Evaluating Bikeability of Utility Biking in Urban Areas

Based on sustainable development goals, biking, a green transportation mode, is becoming more important and popular in urban areas. The ease of bike riding, which is called “bikeability”, would influence people’s inclination for biking. The bikeability is associated with numerous factors. Utility bikers are bikers who bike for specific purposes. The previous bikeability studies ignored multiple dimensions of evaluation criteria. Thus, this research filled the ignorance and developed a new bikeability evaluation model considering comprehensive criteria. The proposed bikeability evaluation model integrates the Analytic Network Process (ANP), the Multicriteria Evaluation with Qualitative and Quantitative Data (MEQQD) and grey numbers. The model can deal with qualitative and quantitative criteria simultaneously and provide not only different dimension scores but also a general score of bikeability. Furthermore, the model can evaluate bikeability scores for an area in an effective and realistic way. In the case study, we adopted this bikeability evaluation model to evaluate bikeability scores in Daan district, Taipei City. The result shows that the distribution of bikeability scores in Daan district is affected by four reasons, including the natural environment, the built environment, policies, and the characteristic of the bikeability evaluation model. Moreover, the outcome of the policy analysis provided many planning suggestions for the top and the last bikeability score Lis and indicated the deficiencies of the future bikeway construction plan in Daan district. This study reaches the following two contributions. The academic contribution is that the proposed model improves the previous bikeability evaluation methods by considering comprehensive dimensions of criteria and focusing on the users of utility biking. As for the practical contribution, the model can assist transportation agencies to evaluate and improve biking environments for urban areas.