Urban Active Transportation Behaviour is Sensitive to the Fresh Start Effect

Abstract

Abstract Municipal governments are investing billions of dollars to facilitate urban active transportation (AT), however, little is known about population-level AT behaviours. Triangulating real world data for cycling traffic (n=1.2M counts), corporate bicycle parking (n=56,307 counts), vehicular traffic (n=6.3M counts) and fitness centre attendance (n=563,290 counts) in a large Canadian city, we show a significant 20% decline in AT-based cycling traffic over the course of a work week, replicated over 5 consecutive years. The decline AT (-147 cyclists/day; 95% CI: -199.0 to -94.6 cyclists/day) and use of occupational bicycle parking (-12 cyclists/day; 95% CI: -17 to -7 cyclists/day) were similar to the weekly decline in fitness centre attendance. In contrast, daily vehicular traffic increased 7% from the beginning to the end of a work week (+2248 cars/day; 95% CI: 2022 to +3674 cars/day). This study provides population-level evidence that urban AT behaviour is susceptible to the “Fresh Start Effect” heuristic.