VELO-CITY 2013 Cycling Visionary Award entry - Understanding bicycling behaviours

VELO-CITY 2013 Cycling Visionary Award entry - Understanding bicycling behaviours

Latest recommendations from urban transport literature together with the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence suggest research on cyclists' perception and experiences. This research has for the first time facilitated the collection and analysis of detailed bicyclists’ route choices in the UK, bringing substantive empirical evidence for understanding daily bicycling behaviours.

Getting exciting!: Cycling takes a centre stage in UK - "Get Britain Cycling" agenda on desk

Oh yes, exciting! and quite refreshing to know that the momentum is ever increasing on the debate on cycling uptake in Britain. The recent general debate on cycling at Westminster Hall on 23rd Feb. 2012 coupled with several other discussions such as Newcastle Cycling Campaigner Katja Leyendecker's excellent talk on Transport Challenges, "Cyclist in the City" blogger Danny Williams' discussion on BBC Radio 4,  among others have generated more awareness among UK residents. Ofcourse increasing research outputs from my PhD research on urban cycling in North East England are also contributing!

Nationally, and quite interestingly, the early day motion 679 - GET BRITAIN CYCLING - tabled two months ago, on 05.11.2012, in UK Parliament with 123 signatures has made it even more interesting, at least to me, to want to hear the upcoming (tomorrow 23rd January 2013!) oral evidence inquiry on same theme being championed by the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group (APPCG). Clearly this is timely and exciting!

As tradition demands, academics will have to wait till mid-April for the report to be published. The report is to be written by no other person than the distinguished Professor of Transport Policy - Professor Phil Goodwin who's surname is just like mine but with an injected letter "o" somewhere. Whiles waiting, I am of the view that my phd research will contribute to some of the listed topics to be investigated such as: Data collection – including monitoring and review; Dangerous roads & junctions – including cycle routes, priority lights; Planning and urban design – cycling as part of transport/planning decisions; Public transport-bicycle integration; and, 20mph and default speed limits. My PhD research has for the first time facilitated the collection and analysis of detailed bicyclists’ route choices in the UK, bringing substantive empirical evidence for understanding daily cycling behaviours.

Understanding Urban Cycling: A data challenge (CDC2013)

Description of the challenge (see AGILE 2013 Workshops and CDC2013 website for more details)
In order to fully comprehend the constraints imposed on cyclists, the GPS tracks of individual cyclists need to be cleaned/processed and analysed alongside secondary data, such as the main traffic arteries, cycling pathways and recently established 20 miles-per-hour zones. As part of data processing and analysis process, a data challenge is introduced to allow interested researchers to meet and exchange ideas whiles contributing to knowledge. The aim of the challenge is to offer a productive environment where selected “special working group,” can work on, and exchange, ideas regarding possible ways to: isolate cycling tracks from messy GPS tracks in order to understand cycling behaviour in an urban area; and, also, reconstruct and visualise the actual cyclists’ movement behaviour using the isolated cycling tracks using any available agent-based modelling platform(s).

What is expected from Participants – possible outputs
Output 1: A working algorithm/computer program that extracts cycle tracks from provided GPS raw data. Comparison with cleaned data and a demonstration during the workshop is essential.
Output 2: A working agent-based model (ABM) that allows possible interaction between any built environment features and cycling behaviour. A comparison with one of any other available open source ABM should be made (E.g., NETLogo).
Output 3: A proposed concept/workflow that allows possible interaction between any built environment features and cycling behaviour
Output 4: A proposed concept/algorithm/computer program that extracts cycle tracks from messy GPS raw data. A comparison with proposed Visual Inspection should be made.
Output 5: Participants’ own innovative ideas relevant to the workshop questions.

A call for cycling revolution in 2013!

For Jackie Ashley, 2012 is definitely the year of cycling but says, for 2013 onward  the need for a revolution is the yardstick.

More about her Richmond Park test results, read the provided article here: "2012 was the year of cycling. Now we need a revolution"