Planning for bicycle infrastructure

Abstract

The ever-increasing demand, be it for land or for other resources, has led the world into a big sink hole. Right from the introduction of motor vehicles, cities were designed to facilitate these vehicles rather than building to optimize for the people. For example, in 1950s, the buildings and public space near the roads of Amsterdam (Netherlands) were destroyed to pave way for these vehicles. Although, the introduction of these vehicles was one of the important aspects in transportation, however, the over-use and over consumption has risen a lot of troubles for the present and the future generation, like global warming, climate change, air pollution, etc. Where most of the countries were focusing on the development of the roads for vehicular movement, there were a few countries like Netherlands and Denmark where the local planners were mostly focusing on developing the nation through upscaling and developing the bicycle infrastructure. These developments were useful not only for the cycle users but also for the pedestrians as they would open up a lot of public space which were before used by vehicles, in addition to this they have a much better environmental condition. In comparison to these countries, India like the rest of the countries focused on developing for cars, which resulted in over consumption of public space, environmental degradation, etc. Thus, the need to study various other approaches arises to benefit the community as a whole. The site selected for this thesis topic is Hauz Khas, Delhi. Over the years, people are finally realizing the importance of bike-able cities. In the last 10 years a push towards public bicycle sharing (PBS) systems was observed although due to political and design related issues it did backfire a lot of times. Also, according to the DCHB, Delhi has a cycle ownership of 35%. One such problem identified in the current infrastructure is the continuity, most of the Indian cities prefer pop-up bicycle lanes which leads the user to an uncomfortable situation where sometimes they have to save themselves from the over speeding vehicles. The other problem is the status of the bicycle infrastructures. Most of the infrastructures are either in a dilapidated condition or are inaccessible. The PBS systems, did tap in the educational and work trips market and in some cities like Delhi did make a quite success. However, the only focus towards these two forms of trips and towards the PBS system does arise research question: Are there any other trips which may facilitate in motivating people to cycle more and also include the 35% cycle owners of Delhi? In order to find a proper solution to the above question a series of analysis and literature review were done. The analysis includes, urban green space in the study area, network analysis of the existing road infrastructure, principal component analysis (PCA) for the perception-based survey forms, descriptive statistics, etc. The data was collected from various agencies working with the government and primary survey through questionnaire. Tracing the connections between these findings, and existing research reveals a range of outcomes and also the possibility of designing for recreation-based trips.