Journal of Transport Geography 30 (2013) 227–233 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo Mapping bicyclists’ experiences in Copenhagen ⇑ Bernhard Snizek a, , Thomas Alexander Sick Nielsen b, Hans Skov-Petersen a a Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, 1958 Rolighedsvej 23, Denmark b Department of Transport Technical University of Denmark, Bygningstorvet 116B, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark article info abstract Keywords: This paper presents an approach to the collection, mapping, and analysis of cyclists’ experiences. By spa- Mapping tially relating located experiences to the availability of bicycle facilities and other aspects of the urban Experiences environment, their influence on cyclists’ experiences can be analysed. 398 cyclists responded and Cycling sketched their most recent cycle route and a total of 890 points to locations along the route where they Urban planning had had positive and negative cycling experiences. The survey was implemented as an online question- Transport planning naire built on Google Maps, and allowed up to three positive and three negative experience points to be Traffic engineering mapped and classified. By relating the characteristics of the experience points and the routes to the traversed urban area in general, the significance of the preconditions for obtaining positive or negative experiences could be eval- uated. Thereby urban spaces can be mapped according to the potential promotion of positive or negative experiences. Further, the method might be applied to assess the effect of proposed changes to the urban design in terms of cyclists’ experiences. Statistical analysis of the location attributes, traffic environments and conflicts, bicycle facilities, urban density, centrality, and environmental amenities indicates that positive experiences, or the absence of negative experiences, are clearly related to the presence of en-route cycling facilities, and attractive nat- ure environments within a short distance of large water bodies or green edges along the route. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Background 1.1. Technology-supported mapping of urban experiences Encouraging motorists to stop using the car for daily urban trips Affective computing systems are a recent development within in favour of the bicycle is one of the major challenges cities cur- emotional mapping. Nold (2009) developed an electronic device, rently face in order to enhance the liveability of cities (Ewing which constantly measures a respondent’s state of arousal via a and Cervero, 2010). However, convincing motorists to choose the galvanic skin device and his/her current location while walking bicycle as the major means of transport is a significant challenge. in a city. By storing the measurements in a spatial database and Understanding the way cyclists perceive their environment as well overlaying several respondents’ tracks, unpleasant locations can as mapping and analysing these perceptions could be the key to be identified. In this way, a map can be constructed, which Leahu designing positive cycling experiences which may well encourage and Schwenk (2008) refer to as an arousal map that visualises more people to travel by bicycle, thereby contributing to sustain- the city’s psychogeography. This map could provide important able urban environments. background information for city planning and could be applied Recently, several studies have treated cycling as a special phe- during the knowledge-gathering phase of the planning process. nomenon, which differs both from motorised as well as pedestrian In Nold’s context, emotional maps are generated by means of both traffic in a number of ways (Forsyth and Krizek, 2011; de Geus stated (semantic mapping of experiences) and revealed (geospatial et al., 2008; Bonham and Suh, 2008; Raford et al., 2005). However, recording of skin resistance) preference after having completed a only a few of these studies deal with the quality of cycling in rela- particular trip. Zeile et al. (2009) developed a methodology for con- tion to the cyclists’ surroundings (Heinen et al., 2011). structing what they call emotional neighbourhood portraits by applying a similar approach to Nold’s. Rantanen and Kahila (2009) presented Internet-based methods to gather, examine, and analyse local knowledge within what they called SoftGIS. Posi- ⇑ Corresponding author. tive and negative quality spots were analysed regarding hotspots E-mail address: [email protected] (B. Snizek). and clustering, which were used as the foundation for participatory 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2013.02.001 228 B. Snizek et al. / Journal of Transport Geography 30 (2013) 227–233 planning processes. Emotional mapping and SoftGIS approaches collection was soon replaced by online questionnaires that were are, however, still new in the context of bicycling. built around or contained map-based components (Bearman and Appleton, 2012). Today, the availability of Application Program- 1.2. Cyclists’ experiences ming Interfaces (APIs) enables software developers to build map applications based on different map technologies such as Google Cyclists’ experiences differ to some extent from those of motor- Maps or maps from OpenStreetMap.1 ists on the one hand and pedestrians on the other and are influ- A web and map-based application based on the Google Maps enced by several factors: The existence and design of cycling API was designed and implemented in connection with a compre- facilities (Sener et al., 2009; Dill and Gliebe, 2008) play a great role hensive online questionnaire survey about cyclists’ preferences in both attracting cyclists in the first place and how they subse- conducted in Copenhagen.2 In this questionnaire, respondents were quently perceive safety and appreciate the route. Furthermore, asked to, (1) draw their most recent route, (2) designate three loca- other roadway characteristics such as physical characteristics, tions where they had had positive experiences and, (3) identify three on-street parking and operational characteristics (Sener et al., locations where they had had negative experiences. In addition, the 2009) as well as land-use (Winters and Cooper, 2008) and proxim- respondents had the opportunity to classify the locations by select- ity to retail establishments (Krizek and Johnson, 2006) also con- ing from a list of given classes and finally adding comments. In total, tribute to the overall cycling experience. 554 positive and negative locations were registered by the system In general, the literature on cycling experiences is limited. For and stored for further data processing, which is described below. Re- example, the following themes have not been studied at all: spa- sponses containing fewer than three good or/and bad points were tially explicit experiences relating to land use, traffic intensity, pol- accepted. The respondents were prompted for located experiences lution and noise, the number of pedestrians and cycling indicating the focus on features of the urban environment, but all infrastructure other than bicycle paths and lanes. As these themes experiences could be recorded – and a possibility for adding text are considered important components of experience, further re- explanations was part of the survey. search is needed. This study conducts a geospatial approach to the mapping and analysis of cyclists’ experiences. The overall goal of this article is to determine whether the characteristics of elements and locations of the city are correlated to the likelihood of having a po- 2.2. Data processing sitive or negative cycling experience? A series of processing steps had to be performed so that the raw data, which had been generated by the web application, could be 2. Methodology analysed. A quick visual sweep showed that some of the lines drawn were In order to build spatial explicit models of an individual’s per- apparently the result of the respondent’s inability to operate the ception of his/her surroundings, data collection methods had to web application. These lines were either very short, did not, par- be developed. Within the literature, quite a diverse range of data tially or as a whole, follow the transportation network or their seg- collection methods can be found. Methods, where respondents ments overlapped each other to a certain extent. actually draw their routes, be it on paper or via computational rep- The routes which obviously had been erroneously entered were resentations, are quite rare: Raford et al. (2005) who asked respon- removed from the dataset as well as the points related to the dents to draw routes on paper being one example. A rather routes (see Fig. 1). uncommon, specialised and distributed system for real time data The area of analysis was defined to be composed of the munic- acquisition which makes it a tool for revealed preference studies ipalities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, Denmark – the latter is described in (Eisenman et al., 2009), whereby a sensing system being totally enclosed by the municipality of Copenhagen. Follow- collects data on pollution level, allergen levels, noise levels and ing the removal of erroneously entered lines those lines exceeding the roughness of terrain. Parkin et al. (2007) employ video clips the municipal boundary were cut to the boundary, those being which are shown to respondents as a means of conveying informa-