Developing A Bikeway Network Design Model for Recreational Bicycling in Urban Areas

Providing bikeways is an effective way to improve not only riding safety but also continuous usage intention for cyclists. In recent years, bicycle city tours, which emphasize “the healthy, slow movement”, have become a new fashion lifestyle. This study proposes a bikeway network design model for recreational bicycling in urban areas. In consideration of users, non-users and planners’ experiences and preferences, the model objectives are to maximize covered attractions, maximize cycling comfort, minimize bicycling risk, and minimize the effects of bikeways on existing traffic. The model constraints are bikeway types, monetary budgets, the continuity of bikeway network, value ranges of decision variables, capacity restraint of bikeways, and flow conservations of nodes. The decisions in the model include: which road links are well suited to set bikeway, what kind of bikeway type should we set, how wide should the bikeway be, and how many travel demands are assigned to each bikeway link. The proposed model is designed as a non-linear, multi-objective and mixed integer programming problem, and the ε-constraint method was used to solve the problem for the case study. The software of Lingo 13 Global Solver was used to conduct the process of ε-constraint method. A case study in Da-an District of the Taipei City is illustrated to verify the model’s applicability and effectiveness, and totally nine non-dominated alternatives were generated. Finally, the scenarios analyses concluded that the increasing of the construction and maintaining budges cannot generally elevate all the objectives in any scenarios, but the growing of travel demands between 200% and 300% can generally reach better performances than the scenarios while maintaining the original travel demands. It suggests that a planner should consider the growing utilization ratio in the future but not the existing one when developing a bikeway network plan. The proposed model is the first bikeway network design model for recreational bicycling in urban areas with the consideration of travel demands; and, these were never valued in related literatures before. The model will also assist bikeway planners to develop alternatives more efficient, systematical, and close to real life situation.