Cycling mode choice: An RP study in Switzerland

Abstract

Cycling is envisioned to play a key role in sustainable transportation systems. However, conventional transport planning models represent travel decisions biased towards motorised modes like cars and public transit, and the representation of bike use can be unrealistic and superficial. The purpose of this paper is to characterise the bike mode more accurately in transport modelling, particularly by establishing the relationship between transport infrastructure and cycling demand. A mode choice model for Switzerland is estimated with infrastructure variables using revealed preference data enriched with route variables obtained from trip routers. The model results show that road conditions of the route play a small role in predicting bike mode choice.