Perceived traffic safety’s impact on cycling route choice with street-level images
Koichi Ito (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management, National University of Singapore)
Roos Terra (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
Miguel Costa (Technical University of Denmark (DTU))
Felix Wilhelm Siebert (Technical University of Denmark (DTU))
Francisco Garrido-Valenzuela (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
Carlos Lima Azevedo (Technical University of Denmark (DTU))
Filip Biljecki (National University of Singapore)
Sander van Cranenburgh (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
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Abstract
Perceived traffic safety influences cycling behavior, yet its value relative to travel time and other route attributes remains unquantified. Building on the stated choice experiment and street-level image dataset of Terra et al. (2025), we extract safety perception scores from cycling-perspective images using a computer vision model and estimate mixed logit models to test whether perceived safety affects route choice after controlling for visual street-level features. Cyclists are willing to accept 64 additional seconds of travel time for a one-unit increase in perceived safety (scale: very unsafe to very safe). Safety preferences vary across demographic groups: older cyclists, recreational cyclists, and those with positive cycling attitudes place more weight on safety, while commuters prioritize speed. These willingness-to-pay estimates enable planners to quantify perceived safety improvements for cost-benefit analyses and to score existing cycling networks for targeted infrastructure upgrades. (Replication code: https://github.com/koito19960406/cycling_safety_perception).
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