If you build it, who will come? Individuals’ cycling volumes and socio-demography: Evaluating urban cycling infrastructure using crowd-sourced data.

Code base of my dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Urban Analytics to the University of Glasgow, School of Social & Political Sciences, Urban Studies.

Author

Samuel Hönle

Abstract

Cities are looking to the bicycle as a way to transition to a more sustainable urban transport system. To ensure this transition is socially just, socio-demographic differences in the effect of urban cycling policy, including infrastructure, need to be understood. Such evaluations currently suffer from a lack of data and appropriate methods.

This dissertation contributes a novel integrated approach to evaluate the impact of new urban cycling infrastructure on individuals' cycling levels and socio-demographic differences therein. The analysis is based on primary data of individual crowd-sourced cycling journey GPS tracks between 2017-2022 combined with socio-demographic variables of their creators, collected from the urban cycling app 'Bike Citizens'. Difference-in-(difference-in-)differences designs are applied in zero-inflated negative binomial and linear regressions. The analysed case is a bidirectional separated cycle path along Linke Wienzeile in Vienna, Austria, opened in November 2019.

The analysis found that individuals' monthly cycling volumes increased on average by 20 % after using the new cycle path. Given the design, this is an indication that the new infrastructure increased individuals' cycling levels overall. The analysis of socio-demographic differences in the effect did not produce clear inferences, but yielded hints for further research.

The presented kind of data and analytical method hold great potential for urban cycling research. Further comparative studies could form the basis of robust policy recommendations.

Structure

The files in this repository are organised analogously to the contents of the dissertation.

• Survey/ contains everything related to the socio-demographic survey.
• Data collection/ contains the data retrieval process.
• Analysis/ contains files performing the analysis.
• helpers/ contains little helper files doing hard work.

The data were strictly separated from the analysis and are not public.