Dillon T. Fitch’s research while affiliated with University of California, Davis and other places

During the COVID pandemic, at least 97 US cities closed downtown streets to vehicles to create commercial pedestrian streets with the goal of encouraging active travel and economic activity at safe social distances. This study addressed three questions about these programs for businesses located on a pedestrian street: 1) what factors influenced their feelings about the program; 2) what concerns did businesses located on pedestrian streets have; and 3) how did the pedestrian street program impact a business’s revenue as compared to other businesses in the area on streets that did not close. We created a geographic database of these pedestrian streets and identified nearly 14,000 abutting businesses, from which we collected interview and survey data. The interviews and survey results highlight key issues surrounding businesses’ experiences with pedestrian streets. Businesses abutting pedestrian streets had a slightly higher opinion of these programs than businesses not abutting these streets. A test of the effect of pedestrian street interventions on business revenue using a pseudo-control group showed the effect to be uncertain but, on average, negligible. The findings point to steps that cities can take to maximize the benefits of pedestrian streets for local businesses.

Bike-share services will produce more limited benefits if users cannot find bikes when and where they need them. Bike-share operators must thus have process for “rebalancing” the bikes within the system to ensure that they are available where demanded. A potentially cost-effective strategy for rebalancing bikes is to offer incentives of some sort to users to walk farther to get a bike (origin-based incentive) or bring a bike to the undersupplied area (destination-based incentive). This paper aims to examine bike-share users’ willingness-to-walk to pick up a bike or drop off a bike at some distance from their origins or destinations if rewarded and to identify characteristics influencing willingness-to-walk. We use data from a survey of dock-less e-bike-share users conducted in the Sacramento region. The analysis shows that half of the respondents use bike-share if the available bike is located 8.9 min away. Our estimates of willingness-to-walk farther than the mean distance for incentives at origins and destinations were 3.8 min and 4.2 min per dollar, respectively. Our results give operators and policy makers insights into the potential effectiveness of incentives as a strategy for spatially rebalancing bike-share fleets.

This chapter examines the impact of the pandemic on walking and bicycling using three longitudinal samples of U.S. adults in the time of COVID-19. We use data from a unique longitudinal panel that was created as a combination of research projects conducted during 2018, 2019, and 2020 at the University of California, Davis. Data was collected in a sequence of four waves of data collection to better understand how active travel changed from early lockdown orders through lifts in travel restrictions. Bicycling in all three panels showed examples of an increase in the mode share for commuting at the start of the pandemic along with less of a decrease in the absolute number of trips with this mode, compared to other modes. Through person-level change and changes in mode share, walking showed an increase for non-work travel and daily physical activity during the spring of 2020. The analyses presented in this chapter show how some respondents initially turned to active travel during the early pandemic months, but that active travel generally waned later into the pandemic.

In 2015, Google began a new transportation demand management program designed to increase bike commuting to their two main corporate campuses in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, CA, United States by lending conventional and electric assisted bikes to employees at no cost to them. Following the lending period, Google incentivized bike purchases, among many other program co-benefits to increase bike commuting. Using a series of bivariate and multivariable analyses, we estimate the program led to average bike commute increases of approximately 1.7–2.3 days per week, roughly a tripling of prior bike commute rates for participating employees. After the program, bike rates of participants diminished slightly, but were still greater than baseline (increase of 1.3–1.9 days per week). Furthermore, nearly all the increases in bicycling are likely attributed to decreases in single occupancy vehicle (SOV) commuting. This study offers a first look at the potential for bike lending as a transportation demand management strategy for large employers in suburban settings which can help other employers design their own programs.

The impacts of shared e-scooters on modal shifts have received increased attention in recent years. This study provides a review of the literature for modal shifts in the US and other countries. The profile of shared e-scooter users is rather similar to that of station-based and free-floating bikeshare programs. The empirical data reveal that people use shared e-scooters in place of cars at substantial rates, especially in many US cities, which suggests that in many locations shared e-scooters may be a good strategy for reducing car dependence. The use of shared e-scooters as a complement to public transit varies highly by city, highlighting how technology, regulations, and incentives may be needed in some cities to ensure modal integration and harvest the potential societal benefits from the introduction of shared e-scooters.

Understanding what environments are comfortable (and perceived as safe) for bicyclists is essential for increasing bicycling, particularly for non-experienced riders. Surveys probing people’s qualitative perceptions about bicycling environments can inform bicycle planning in important ways. In this study we use survey data from an on-line video experiment to analyze bicycling comfort and its relationship with person-level and road-level variables. We use an existing survey of students, faculty, and staff at UC Davis (n = 3089) who rated video clips of bicycling facilities in different environments based on their perceived comfort as a part of the annual UC Davis Campus Travel Survey (CTS). The video clips come from a variety of urban and semi-rural roads around the San Francisco Bay Area where bicycling rates vary. Our results indicate considerable effects of socio-demographics and attitudes on absolute video ratings, but we find relative agreement about which videos are most comfortable and uncomfortable across our sample population segments. Presence of bike infrastructure and low speed roads are especially important in generating higher comfort ratings. However, our results suggest that even the best designed on-road bike facilities (according to attributes in our data) are unlikely to provide a comfortable bicycling environment for those without a predisposition to bicycle. Nonetheless, our results provide guidance for improving roads with on-street bike facilities where protected or separated facilities may not be suitable. We discuss these results in the context of design standards for bicycling and methods for prioritizing bike infrastructure investments.

Bike-share service has become popular as a sustainable mode of transport in many cities in the U.S. But growing bike share demand while addressing social equity by providing adequate access to the service to lower-income groups is a challenge for cities. With the goal of informing their efforts, we analyzed the influence of socio-demographic and other factors on the decision to use bike-share as well as the frequency of using bike-share. The data for this analysis come from household and bike-share user surveys from the Sacramento region. Statistical modeling shows that although low-income individuals and students are less likely to use bike-share, they use it more frequently compared to others when they do use it. Individuals who regularly use multiple modes of travel also use the service frequently. Simulations based on the statistical models show that bike share demand increases substantially if low-income individuals, students, and multi-modal travelers make up a higher share of the user base.

Understanding perceptions of safety and comfort (PSC) while walking or cycling is essential to accommodating and encouraging active travel, but current measures of PSC, primarily surveys, suffer from validity and reliability issues. Physiological markers of stress like electrodermal activity and heart rate variability have been proposed as alternative, objective measures of PSC. This paper presents a literature summary and conceptual framework examining the use of physiological stress markers during walking and cycling. The existing studies of active traveller stress markers report inconsistent findings and account for limited controls. We propose a comprehensive conceptual framework to describe the array of dynamic stimuli experienced during active travel, with complex appraisals and multidimensional stress responses that feedback to travel behaviour and stimuli exposure, and culminate in a set of physiological outcomes triggered by activation of the autonomic nervous system – all moderated by numerous personal and trip-related factors. The key challenge of inferring traffic-related fear or discomfort from physiological markers measured on-road is potential confounding effects of: (1) non-traffic factors that induce or modify stress responses, (2) traffic factors that induce stress responses not associated with safety or comfort, and (3) personal and environmental factors that directly influence physiological measurements outside of a stress response. No physiological stress marker has yet been shown to be reliable for on-road active travellers, particularly not for inter-subject comparisons. Physiological markers have the potential to provide high-resolution, objective information about pedestrian and cyclist PSC, but further research, particularly controlled experiments, and more precise study framing are needed to ensure validity and address moderating and confounding factors.

Dock-less e-bike-share use is likely to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and related greenhouse emissions – if it substitutes for car use. If the major mode shift comes from public transit, owned bike, or walking, the benefits will be more limited. The goal of this paper is to identify the factors influencing mode substitution, defined here as the mode that is replaced when bike-share is used. The analysis shows that the dominant mode substitution for trips of less than 1 mile for most trip purposes is walking. Long trips and non-commute trips that start at non-commercial locations are likely to represent car substitution and some groups, such as women, non-membership holders and those who have a private car, are more likely to report car substitution for any trip purpose. These results provide guidance for designing bike-share operations and policies to enhance car substitution.