Introducing new criteria to support cycling navigation and infrastructure planning in flat and hilly cities

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to quantify the energy consumption, travel time, difficulty of each route and also safety levels for cyclists in different alternative routes. For this study, cyclists ride a conventional bicycle equipped with a GNSS and the energy required is quantified with Bicycle Specific Power Methodology (BSP). Cyclists also wore an equipment to record the heart rate called Vital Jacket and a video camera to record road conflicts between cyclists and cars. The aforementioned methodology was applied to three different routes chosen in the Portuguese cities of Aveiro (flat terrain) and Porto (hilly). For the flat city, the average energy expenditure was 44, 5 Wh/km while for the hilly area the energy expenditure was 96,05 Wh/km. For each origin-destination pair by choosing an appropriate route it is possible to save about 28% energy in Aveiro and 35% in Porto. Regarding route comfort, the average number of car overtaking maneuvers to the bicycle was used as indicator, while road safety was based on historical data. The tradeoffs identified and variation magnitude of variables analyzed suggest the information provided would be useful for cyclists with heterogeneous profiles as well as to support management authorities in order to maximize the attractiveness of the various routes.