Publication Detail

Brief: A San Francisco Case Study: What Bicycle Investments Have the Greatest Influence on Where People Ride?

UCD-ITS-RR-17-63

Brief

National Center for Sustainable Transportation, BicyclingPlus Research Collaborative

Suggested Citation:
Fitch-Polse, Dillon T., Calvin Thigpen, Antonio Cruz, Susan L. Handy (2017)

Brief: A San Francisco Case Study: What Bicycle Investments Have the Greatest Influence on Where People Ride?

. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, Brief UCD-ITS-RR-17-63

Many cities in California are investing bicycle infrastructure as a way to increase the sustainability of travel in their city. A growing body of evidence shows that bicycle infrastructure positively affects the choice to bicycle and influences the routes that bicyclists choose. However, most of these studies are cross-sectional in design and thus provide limited evidence of a causal relationship between infrastructure and bicycling behavior. To better understand the impacts of infrastructure investments, this project examines changes in bicycling behavior in San Francisco using data collected before and after major bicycle infrastructure investments. The project replicates the successful GPS travel survey conducted in 2010 by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority to build a dataset that can be used for before-and-after analysis. The goals of this research are threefold: (1) evaluate the impact of infrastructure investments on bicycle route choice, (2) identify key factors influencing bicycle route choice and frequency, and (3) validate a route choice model for use in estimating future effects of infrastructure projects.

The full research report can be found at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qv2h032