Forecasting the impact of infrastructure on Swedish commuters’ cycling behaviour

In this paper we investigate the impact of four cycling environments on the propensity to cycle to work. The types of infrastructure investigated were mixed traffic, bicycle lane in the road way, bicycle path next to the road, and bicycle path not in connection with the road. In the mode choice model we combined three different data sets, two with stated preference data and one with revealed preference data, restricted to only include journeys of 12 km or less. At baseline, 24% of the cycling time was spent in mixed traffic, 2% in bicycle lanes, 42% on a bicycle path near the road way, and 31% on a bicycle path not in connection to a road way. Values of travel time savings for bicycling independent on infrastructure (based on revealed preference data) was 176 SEK/h, for cycling in mixed traffic it was 241 SEK/h, for cycling on a bicycle lane in the road way it was 249 SEK/h, for cycling on a bicycle path next to the road it was 178 SEK/h, and for cycling on a bicycle path far from the road it was 167 SEK/h (all differentiated values are based on rescaled stated preference data). Using an incremental form of the logit model we found that the biggest shift to cycle that may be possible is if all cycling after the change takes place on the bike path far from the road. The proportion of cyclists in this sample would then increase from 51.0% to 61.3%, i.e. an increase of 20%.