Bicycle Route Choice: GPS Data Collection and Travel Model Development – Year 1 (2012–13)

Shen, Qing; Chen, Peng; Schmiedeskamp, Peter; Bassok, Alon; Childress, Suzanne · 2014 · ROSA P / Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) (UTC)

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Summary

This study addresses the lack of empirical data regarding bicycle route choice behavior, which hinders the ability of transportation planners to evaluate the effectiveness of infrastructure investments and predict induced cycling demand. While literature identifies general factors influencing mode choice, there is limited understanding of how specific facility types, environmental conditions, and built environment features affect route selection. The research aims to improve the Puget Sound Regional Council’s travel demand model by incorporating bicycle route choice and assignment capabilities, thereby enabling better policy analysis and understanding of tradeoffs between utilitarian and recreational cycling. The researchers conducted a revealed preference study in the Central Puget Sound region between April and October 2012. Data were collected using the CycleTracks smartphone application, which records GPS traces alongside sociodemographic and trip-purpose data. The study relied on a self-selected sample recruited through the Puget Sound Regional Council’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, social media, and local blogs. No financial incentives were offered. The final dataset comprised 2,750 trips from 165 unique bicyclists. The methodology involved cleaning GPS data to identify bad traces, generating choice sets, and integrating supplementary geospatial data layers, including road networks, bicycle facilities, elevation, and traffic attributes. The literature review identified key variables influencing route choice, including distance, slope, traffic volume, vehicle speed, parking availability, and facility type. Cyclists generally prefer shorter, flatter routes with lower traffic volumes and speeds, fewer turns, and fewer traffic signals. Facility preferences follow a hierarchy: off-street paths are preferred over protected on-street lanes, which are preferred over unprotected lanes or mixed traffic. Wider lanes and better pavement quality also increase route attractiveness. The collected data allowed for the validation of the data collection mechanism and the identification of processing strategies for future analysis. However, the study notes that the sample size was smaller than expected and the non-random sampling methodology limits the generalizability of the findings. The significance of this work lies in its contribution to the development of robust bicycle travel models. By establishing a framework for data collection and processing, the study provides a foundation for future policy analysis regarding bicycle infrastructure. The authors recommend revisiting the sampling approach in future studies, potentially leveraging region-wide events to recruit a larger, more representative sample. The analytical methods and data processing strategies developed in this project are intended to be completed and applied to future datasets to fully realize the goal of improving travel demand models for bicycle route choice.

Key finding

The study collected 2,750 GPS-tracked bicycle trips from 165 participants but concluded that non-random sampling and small sample size prevented robust, generalizable conclusions.

Methodology

dataset

Sample size: 165

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• cyclist safety