Impact of land use on bicycle usage: A big data-based spatial approach to inform transport planning

Abstract

Bicycling is an alternative of urban transport mode, which is significantly influenced by land use. This paper makes an effort to quantify the magnitude and direction of the impact. We first develop a theoretical framework to establish links between land use and bicycle usage. Then, trip data is crawled from Mobike, one of the largest newly emerging, free-floating bike sharing operators in Shenzhen (China), for a total of more than 7.8 million records over 191 consecutive days. And bicycling frequency, travel duration, and riding distance are obtained to be proxies of bicycle usage. Land-use characteristics regarding bicycling are comprehensively indicated by a set of standardized variables including three dimensions, land-use type, land-use mix, land-use connections, and 12 concrete indices. Panel spatial model is applied to quantify the associations at the district level with socioeconomics controlled. Results show that the percentage of green land has a remarkable impact on bicycle usage outcomes and land-use mix is positively associated with bicycling frequency. Density of intersections contributes to longer trip duration. Bicycle lane is a positive facilitator on workdays, while the number of stations is positively related to bicycle usage, especially frequency and distance. These findings provide insight into land use-transport interaction and could be of value to policymakers, planers and practitioners for transport planning while incorporating bicycling-friendly principles.