Incorporating bicycling demand into pavement management systems for convenient bikeway networks

Abstract

Several cities around the world have announced strategies to extend and (or) upgrade their bikeway networks in response to the rapid increase of bicycle users. However, there is a disconnection between these strategies and management systems, often used for the scheduling of maintenance and rehabilitation of roads. Traditional pavement management systems fail to incorporate bicycle pathways considering bicycling demand, along with pavement condition, as a driving element to budget for improvements. More convenient and safer bicycling facilities can encourage more individuals to shift their daily commuting habits to bicycling. In this study, we incorporate bicycling demand into pavement management systems to produce strategic plans for the maintenance and improvement of the bicycle networks. Furthermore, here we employ smartphones to represent bicycling demand using GPS trajectories of bicycles. In addition, goal optimization is applied to schedule interventions and improvements. Two scenarios are investigated with different annual budgets.