Bike Infrastructures and Design Qualities: Enhancing Cycling

Decisions on transportation projects are typically – alongside the project costs – based on the potential for the project to contribute to broad public policy goals. Information on how specific design qualities enhance cycling will help decision makers to develop better and more cost-effective bike infrastructures. This article aims to present findings of the research project titled Bikeability – funded by the Danish Research Council. The overall purpose of the Bikeability project is to investigate and document relations between cycling motivation from different socio- demographic groups and distinct design characteristics related to the urban environment and the bike infrastructure. The part of the project described in this article concerns an in-depth case study of three bike infrastructures with distinct typologies – Vestergade Vest/Mageløs in Odense; Hans Broges Gade in Aarhus and Bryggebroen in Copenhagen. The main element of the case studies is a questionnaire amongst users of the three infrastructures allowing the determination of socio-economic characteristics of the users and effects of the infrastructure in terms of the use of bike. Furthermore, the users were asked to assess the infrastructure project as well as to describe what specific design element primarily motivated them to travel by bike. The findings highlight the critical role of fast connectivity and fast bike lanes in motivating cyclists to ride their bikes more often. It also indicates that it is challenging to ensure the perception of safety in shared-used spaces. These are findings that should be taken into consideration by architects, planners and engineers when designing bike infrastructures. Bridging research and policy, the findings of this research project can also support bike friendly design and planning, and cyclist advocacy.