How do people cycle in Amsterdam? Estimating cyclists’ route choice determinants using GPS data from an urban area

Abstract

Nowadays, the bicycle is seen as a sustainable and healthy substitute for the car in urban environments. The Netherlands is the leading country in terms of bicycle use, especially in urban environments. Yet route choice models featuring inner-city travel that include cyclists are lacking. This paper estimates a cyclists’ route choice model for the inner-city of Amsterdam, based on 3,045 trips collected with GPS data. The main contribution of this paper is the construction of the choice set using an empirical approach which uses only the observed trips in the dataset to compose the choice alternatives. The findings suggest that cyclists are insensitive to separate cycle paths in Amsterdam, which is a city characterized by a dense cycle path network in which cycling is the most prominent mode of travel. In addition, cyclists are found to minimize travel distance and the number of intersections per kilometer. The impact of distance on route choice increases in the morning peak where schedule constraints are more prevalent. Furthermore, overlapping routes are more likely to be chosen by cyclists given everything else
being the same.