Bike to the Future

Understanding and evaluating behavioural reactions of cyclists to street design interventions.

Despite Singapore’s dense and polycentric urban structure the percentage of people who choose to cycle as a mode of transport is only about 1%. The lack of dedicated infrastructure to offer cyclists direct, safe, comfortable and attractive routes is widely considered to be the main reason for such a low modal share.

However, implementing new cycling infrastructure often requires heavy public investment and a trade-off for space with other transport modes. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of different types of infrastructure and design options on travel behaviour before these infrastructural changes are implemented.

Planners, policy-makers and of course the public might not be familiar with these infrastructure and design options. To improve the understanding the options of different transport futures visualization plays an important role. Visualization is increasingly being used as a tool for understanding behavioural preferences and communicating plans to a general audience.

The advent of affordable and off-the-shelf virtual reality technology offers the opportunity to immerse people in an immersive transport future. Virtual reality offers unprecedented opportunities for communication and public engagement as it allows the user to immerse in and freely explore future environments. We aim to explore those opportunities by actively engaging the community to experience alternative design configurations in virtual reality and provide feedback both on the proposed plans but also the suitability of the VR technology as a research tool. Our current research in active mobility revolves around two core projects.

Bike to the Future

On World Parking Day (September 16, 2016) we engaged with the public and set t up a digital peephole into the future: Bike to the Future. We tested new possibilities for engaging people for street design and urban development projects. The technology combined the latest 3D modelling and traffic simulation techniques in virtual reality and showcased how streets can be re-designed to make cycling and walking a more pleasant experience. We reached over 300 people in four events and are in the process of evaluating survey results.

Bike to the Future 2

As the linchpin of this research project, we develop a virtual reality (VR) cycling simulator and explore how it can be used to study the impact of different types of infrastructure and design options on travel behaviour. To this end, we first will explore the validity of using such a simulator to study behavioural reactions while cycling and define practical applications.

In a next step, we test the simulator as a tool to provide evidence-based design guidance in pre-occupancy evaluation. This will ultimately enable transport engineers and urban designers to evaluate the impact of their plans on travel behaviour before the infrastructure is actually built.