Laura Cabral, MSc candidate in transportation engineering, surveys Edmontonians to improve the future of city bike lanes.
(Edmonton) Laura Cabral, MSc candidate in transportation engineering, wants to find out if Edmontonians feel comfortable cycling on Edmonton's streets and bike lanes.
Cabral developed a survey containing short video clips of a cyclist's view riding through different areas of the city and in different cycling infrastructure. Participants are asked to rank their comfort level with these cycling paths.
"If you're not comfortable cycling between where you are and where you want to go, that will help you decide whether to take your bike or your car," explains Carbal.
Her research is based on a classification system used to determine people's comfort level based on four levels of traffic stress.
The first level is whether children would be comfortable cycling on a road. The second level is for cyclists (or people who are not cyclists yet) who are "interested but concerned" about cycling. The third level is for people who are enthused and confident about cycling. The fourth level is for those who are strong and confident cyclists.
"The classification system was never empirically tested whether it actually aligns with the bike lanes they are assigned to. So if I'm an 'interested but concerned' person, and I cycle on a path which is designed for someone like me, does it actually fit my comfort level?" said Cabral.
Amy Kim, a professor of civil and environmental engineering supervising Cabral's work, says determining whether such a classification system is accurate is important for future city infrastructure planning.
"If you build this kind of infrastructure, we assume it will be used by certain types of cyclists and commuters, but these assumptions should be tested and verified to ensure we are building the right facilities," said Kim. "One of the major drivers for this survey is that cities like Edmonton are putting millions of dollars into urban bike lanes and networks."
Transportation engineering is a multidisciplinary field of study, heavily influenced by social sciences because infrastructure is meant to be designed based on how humans use it.
"We study behaviour, but also have to have an understanding of infrastructure, how you build it, design standards, etc. and that's part of why this is an engineering problem," said Cabral. "Survey participants are going to be looking at a video and rating their comfort level and we will compare that to our current classification of that particular environment to see if it matches."
Carbal is hopeful that people of all cycling levels, including non-cyclists, will take the survey.
"We need people who are not cyclists to take the survey as well, because otherwise we will have a very biased sample of how people feel," she said. "We need to understand how people who don't currently cycle feel."
If the results show that people's perceptions don't match how the bike lanes are classified, she plans to propose an alternate classification system to the city for how they can assess infrastructure to more accurately reflect Edmontonians' perceptions and comfort levels.
Cabral partnered with the City of Edmonton for the survey, which is available to the public on the City's website. The survey only takes 15-30 minutes to complete.