If You Build It, They Will Come!
Have you ever walked down a street in your city and imagined what it would look like without any parked cars? Those empty parking spaces and areas are full of development potential that just needs to be identified. Samuel Hönle’s master’s thesis focused on the transport revolution, and more specifically on cycling infrastructure. He analysed the impact of new cycle paths, and his research produced some exciting results.
What’s it all about?
“If you build it, who will come?” is the subject of Samuel’s master’s thesis, and the main question he addressed was: Who uses cycling infrastructure, and how much do they use it? He wanted to find out what effect a positive cycling experience has, or, by contrast, what effect bad cycling experiences can have. Working with data provided by Bike Citizens and the KYUC survey tool, he obtained some extremely interesting – and in some cases unexpected – results for the cycle routes he focused on in Vienna.
What prompted him to do this?
Originally from Graz, during his time at a secondary technical school in Kaindorf he became interested in politics and went on to study political science, software and information engineering in Vienna. In the Austrian capital his passion for the city grew and grew – he was primarily interested in the political processes, but also in how the city looked, what quality of life it offered, and what the environmental factors were.He was in touch with Bike Citizens while writing his bachelor’s thesis, and he developed a tool that allows surveys to be carried out within the app and the users’ answers to be combined with other data in order to analyse the results.
After graduating, he wanted to combine both strands of his studies – and Glasgow turned out to be the right place to do that. He now focused on turning the theory into reality, and the survey tool was used for the first time in the construction of a new cycle path on the Linke Wienzeile road in Vienna. The challenge was to analyse how exactly people use their bikes, and whether using the new cycle path on the Linke Wienzeile would encourage more people to travel by bike.
Mobility in Vienna and Glasgow
Samuel regularly travels by bike in Vienna, partly because shorter journeys are faster by bike than by car, and partly because he can get everywhere he needs to go by bike. But when he moved to Glasgow, he hardly used his bike at all.
“It’s a car-dominated city.”
In Glasgow he found pretty quickly that cyclists were neither respected nor valued – other road users were completely inconsiderate towards people on bikes, and there were very few designated cycle paths. That was reason enough for him to leave his bike in the corner and choose other forms of transport.
Why the Linke Wienzeile?
Samuel deliberately chose the Linke Wienzeile because the construction of this cycle path was politically highly controversial. It involved removing several parking spaces, and local residents and businesses worried that it would impede traffic and reduce turnover. Despite these concerns, the cycle path was built, and Samuel’s research focused on the real-world impacts on cyclists and whether this new cycle path was ultimately worth it.
Which tools did he use?
Samuel used the GPS data from Bike Citizens users, as well as his own survey tool to establish a consensus. He compared the Bike Citizens users’ data from before the cycle path was built with the data collected after it opened. In theory it would also have been possible to identify sociodemographic differences: intriguing questions such as whether the cycle path helped low-income earners, or whether there were gendered differences in how it was used. Unfortunately, there was insufficient data to reach meaningful conclusions on these issues. However, there was evidence that it may have a bigger impact for people earning below the average wage and for people who either have no access to a car or have chosen not to use one.
Results of his master’s thesis
Samuel was interested in finding out whether new cycle paths enable or simplify everyday journeys. In this case, his analysis showed that adding the cycle path to the Linke Wienzeile had a major impact on how people in Vienna get around. The data he collected showed that cyclists who rode on the new cycle path used their bike 20% more each month – and that doesn’t mean that just the Linke Wienzeile was used 20% more, but that overall people travelled by bike more than they did before.
What’s cycling infrastructure like in Austria?
Lots of people don’t travel by bike because the right infrastructure isn’t in place for them, or because they feel it’s unsafe.
“If you want to encourage the transport revolution, get people out of their cars and convince people to switch to green alternatives, you can’t be happy with that.”
Conclusion
Investing in cycling infrastructure pays off! Samuel’s work shows that a new cycle path can have multiple positive impacts, including increasing overall bike usage. The aim should be to design and build cycling infrastructure so that absolutely everyone feels safe when riding their bike. To do that, studies need to be conducted on the different effects of the various safety levels offered by cycling infrastructure. Samuel says there’s a very big gender gap in cycling, as most of the existing cycling infrastructure was built at a time when urban planning was dominated by men and mainly focused on how men get around.Women, older people and people in part-time work have very different, and varying, patterns of mobility. It’s important to avoid repeating the mistakes of car infrastructure and not just build cycling infrastructure in the same places currently used by cars – this time we need to get it right and provide inclusive cycling infrastructure so that everyone can use it.
