Bicyclists’ Travel Environments Perception And Travel Behavior Of Urban Streets

The bicycle mode assumes an increasingly important role among other traffic modes for its flexibility, freedom, economy and environment-friendly. However, the available travel space left for bicycle is few due to the rapid development of motorized transport mode. In recent years, local governments in many cities of China have launched the “Demonstration project of walking and bicycle transportation system in urban streets”, which lead to more attention on bicycle planning and management. In spit of the increasing of bicycle facilities, quality of bicycle travel didn’t be improved for the weak theoretical basis of bicycle traffic in China, therefore it is necessary to design bicycle facilities in view of bicyclists’ perception.Bicyclists would have different travel behaviors under effects of physiological and psychological force, which are got from the perceived travel environmental elements of bicycle. It could be concluded that the travel behaviors reflect the results of bicyclists’ environmental elements perception, and through which the assessment of bicycle travel quality could be obtained. Therefore, in this paper the bicycle travel behavior would be used to explore the bicyclists’ environmental perception;Firstly, the paper generalizes three bicycle travel behaviors by actual observation and the analysis of researches on bicyclists’ travel behavior, the three behaviors include occupancy behavior, passing behavior and avoiding behavior. Then the perceived elements such as bikeway basic infrastructure, bikeway environment and traffic conditions that influence the three behavior are identified initially;Secondly, three bicycle travel behaviors models are built by using the logistic and multiple linear regression model which included the main factors that bicyclistsperceived, and then the parameters of the models are estimated by survey date which are collected in Xi’an. After that sensitivity analysis of the main factors that affect the three behaviors are developed;Finally, the model for quality of bicycle travel are established by three travel behaviors, through which the relationship between different level of bicycle travel quality and three behavior and its corresponding main factors that bicyclists perceived could be obtained.This research focuses on bicyclists’ travel behavior and travel environments perception, on the basis of which the bicycle travel quality model is developed. On one hand the study of this paper helps improving the theory of bicycle traffic characteristics in China, on the other hand it provides a guide for both bicycle designing and travel quality improving, once the travel environmental facilities of existing or planned bicycle are determined, bicyclists’ behavior and travel quality of the bikeway could be got, and then specific improving measures could be put forward.