in terms of health, safety, and economic value.

Contribution

It introduces a novel route choice model that accounts for the entire network and estimates infrastructure's impact on cycling demand using detailed trajectory data.

Findings

Bicycle trips increased by 60% due to infrastructure.

Bicycle kilometers traveled increased by 90%.

Annual benefits amount to EUR 0.4M per km of lane.

Abstract

To what extent is the volume of urban bicycle traffic affected by the provision of bicycle infrastructure? In this study, we exploit a large dataset of observed bicycle trajectories in combination with a fine-grained representation of the Copenhagen bicycle-relevant network. We apply a novel model for bicyclists' choice of route from origin to destination that takes the complete network into account. This enables us to determine bicyclists' preferences for a range of infrastructure and land-use types. We use the estimated preferences to compute a subjective cost of bicycle travel, which we correlate with the number of bicycle trips across a large number of origin-destination pairs. Simulations suggest that the extensive Copenhagen bicycle lane network has caused the number of bicycle trips and the bicycle kilometers traveled to increase by 60% and 90%, respectively, compared with a counterfactual without the bicycle lane network. This translates into an annual benefit of EUR 0.4M per km of bicycle lane owing to changes in subjective travel cost, health, and accidents. Our results thus strongly support the provision of bicycle infrastructure.