Estimating bicycle demand in an aggressive environment

Abstract

The perception of the environment where we move can be a key factor in choosing a transport mode for our daily trips. For example, many cities lack adequate infrastructure or experience environmental conditions that do not favor cycling. We examine the potential demand for using the bicycle as a transport alternative in trips to college in Barranquilla, Colombia, a city with fairly aggressive environmental conditions for cycling. We designed a Stated Choice experiment geared to students and staff living within three kilometers of two college campuses in the city and traveling by bus or bike. We also considered people’s perceptions in an effort to understand the reasons why only 2% of Barranquilla’s daily trips are made by bicycle. Our mode choice analysis incorporated two latent variables (unsafety/insecurity and convenience), in addition to typical level-of-service attributes, such as travel time and cost. We found that the perception of unsafety/insecurity has an important negative effect on the probability of using bicycle; the possibility of suffering an accident or being mugged, weighs much more than the possible economic savings and improvements in health associated with using the bicycle. In terms of convenience, our results suggest that it could be just as important to have showers on campus as bike lanes available on the route. Also, investment in facilities such as free parking for bikes, and strategies such as planting trees in bike paths and sidewalks to provide shade, could significantly encourage cycling.

Keywords:

• Attitudes
• bicycle choice
• latent variables
• perceptions

Notes

1 The SE status is used in Colombia for public service taxation and subsidies. The SE status goes from 1 to 6: 1 representing the lowest income level and 6 the highest level. Socioeconomic levels 5 and 6 subsidize lower income people, belonging to levels 1 and 2. Usually, the medium income people are categorized into levels 3 and 4, while the wealthiest people in the population are categorized in levels 5 and 6 (Cantillo-García, Guzman, & Arellana, 2019).

2 At the time of the survey, 1 US$= 2800 COP.

3 The model was estimated using a code written in Ox Metrics^TM (Doornik, 2007; Arellana, 2012).