Effects of Perceived Traffic Risks, Noise, and Exhaust Smells on Bicyclist Behaviour: An Economic Evaluation

Abstract

Active mode (walking, bicycling, and their variants) users are exposed to various negative externalities from motor vehicle traffic, including injury risks, noise, and air pollutants. This directly harms the users of these modes and discourages their use, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of less active travel, more motorized travel, and more harmful effects. These impacts are widely recognized but seldom quantified. This study evaluates these impacts and their consequences by measuring the additional distances that bicyclists travel in order to avoid roads with heavy motor vehicle traffic, based on a sample of German-Austrian bicycle organization members (n = 491), and monetizes the incremental costs. The results indicate that survey respondents cycle an average 6.4% longer distances to avoid traffic impacts, including injury risks, air, and noise pollution. Using standard monetization methods, these detours are estimated to impose private costs of at least €0.24/cycle-km, plus increased external costs when travellers shift from non-motorized to motorized modes. Conventional transport planning tends to overlook these impacts, resulting in overinvestment in roadway expansions and underinvestments in other types of transport improvements, including sidewalks, crosswalks, bikelanes, paths, traffic calming, and speed reductions. These insights should have importance for transport planning and economics.

Cyclists’ exposure to atmospheric and noise pollution: a systematic literature review

“…A substantial number of cyclists state that they are ready to modify their itineraries to reduce their exposure (Anowar et al, 2017;Bigazzi & Gehrke, 2018;Dey, Anowar, Eluru, & Hatzopoulou, 2018;Gossling et al, 2019;Tom et al, 2015). The tendency to resort to detours varies depending on the gain expected regarding exposure and the sensitivity of the cyclists surveyed.…”

Challenges Caused by Increased Use of E-Powered Personal Mobility Vehicles in European Cities

“…The importance of relocating urban bike lanes to the calmer streets or nature predominated places has been stressed by many researchers [24]. The bicycle networks are planned to be separated and moved away from heavy traffic to safer and healthier environments like unused riversides, parks, and natural territories [25][26][27][28]. When implementing these measures, it must be taken into consideration that this infrastructure will be shared with e-PMV users, therefore new lanes must be designed according to requirements for higher speeds and, if possible, with divisions for walking, low speed, and higher speed lanes.…”

The Health Cost of Transport in Cities

“…Urban planners should also seek to restrict and limit motorized forms of transportation, specifically the private car [73]. The attractiveness of active mobility will increase where active transport is separated from motorized transport, as travelers value quiet roads, engaging in significant detours to avoid traffic risks, noise, and exhaust [23,54]. As cities such as Copenhagen or Amsterdam have cycle trip percentages exceeding 30% of all trips [73], urban re-design should be thought in bold terms [35,56].…”