Associations between spatial access to bicycle-specific infrastructure, sociodemographic characteristics, and city-wide safety perceptions of bicycling: a cross-sectional survey of bicyclists in 6 Canadian and U.S. cities
Author(s): Branion-Calles, Nelson, Fuller, Gauvin, Winters
Slidedeck Presentation Only (no paper submitted):
Abstract:
Safety concerns are a primary deterrent to bicycling. Bicycle-specific infrastructure is both preferred and safer for bicycling. In this paper, we examine the association between access to bicycle-specific infrastructure and perceptions of bicycling safety amongst over 3,000 bicyclists living in six large Canadian and US cities. In three repeat cross-sectional surveys (2012, 2013 and 2014), adults living in Boston, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver were surveyed about their bicycling habits, safety perceptions, and demographic characteristics as part of the International Bikeshare Impacts on Cycling and Collisions Study (n = 16,864). Participants were assigned a measure for spatial access to bicycle-specific infrastructure (a component of Bike Score® called Bike Lane Score, range 0-100) based on their residential postal code. We used weighted multinomial regression models to examine associations between perceived bicycling safety and spatial access to bicycle-specific infrastructure accounting for sociodemographic characteristics amongst those who report bicycling in the past month (n=3,446; weighted n = 3,493). Results indicate that within cities, bicyclists with greater access to bicycle-specific infrastructure had improved odds of perceiving bicycling as safe. Specifically, a 10-unit increase in Bike Lane Score was associated with 6% higher odds of a bicyclist perceiving the safety of bicycling as safe compared to neutral. Differences in bicycle safety perceptions were also noted by sociodemographic characteristics including age, sex, ethnic background, having young children, and income as well as bicycling frequency. The IBICCS study provided a large sample of spatially located survey data over diverse contexts in six large Canadian and US cities, and used a standardized a measure of the bicycle environment, shown to be associated with bicycling. Our findings support the hypothesis that bicycling infrastructure availability around one's residence is associated with more favourable perceptions of bicycling safety. These results suggest that increasing access to bicycle-specific facilities by expanding bicycling networks may result in increases in perceptions of bicycling safety for existing bicyclists.