This report consists of three summaries of studies, conducted at VTI, concerning cyclists’ valuation of travel time savings on different types of bicycle paths and pedestrians’ valuation of travel time savings on footh paths. In the bicycle studies effects of health aspects have also been studied. All studies are questionnaire studies conducted with stated preference techniques. The results show that the valuation of travel time savings are lower when cycling on a bicycle path than when cycling on a road way in either mixed traffic or in a bicycle lane in the roadway. Cycling on a path next to the road was not considering worse than cycling on a path not in connection to the road, indicating that the respondents did not take traffic noise and air pollution into account in their decision to cycle. Respondents who included health aspects in their choice to cycle had lower value of travel time savings for cycling than respondents that stated that health aspects were of less importance, at least when cycling on a bicycle path. Valuations of travel time savings regarding cycling differed markedly depending on the respondents’ alternative travel mode, where persons with car as alternative travel mode had much higher values than those with public transport as alternative travel mode. The results showed that the largest shift to bicycle would happen if all cycling after the change takes place on a bicycle path far from the road. For pedestrians, it was shown that individuals do not seem to prefer separated pedestrian and bicycle paths or completely secluded footpaths to the extent one might expect. The main thing seems to be that the walk takes place on a footpath of some sort and not along the roadside on a road with motor vehicles. Another result that is worth to highlight is that the visibility seems to be very important for which route people choose to walk. Other attributes such as maintenance, distance to a road with motor vehicles and type of crossing were not nearly as important. (Author/publisher)
Abstract