Revealed Preference Methods for Studying Bicycle Route Choice-A Systematic Review.

Area of Science:

• Urban Planning
• Transportation Engineering
• Human Geography

Background:

• Promoting utilitarian bicycle use requires built environment modifications for safety and efficiency.
• Revealed preference data on bicycle route choice is crucial for understanding user behavior and prioritizing infrastructure.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and compare empirical methods for evaluating whole journey route choices of bicyclists.
• To identify the strengths and weaknesses of different data collection approaches for bicycle route analysis.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature search of two electronic databases using keywords related to bicycle and route choice.
• Identification and categorization of seven families of methods for evaluating bicycle route choices.

Main Results:

• Seven families of methods were identified: GPS devices, smartphone applications, crowdsourcing, participant-recalled routes, accompanied journeys, egocentric cameras, and virtual reality.
• A trade-off exists between the quality of obtainable data and the average number of participants across different methods.

Conclusions:

• The choice of method for evaluating bicycle route choice involves a trade-off between data richness and participant numbers.
• Future methods may incorporate dockless bikeshare data, computer vision with multiple cameras, and immersive bicycle simulators.