Speaker: Joseph Broach, Portland State University

Topic: Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike

When: Friday, October 31, 2014, 12-1 pm

Where: PSU Urban Center Building, SW 6th and Mill, Room 204

Summary: Some travel routes attract people walking and cycling, while others may scare them away. What features of street environments are most important, and how do available routes affect decisions to bike or walk on a specific trip?

Research to date has focused on either large-scale areal measures like “miles of bike lane nearby” or else has considered only shortest path routes. Neither method is suited to capturing the impact of targeted route-level policies like neighborhood greenways. This session will present a new technique for measuring bike and walk accessibility along the most likely route for a given trip. The method is applied to travel data, and results provide new insight into the relationship between route quality and travel mode choice.