Understanding Public Attitudes to Bike-Sharing in Gothenburg

A predominately car-oriented transport has been the cornerstone of urban development in a worldwide scale for decades now; a cornerstone that is associated mostly with the short-term individualistic benefit of the road user in terms of comfort and convenience, but also with severely adverse effects on societal and environmental sustainability. The problem for society – and policy – is therefore how to retain the social and economic benefits linked to mobility while reducing the negative environmental, economic and social impacts from transport. Considering this and the ever-increasing number of people who live in cities, the development and promotion of alternative social, attitudinal, behavioural and technological niches to the current automobile-focused transport regime is needed more than ever before. One of the prime non-regulatory frameworks to promote this transition to a more sustainable transport paradigm refers to the shared-use of mobility innovation mechanisms. Bike-sharing is perhaps the most characteristic and greener example of this sort of alternative transport solutions. It can be described as a short-term bicycle rental service for inner-city transportation providing bikes at unattended stations. Bike-sharing systems have been introduced as a means to extend the reach of public transit services to final destinations in a way that promotes the development of sustainable and aesthetically pleasing urban environments that prioritize people over cars. The most distinctive function of such a scheme however, is clearly the concept of “sharing” since individuals use bicycles on an “as-needed” basis without the costs and responsibilities of bicycle ownership. Despite the vast potential of bike-sharing outlined herein and more importantly despite the numerous (at least 500) schemes of variable sizes and types that run in more than 50 countries worldwide, the impact of its use and the factors that can make it successful or not constitute a topic that is still only modestly negotiated by research. This abstract refers to a study aiming to frame the attitudes of people towards the rapidly expanding bike-sharing scheme of Gothenburg some of them referring to their experience of the scheme as users.Gothenburg has in place Styr & Ställ, which is a self-service bike rental system, spread across 62 stations throughout the city centre with an excess of 600 bicycles. This fairly inexpensive system can be accessed 24 hours a day and seven days a week between 1st of March to 31st of October. Approximately 50,000 annual users signed up in 2012 for using this service (including tourists) a number that has really forced the rapid expansion of the scheme in what it is today and calls for research pointing to two directions; research that could either attempt to captivate what it seems to be a formula for success or understand how a scheme with such a potential could become even more publicly acceptable.A number in excess of 500 fully completed questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The respondents believed in general that cycling could be a sustainable, cost-saving, healthy, pleasant mode capable of reducing road traffic congestion. 90% of them agreed or strongly agreed that more bicycle-related investments are necessary for Gothenburg. More importantly though, only an insignificant proportion of the respondents (approximately 1.5% of them) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the notion that Styr and Ställ is a good scheme for the city. The respondents believed that Styr and Ställ is a pro-environmental, inexpensive and healthy travel option, which complements the other existing public transport services and promotes a more human-friendly identity for the city. The vast majority of them also believed that public bicycles provide a viable service for the city that should expand to more areas. Despite these positive attitudes and although at least one out of four respondents cycle in a daily basis and more than half of them use a bike regularly, very few of them ride a public bicycle: almost 85% of them don’t or use it rarely. More than 40% of the respondents though reported that they do that because they use their own bicycles, while an excess of 30% considered that there is still a lack of good public bicycle related infrastructure in the city. Another finding of the study is that quite a few people find neither the bicycles nor the rental stations particularly attractive and they do not see a need for electrical bicycles. All in all, even the majority of the respondents that self-reported a small likelihood to ever use systematically public bicycles was positive towards the scheme

Bike-Sharing: Is Safety an Issue Adversely Affecting its Potential for Being Embraced by Urban Societies?

Using bicycles on an ‘as-needed’ basis, usually for a small rental fee and without the externalities and obligations linked to bicycle ownership, is what makes public bicycles a societally affordable medium to enhance the transition to a more sustainable urban transport paradigm. However, despite its distinctive character in terms of its potential to be a mechanism transforming in some degree urban mobility to a shared responsibility regime, bike-sharing still faces some of the same safety concerns associated with ordinary bicycle ridership. The most common problem for cyclists’ wellbeing is that the traffic system is designed predominately from a car-user perspective. Even the cities that have recently implemented public bicycle programmes, and therefore showed some extra care to provide fitting urban conditions for them, have not yet achieved to fully eclipse car-orientation as the prime cornerstone of their development norms. This means that transport systems worldwide do not necessarily take fully into account the main characteristics of cyclists reflecting safety themes: a cyclist is vulnerable (in a crash), flexible (in behaviour), instable (may fall off the bike), inconspicuous (difficult to see), has differing abilities (due to a wide range of the population), is conscious of effort (i.e., highly motivated to minimize energy expenditure), and sometimes seen as intruders in the traffic systems, rather than as an integral part. This work refers to the results of a research scheme that meant to examine road users’ attitudes directly reflecting public acceptability towards two bike-sharing schemes in Drama (Greece, 50.000 residents) and Gothenburg (Sweden, 500.000 residents). Although safety was not the principal initiative for doing this dual study, one key conclusion was that many people could not embrace bike-sharing due to their perceptions that bicycle represents in general an unsafe travel mode and that their cities provide only limited road safety for cyclists

Public Bicycles: How the Concept of Human-Oriented “Mobility Sharing” Technology Can Influence Travel Behaviour Norms and Reshape Design Education

Although at the moment an excess of 500 public bicycle schemes of variable sizes operate in almost 50 countries worldwide, the impact of their use on travel behaviour and modal change have neither been studied extensively nor have been understood thoroughly as yet. This work negotiates the initial stages of an international research scheme that means to look into the attitudes and system user experiences (the latter only when it is applicable) that could define the design (or re-design) criteria for three public bicycle schemes in three cities of different size and culture. These systems are currently on three dissimilar operational phases spanning from bidding for funding to actually having a fairly successful system already in place. As a matter of fact, the choice of the three case study cities represent an effort to frame the dynamics of the bike-sharing phenomenon in a micro-scale (Drama, Greece, 50.000 residents), meso-scale (Gothenburg, Sweden, 500.000 residents) and mega-scale (Shanghai, China, 23 million residents) looking also into the attitude-shaping process before and after the implementation of a scheme. This project’s didactic role is a twin one; it aims to reinforce education practice on sustainable mobilities design by using student projects as an apparatus for supporting research and promoting urban change in real societal terms and subsequently to integrate the findings of the research into future postgraduate and undergraduate course material. Thus, bike-sharing design, for the means of this paper, aims to serve as an academic platform for integrating and synchronising research and education by promoting a balanced and timely development of technological opportunities that capture the mobility needs of tomorrow

Haptic nudges to influence cyclist behaviour – an experimental study

Bicycle riders are over represented in fatal traffic accidents in Europe, and the trend is still on the rise (European Commission, 2018). While most cycling accidents are defined as single accidents, the outcome of an accident where a car or other heavy vehicle is involved is naturally much more severe. A Swedish study found that eight of ten car-bicycle accidents happen in intersection scenarios (Isaksson-Hellman & Werneke, 2017). If cyclists, as well as car drivers, adapt their speed before intersections everyone has more time to spot each other and to take evasive action, which should lead to a decrease in accidents. Authorities around the world are putting up physical obstructions such as rumble stripes to make cyclists slow down, but is this the right way to go? Previous studies have found smooth surfaces to be a very important factor for cycling comfort, and vibrations to be highly disliked (Ayachi et al., 2015; B\uedl et al., 2015; Stinson and Bhat, 2005; Torbic et al., 2003).The core of the MeBeSafe project is to investigate whether nudging, i.e. non-forcing measurements without demands on conscious interpretation, can be used to influence traffic behaviour and suggest how these nudges should be designed. In the project, both visual and haptic nudges have been developed and tested. This paper reports on an experimental study with 16 participants, 19-75 years of age, that was carried out with six different haptic nudges. The nudges consisted of modified surface softness and roughness as well as dimensional modifications. Results indicate that most haptic nudges have very little effect on speed and those with larger effect are generally disliked. This suggests that building physical obstructions for cyclists may not be the correct way forward, although results from cycling workshops performed in the project suggests that haptic nudges might be a good choice if one wants to nudge cyclist to change trajectory. If one wants to affect bicyclists’ speed, visual nudges are likely to be a more constructive route for cities to take

Cycling that makes sense - A qualitative exploration of cyclists’ perception of bicycle infrastructure

Bicycle infrastructure is in most cities a fairly recent addition and something that has, in many cases, been squeezed in where space has been available. Consequently, the properties of bike lanes differ a lot between different locations. An observation that is easy to make is that when bike lanes are wide, smooth, and straight, the variation in cyclists’ behaviour is low. When on the other hand there are lanes that disappear, that takes long detours, or are blocked for various reasons, cyclists start to act in a way that from an outsider perspective may look random or at least difficult to predict. This paper reports on a study where 17 cyclists have filmed their daily commute with GPS equipped action cameras. They then observed their film together with a researcher and explained how they perceive the route and how they make their choices in traffic. Based on the results of the study we present a tentative model of how cyclist behaviour can be predicted that can be used as a design tool when designing bicycle infrastructure or making changes to existing infrastructure. The model suggests that cyclist behaviour is affected by two sets of factors; physical factors that can be viewed as unintentional nudges associated with the environment, and subjective factors that are based on rational decisions by the individual cyclist

Finding that elusive bell and other issues - experiences from starting to cycle during a pandemic

The Covid19 pandemic has pushed a large number of people to change their mode of transport from (mainly) public transport to cycling, and thus given us an opportunity to study the adoption process of cycling. The paper reports on an interview study with 12 participants who started, or significantly increased, cycling during the pandemic, and utilises the Innovation-Decision Process to analyse the participants\u27 cycling adoption and draw implications. The results show that adopting cycling as a primary mode of transport is a journey of constant reinvention of practices based on positive and negative discoveries, and that equipment (incl. a variety of clothes, bicycles, and bells) is key to overcome the negative discoveries.The main implication for urban policy and planning is that many measures can be taken to increase adoption of everyday cycling in addition to building more protected bicycle lanes. Examples include 1) develop new equipment more suited for everyday cycling, 2) create meeting points to transfer knowledge on equipment as well as good routes, 3) prioritize cycling at workplaces and other destinations with lockers, indoor storage, etcetera. To influence people to begin everyday cycling, it is also important to address the measures towards ‘people who cycle’ rather than ‘cyclists’ as many people do not wish to identify themselves as the latter

On the evaluation of visual nudges to promote safe cycling: Can we encourage lower speeds at intersections?

Crashes between cars and cyclists at urban intersections are common, and their consequences are often severe. Typical causes for this type of crashes included the excessive speed of the cyclist as well as car drivers failing to see the cyclist. Measures that decrease the cyclists’ speed may lead to safer car-cyclist interactions. This study aimed to investigate the extent to which cyclists may approach intersections at a lower speed when nudged to do so.Visual flat-stripe nudges were placed on bicycle lanes in the proximity of uncontrolled intersections (with a history of car-cyclist crashes) in two locations in Gothenburg, Sweden. This specific nudge was the one obtaining the best results from a previous study that tested different nudges in controlled experiments. Video data from the intersections were recorded with a site-based video recording system both before (baseline), and after (treatment), the nudge was installed.\ua0 The video data was processed to extract trajectory and speed for cyclists. The baseline and treatment periods were equivalent in terms of day of the week, light, and weather conditions. Furthermore, two treatment periods were recorded to capture the effect of the nudge over time in one of the locations.Leisure cyclists showed lower speeds in treatment than in baseline for both locations. Commuters were less affected by the nudge than leisure cyclists. This study shows that visual nudges to decrease cyclist speed at intersections are hard to evaluate in the wild because of the many confounders. We also found that the effect of visual nudges may be smaller than the effect of environmental factors such as wind and demographics, making their evaluation even harder. The observed effect of speed might not be very high, but the advantage both in terms of cyclist acceptance and monetary cost makes an investment in the measure very low risk. This study informs policymakers and road authorities that want to promote countermeasures to intersection crashes and improve the safety of cyclists at urban intersections

RE-THINKING DESIGN REPRESENTATIONS IN DESIGN EDUCATION: AN INTERVIEW STUDY WITH PROFESSIONAL DESIGNERS

Design representations are important tools for designers in the design process. To help designers choose the appropriate representation, taxonomies have been proposed based on type, degree of fidelity, and when to use them. However, Design representations may also play an important role in designers\u27 communication with users and enabling users as co-designers. Therefore, new taxonomies, focusing on design representations\u27 potential mediating roles in collaborative design processes with users, have been developed. The purpose of this interview study, with twelve designers within Swedish industry, was thus to investigate how designers use design representations in communication with users in the design process. The study indicates that the designers mainly interacted with users in order for them to answer specific design questions or to evaluate design solutions. If design representations\u27 value for facilitating communication and collaboration with users should be emphasized, we need to shift from teaching mainly taxonomies related to fidelity levels or when to use them in the design process, and rather educate future designers about design representations inherent potential to mediate and enhance the dialogue with users

Nudging bicyclists towards a safer behavior -Experiences from the MeBeSafe project

The European union’s official cycling strategy states that bicycle use should increase by 50 percent in ten years while at the same time halving the amount of deaths (ECF, 2019). It is therefore highly important to find safety increasing measures that are both acceptable for bicyclists and that actually work. The Horizon 2020 project MeBeSafe is investigating if nudging can be a fruitful way towards safer traffic behaviour of car and truck drivers, as well as cyclists. This paper reports on a series of quasi-experimental studies that investigated if nudging can affect bicyclists’ speed as well as trajectory. The project has so far showed that visual nudges have a great potential for affecting speed and trajectory, while haptic nudges seems to have little effect