Hello everyone and welcome to the third episode of Cycling Research Reviews. So we're up to 85 subscribers as I record this, which is pretty good. So I guess let's keep going. This week's paper is by Ann Forthsooth and Kevin Kreitzig titled Urban Design. Is there a distinctive view from the bicycle? They ask, would urban design considerations and practices be different if the experience of bicycling was provided a more central role in dialogues regarding the future of our cities? And to answer this question, the paper juxtaposes what I would call the quantitative engineering approach. So this includes most of urban planning, traffic engineers, and the more of the engineering mathematical discipline, and that includes modeling as well. And they contrast that approach to the more qualitative, user-centered approach of urban designers such as Jan Gale, such as White in the 1960s, and such as Kevin Lynch, who talked about spatial awareness and the image of the city. So they write, cyclists have needs from the standpoint of urban design that differs substantially from pedestrians, motors, or transit users. Furthermore, it is contended that full provision for their needs is unlikely to come to fruition until their perspective is more formally acknowledged in research and through urban design guidelines. Therefore this paper aims to respond to three questions. What would it mean to create an urban design approach based on the bicycle in addition to or instead of the motorized vehicle and the pedestrian? What are the dimensions of Peter Appleyard's view from the road, from the perspective of the cyclist? So how can we translate perhaps the work that has been done on highways and moving scenery into the language of cycling? And what are the implications of the processes of city building, particularly of applying cycling design to sustainable urban design and urban development? So these are the three questions posed by Forseth and Kreizig. And then they now seek to try and understand the cyclist's perspective by putting two different frameworks. Number one is quite clearly the traffic approach versus the urban design approach. And they encapsulate these two approaches by looking at what sorts of characteristics are similar to motorized vehicles for cyclists and what kind of cyclist characteristics are more similar to pedestrians. So on the one hand, more like a motor vehicle is that cyclists have wheels and they roll so they kind of require smooth asphalt. You have directionality and momentum. And also on a bicycle you are moving quite a bit faster than a pedestrian. So when you navigate through the city, you need things like turning radiuses, you need larger signs for wayfinding, et cetera, et cetera. Now on the side of pedestrians, cyclists are, for example, exposed to the environment. Cyclists can easily dismount their bike and transform into a pedestrian on a busy street, for example. And also cyclists have limited range and are human-powered like a pedestrian. And this gives us more human characteristics to consider, such as, for example, if you're going up a hill, you're dealing with human muscle power, so you should design for that instead of for an unlimited power delivered by an electric or gasoline motor. You also have safety concerns. So on the issue of safety concerns, you have motor vehicles in which you're in a cage. And on the side of pedestrians, you are completely exposed and unprotected by any sort of armor. For the cyclists, this is perhaps even a more vulnerable point where you're unprotected, you're going faster, and you're balancing on two wheels. So these are kind of the issues that are at play in terms of safety. Now let's go on to look at issues of movement and parking and how different aspects of the urban environment can influence cycling and how they compare to pedestrians and motor vehicles. I think another huge advantage of cycling is that the parking requirements are very limited. Yes, you can get your bicycle stolen, but the physical space and be able to place your bicycle next to your destination is a huge advantage that puts cycling much closer to the realm of pedestrians in terms of freedom of movement to get close to where you need to be before you have to walk. In terms of carrying loads, cyclists can carry quite a bit more than pedestrians given the right equipment, but without the right equipment, then cycling is more like the load capacity of pedestrians. If you have equipment such as cargo bikes or even these electrified cargo delivery tricycles, then you can carry much more, more like a car or a small truck. It is also worth mentioning that like a pedestrian, I think in most places, you don't need a license to ride a bicycle. So that gives freedom of movement to people of all ages in theory, although as we know that requires good design of infrastructure to make that safe and practical for everyone as well. Next, we look at the six dimensions of urban design and how these relate to cycling in terms of overall layout, facilities, processes, and also the detailed design elements. So there are six and the first one and the one that they argue that is paid most attention to when designing for cycling is function and that seems to be heavily focused on. And we'll go through the other five which are much less focused on. So the other five are morphology, perception, social issues, the aesthetic and visual pleasantries of the environment, and also time, time both in objective time and also how time is perceived on the move. So in terms of morphology, this kind of goes into the work of Kevin Lynch and how both how cities are perceived in terms of wayfinding and space, but also morphology and more concrete terms such as how far is it to the grocery store, how far is it to work. As we said, bicycles have a limited range, so the morphology of the city has to cater and match to that range in order for cycling to be practical. Number two, perception. So now this again is about hierarchy and wayfinding. So how does the whole city make sense? Does the whole city intellectually, mentally can you map out where you need to go? And if you can't, if you're going to a new destination, is it clear? And also on the micro scale, is it clear how streets are set up? Do cyclists have their own space? Do cyclists perceive the space around them to be safe? The built elements are also perceived clearly from a faster speed. So this now perception also in terms of scale and how fast the urban environment moves around the cyclist. Next, we move into social issues, right? The cycling, they argue, and this is kind of much of the work that we've been working on as well at the Urban Cycling Institute is how cycling and walking and these more exposed modes of transport, how this leads to more connectivity and social activity between citizens, right? Cycling can be used to connect different destinations and on the way you can meet all sorts of people, right? And here this is where Dutch cycling in particular comes in. In Dutch cycling it's very normal and embedded in the traffic code to be able to ride side by side. So and if you see a school of children, sometimes it's three abreast, right? If you have a five-meter bike lane going two ways, you'll see kids riding three, four abreast and they seem to be having a lot of fun socially as they perform this activity, right? And for this to happen, we have to be able to make it safe for all ages. So the issue of age and inclusivity also comes back. Next we move on to the visual and aesthetic elements, which when we think of urban design or when I think of urban design, that seems to be the most topical element is the visual, right? How buildings fit together to define a space and how we perceive the buildings to come together to make a place, place making as they call it, right? So and this is talking about the eye level perspective, right? So when this paper talks about what does it mean from a perspective of a cyclist, it means also literally looking at the city from the perspective of a cyclist, right? As you cycle around the city, what do you see? You're slightly more elevated than a pedestrian and you're seeing moving scenery that's moving four to five to six times faster than walking scenery. So how does that play into urban design? And how does that play into how cyclists perceive the aesthetics of a place? In addition to visual aesthetics, there's I would say also important in cycling is sound, feeling, and also the kinesthetic, so how it heals and also how the pavement and the asphalt rumbles, right, as you pass by on a bicycle. So it's also very multi-sensory and that places it apart from the automobile, which bubbles you in and you're able to turn on your own music. So that's very interesting to me and there's papers written about how cyclists mediate the environment by putting a headphones and such and perhaps now texting and cycling as well. So that's also known to be a very controversial issue that all defines the experience of cycling. Finally, we have time. So how do we lay out bike paths and how do people perceive subjective time versus objective time? The research I'm doing now is trying to compare three routes and with routes with given qualities, if cyclists are all going to the same place, why do people pick different routes? And one of these elements could be a different subjective perception of time, right? Why cyclists pick the longer route? Well, maybe because it feels shorter because it's nicer, because you have more flow when you don't stop for traffic lights. So laying out the different paths for cycling or laying out the ideal path for cycling doesn't necessarily mean the shortest path from A to B. There are definitely other elements to be considered and also here they mentioned how psychopaths can be also considered for the future design. So how the bicycle paths evolve over time as a city and other elements of the transportation network also evolve. I'll take another quote from Forsyth and Krychik. And in my particular interest, they argue that, quote, facilities for cycling have received far more attention than network layout from the urban design and even transportation planning perspective, right? So if we're to consider the environment around the cyclist, that in a large part is determined by which routes you pick. It's relatively easier to build cycling infrastructures and the asphalt and the lighting and perhaps a few benches and your crossings with the roads. But that is perhaps relatively easier than actually building, let's say, a new forest surrounding the bike path, right? So sometimes when you choose a bicycle route, then what you're doing is actually also choosing the environment surrounding the bicycle route, right? So if you pick a route next to a highway while you're stuck with a relatively noisy highway environment, regardless of how many trees you plant to kind of try and soften that up. So there are really the bicycle planning considerations come in at two scales. One is on the, I'd say, the city network scale, right? Where you choose your route. And then the second scale is, well, realizing that the impact of choosing a route mean that now you've picked a bike path that goes through a residential area or beside a highway or in some greenery and then that limits what you can do afterwards with the urban design of this route, right? So then I argue that a four meter wide bicycle infrastructure, a nice wide bike path is perhaps a necessary but insufficient condition for a nice pleasant cycling experience because you're also paying attention to the environment surrounding it. And if you go to the blog or their article, they give a few very good examples of the different environments in their paper. Okay, let's wrap this up then, right? This paper now then concludes with a few practical recommendations for transportation planners and urban planners. And they mentioned that even on the issue of safety, for example, where much research has already been done, it's still being done from a very functional perspective, right? Using injuries and deaths as indicators. We don't want those, but on the other hand, you also have the perception of safety. Ideally, those should kind of line up, right? So they say, quote, safety, not so much in terms of crashes, but in terms of violations from others. So sometimes you get nervous at a crossing, perhaps. Remains an untapped issue, right? Driver's passing to you closely, you're not injured. But doesn't feel so good. So they say, this is an untapped issue. This providing more of a sense of enclosure for cyclists or cycle I street level wall have negative safety implications. It remains unclear if additional cycling infrastructure clutters the street environment, creates visual noise, and undermines the experience of other users, right? So we're trying to increase, improve the cycling experience for cyclists, but Forza and Crisik alerts us to the fact that, well, we should also try to do it in a way that benefits other modes of transport, especially pedestrians. So if I were to summarize Forza and Crisik's call to action, it's that, quote, given that the cycling lies squarely at the intersection of the domains of transportation planners and urban designers, these planning and design processes have much room to acknowledge both areas of expertise. Now, bringing this to the professional world, I see that, especially when I scroll through the North American job postings for bicycle planners, that mostly you're looking for professional engineers, people with an engineering background, or urban planners who are well immersed in how to deal with traffic. There is room, according to this paper and according to my opinion, that there is much room for people who have more of an artistic training and who are more aware of the needs of, let's say, pedestrians, right? Because without a professional training for bicycle planners, I think the best bet now is to grab people from both ends. One, the people with the quantitative knowledge to actually build out the cycling infrastructure network in a way that is according to the design manuals, but also number two, this awareness that design manuals are not enough, that it's not just about the functional criteria, but also the technical knowledge of how to lay down asphalt and how to make direct connections and how to manage traffic. So, room for both spectrums of expertise and hopefully we can develop this knowledge, very specialized knowledge of cycling through the interaction of these two domains, right? Okay, let's get to our final questions and let's wrap this up. So, as any good academic paper does, this paper leaves us with many more questions than answers, right? What we gain from this paper, I think, is a nuance of vocabulary on how to articulate why the purely functional approach to bicycle planning fails to provide a good cycling experience and they call for future research in a series of six questions, right? Number one, what types of forms are best perceived by cyclists given their height, position and speed? Number two, how can social interaction between cyclists and others be best considering both the safety and quality of experience? Number three, what level of visual complexity is the most appealing for cyclists in different contexts? Number four, how can social interaction between cyclists and others be best considering the safety and the quality of experience? Number five, what level of visual complexity is the most appealing for cyclists in different contexts? And finally, how can cycling environments evolve over time? All right, that brings us to the conclusion of this paper, and I hope I've done it justice. Click on the bell to subscribe below. And also, this paper is available open access. If you click on in the description below or in the green link on the website. So thank you very much for the support so far. I'll keep going with this and release a video every Tuesday. And up next week is Koglen and RISE paper on the modernization, the marginalization of planning when it comes to the bicycle transportation system. So thank you very much and I'll see you next week.


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