The Applicability of Space Syntax to Bicycle Facility Planning

Abstract

With the emergence of bicycles as an increasingly viable form of urban transportation comes the need for improved design and planning tools. Existing methods for evaluating bicycle facilities and for prioritizing their construction and maintenance are reviewed. Two components are necessary for such an analysis: one for assessing the quality of the segments that make up the network, and one for assessing the overall network itself. Space syntax analysis is evaluated as a tool for network assessment on the basis of its potential to predict patterns of travel over different network configurations. The theory behind space syntax is evaluated and then tested by using data from the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. A good model for predicting bicycle volumes within a network can be constructed by using only census data and the space syntax measure “choice.” Unlike existing bicycle suitability measures, space syntax describes the importance of segments to the connectivity or completeness of the network.